Product: Systran Professional Standard
Company: Systran Soft
Website: http://www.systransoft.com
Estimated Street Price: $195 for the downloadable version
Review By: Julien JAY

Office Integration

Systran also integrates itself to the Microsoft Office 2000 software like Outlook (we’ll see that one later) and Word. In Word 2000 two new icons one in a new toolbar as well as a new SYSTRAN menu materialize the presence of Systran. The first button allows translation of selected text and the second allows to change settings like the current selected translation engine as Systran is unable to detect the language of the current document. Note that the SYSTRAN menu simply contains shortcuts to the two features explained above. Curiously and certainly due to the lack of macros in FrontPage 2000, Systran doesn’t integrate itself with Microsoft FrontPage 2000 which is really a pity since webmasters often needs to have assistance translating web contents.

Systran icons in Microsoft Word 2000

Internet Integration

One of the main interests of this new release of Systran is its full integration to internet software. If you’re running Microsoft Outlook 2000 two new Systran buttons will be displayed in every email window you open. The first one allows to instantly translated the text of the email you received, after selecting the appropriate language pair translation engine using the second settings button: indeed it’s a pity to see that Systran doesn’t automatically recognize the original language of the email to translate it: so if you want to translate a Spanish email you received into English you’ll have to go in the settings to select the Spanish to English translation engine: it’s a bit painful. Also unless you enable a special setting the results of the translation will erase all the original email contents. We noticed that intensive use of Systran in Outlook 2000 quickly generates crashes: we were provided a patch that hopefully solves the problem. Last thing we regret is that Systran doesn’t integrate itself to Microsoft Outlook Express, probably the most used worldwide email client. Systran also integers itself to Microsoft Internet Explorer and unfortunately you can’t disable this integration except by hiding the new awful icons that are added to the main IE toolbar. When launching IE after installed Systran you’ll find new commands in the Tools menu of IE. These Systran commands contain: internet shortcuts to look for updates, and register the software. There are also Systran commands to translate the current webpage as well as the contents of the frame of this webpage. Other commands allow to empty the Systran cache information and to change the systran settings. Notice that the Systranet applet, you can manually launch from the systran program group, provides access to all the enumerated commands through an icon placed in system tray notification area of Windows: it's very useful as it provides quick access to internet related translating features. As the software is in perpetual evolution to ensure its translation quality, a link is offered in Systranet and in the main Systran interface to check for updates on the net: great feature to ensure the profitability of the investment.

Systran integration in Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5

Translating Webpage

Systran offers advanced features to translate the content of a webpage in the language of your choice by selecting it in the settings panel. It's an awesome feature that we wouldn't imagine to exist! How does it work? The online page you’re visited is moved into a temporary Systran folder and its content will be translated and displayed in Microsoft Internet Explorer. When translating the main FrontPage of ActiveNetwork we noticed with regrets that the layout of the page is partially broke by the translations: some words are suddenly formatted with no reason as indices, the left frame of the frontpage is much larger: in fact 2 times bigger than with the accustomed one, etc.