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<HEAD><TITLE>Software review: Harrap's Unabridged Pro CD-ROM. </TITLE></HEAD>

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<Font size="4"><B>Harrap's Unabridged Pro CD-ROM French <> English Dictionary.</B></Font> <BR>

Reviewed by Fran&#231;oise Herrmann <BR></P><BR>

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Harrap Publishers / Sejer, France 2004. <BR>

ISBN 5371123385<BR>

Price: 75&#8364; / 110&#36;<BR>

Available from: <A HREF="http://www.fnac.fr">www.fnac.fr</A><BR>

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<P><SPACER TYPE="horizontal" SIZE="36">The <I>HUP - Harrap’s Unabridged Pro</I> French<>English dictionary on CD-ROM, is Harrap’s second electronic bilingual dictionary. The first, <I>Harrap’s Shorter</I> on CD-ROM, was released in 2000 (see the August 2001 ATA Chronicle).<sup>1</sup> With 475,000 words and expressions and 1,000,000 translations, the <I>HUP</I> offers double the corpus of translations, and almost 200,000 more words and expressions. Designed for professionals, the <I>HUP</I> actually regroups two complete editions of Harrap’s flagship hardcopy dictionaries: <I>Harrap’s Unabridged</I> and <I>Harrap’s Business</I> dictionary. Published by Harrap’s in Scotland, in collaboration with French software developer Sejer, the <I>HUP</I> also includes: 55,000 audio pronunciations; 5,000 abbreviations; grammar, communications, and conjugation tools; 1,700 cultural notes designed to clarify the meanings of culturally-loaded words and expressions; and citations culled from the French, British, and American media. </P>

<P><SPACER TYPE="horizontal" SIZE="36">The <I>HUP</I> runs on PCs equipped with a Pentium III 700 MHz processor, 64 MB of RAM, and Windows&#174; 98/2000/ME/NT 4.0 or XP. Checking your computer for processor speed and generation of Pentiums via the Control Panel and System is important. The <I>HUP</I> is packed and loaded. Using a Pentium II, for example, will make the program run too slowly. Running the software also requires a 4X CD-ROM drive, a 2 MB video card, a 16-bit audio card compatible with Soundblaster, a minimum of 80 MB of HD space, and Internet Explorer 5.5 or later versions. Installation occurs with an installation wizard. You may select a minimal, regular, or complete installation of the dictionary. The first two installation options (for a minimum of 80 or 320 MB of HD space, respectively) require you to insert the CD every time you wish to use the dictionary.  Installing a complete version of the dictionary uses 600 MB of HD space, and frees your CD drive for the use of other applications. </P>

<P><SPACER TYPE="horizontal" SIZE="36">Once you have installed the <I>HUP</I>, accessing the application occurs in one of three ways. You may launch the application from the Start menu. You may right click on the application icon installed on the Windows toolbar. Or you may use the <I>HUP</I> pop-up mode directly from any other application with which you are working, including Outlook Express (for mail messages) and open Web pages in Internet Explorer. Simply highlight the word for which you need a translation, and left-click on the Harrap’s icon of the Windows toolbar. A pop-up window will open displaying the results of your query. Once in the pop-up mode, you will have access to the hyperlinked content of the dictionary, and the forward and backward page functions will allow you to keep track of your searches. The pop-up window is also designed to operate both separately and concurrently with the rest of the application. That is, you may continue to use the pop-up mode together with the launched application, even if you cannot toggle directly out of it into the fully launched program, or have access to the full features of the application from within it.</P>

<P><SPACER TYPE="horizontal" SIZE="36">You may search the <I>HUP</I> dictionaries separately, or both at the same time (see Figure 1). Your choice of dictionary, or of both dictionaries, appears in the upper right corner of the application window. The entries appearing on the left side of the split screen for <I>Harrap’s Unabridged</I> are also flagged with a red bullet, while the entries in <I>Harrap’s Business</I> dictionary are flagged with a blue bullet. Flagging makes it easy to navigate both, or each of the dictionaries. There are two search modes: Index and Search. The Index mode consists of a headword search. You type in a search word, and if it is listed as a headword within either, or both, dictionaries, the search will return a list of entries on the left side of the window. Selecting a match on the left side will bring up a corresponding article on the right side of the split screen. For example, Figure 1 displays results of a search for a translation of the term “price” and a corresponding article selected from the <I>Harrap’s Business</I> dictionary.</P> 

<P><SPACER TYPE="horizontal" SIZE="36">In the Search mode, you may search either dictionary, or both at the same time, for “keywords.” This is a useful function when searching for expressions, and when you do not know the entry word of the expression (for example, when searching for a translation of the expression “bear market” and you do not know whether the expression is listed under “bear” or “market”). Also in the Search mode, you may also do a “full text search” to retrieve occurrences of a term or expressions anywhere in both dictionaries. For example, for the expression “bear market,” a full text search will retrieve related expressions, such as “bear transaction,” “bear trading,” “bear position,” “bear sale,” “bear closing,” etc., and their translations. Thus, the full text search allows you to perform searches in the dictionaries that are otherwise impossible to perform in a flip-page mode. </P> 

<P><SPACER TYPE="horizontal" SIZE="36">Finally, all of the above options are visible and function without pull-down menus. Choosing a dictionary, a search mode (either by keyword or full text), and selecting the direction of the translation (from or into French) are all button-driven actions. This is ultimately both more user-friendly and timesaving than pull-down menus. It also creates a particularly uncluttered and crisp “WYSIWYG” (what you see is what you get) interface. </P>

<P><SPACER TYPE="horizontal" SIZE="36">In terms of content, the <I>HUP</I> regroups the complete 2001, two-volume, hardcopy edition of <I>Harrap’s Unabridged</I>. This is the largest of the Harrap’s bilingual French<>English dictionaries: a 12-pound heavyweight champion of established excellence, with 305,000 words and expressions, and 750,000 translations (see the May 2002 <I>ATA Chronicle</I>).<sup>2</sup> The HUP also includes the complete 2003 edition of Harrap’s Business dictionary, a popular and highly rated dictionary, which includes 40,000 words and expressions and 48,000 translations (see the November/December 2004 <I>ATA Chronicle</I>)<sup>3</sup>. The established qualitative excellence of Harrap’s Unabridged clearly shows, for example, in such features as: the particular attention given to indexing according to regional language variation and register; the inclusion of extensive cultural commentary and explanation to clarify native meanings; translation of works of art in all major categories, including movies and paintings; extensive lists of abbreviations, both expanded and translated; and a corpus that is culled from a 100-year tradition of lexicography.</P>  

<P><SPACER TYPE="horizontal" SIZE="36">Content from the <I>Harrap’s Unabridged</I> hardcopy edition, transposed to an electronic version, is also apparent in the layout of search results, which appear identical to the Harrap’s paper edition. For example, just as in the printed edition of <I>Harrap’s Unabridged</I>, search results on the right side of the application window are color-coded blue for headwords, black for translations, with a hyperlinked summary at the top of the article pointing to the semantic divisions of the searched item. For users accustomed to the printed version, this mapped presentation offers added friendliness. With the electronic version, however, comes the bonus convenience of the immediacy of search results; a find function appearing as a small magnifying glass at the top left corner to search items within a long article; a parser, which still finds your search term, even if you type it incorrectly; hypertext linking of the full content of both dictionaries, allowing you to click on any word of a particular article for further translations; and audio pronunciation of the 55,000 words listed. Thus, the <I>HUP</I> with a price tag of approximately 110.00 USD offers an excellent ROI (return on investment). You get two of Harrap’s largest and most popular bilingual dictionaries for significantly less than the printed edition prices, in addition to all of the above-mentioned media-specific advantages of electronic searching, audio presentation, and the hyperlinked format.</P> 

<P><SPACER TYPE="horizontal" SIZE="36">What is more, there are four additional tools included in the <I>HUP</I> beyond the dictionary (corpus and search) tool. These four additional tools: Grammar, Conjugation, Communication, and Cultural Information tools are each packed with additional aides to translation. In the Grammar tool, you will find a compendium of traditional parts of speech, with an index on the left side of the split screen. In the Conjugation tool, there is an interactive conjugation function that returns verbal forms for any verb input. In the Communications tool, you will find countless original models of written communication, such as letters, invoices or financial statements. These original documents initially appear as links in a context of careful explanations and comparative cultural commentary. Subsequently, each of the original documents open with mouseover diamonds that pop-up as boxes containing further explanations and translations.  For example, within the samples of small ads (rentals, cars for sale, jobs, or personals), all of the abbreviations contained in the ads appear with mouseover diamonds that supply expansions and translations. Similarly, in the statement of cash flows model (see Figure 2), mouseover diamonds open into boxes with additional cross-cultural comments. Finally, within the Cultural Information tool, you will find that extra Harrap’s hallmark dimension that is designed to clarify the “cultural baggage” of certain terms and expressions. Cultural information includes: a systematic effort to cover both American and British culture; all the information contained in the appendices of the printed Harrap’s Unabridged, including “allusions” (culturally significant phrases, such as “Gotcha,” “Catch 22,” or “That’s all folks”), administrative divisions, and nations of the world; translations for all works of art cited and translated; and all of the boxed cultural notes inserted with headword articles (for example, covering terms such as “Downing Street,” “Magna Carta,” and “State of the Union Address”).</P>

<P><SPACER TYPE="horizontal" SIZE="36">In sum, the <I>HUP</I> appears a super bargain, both in terms of qualitative content and cost. This is an application that combines the complete editions of two of Harrap’s flagship dictionaries with the bonus advantages of electronic searching using a particularly uncluttered and button-driven interface. When you purchase the <I>HUP</I>, the costs are significantly less than the corresponding costs for the printed edition of both dictionaries. In terms of harnessing more electronic features and supplementing the familiar hardcopy versions, one wonders, perhaps, why some of the hallmark features of the printed editions, such as indexing according to language variety and register, are not included in the search features of the <I>HUP</I>. Similarly, one may legitimately wonder why stellar design features of the <I>Harrap’s Shorter</I> CD-ROM, such as the conversion tool or links to the Internet, are absent. Beyond such design choices, however, perhaps what matters most of all to translators is that electronic dictionaries supply superb translations, and in quantities that simply defy the print world. In this respect, the <I>HUP</I> tops all of the electronic versions of the French institutional giants currently available on the market. Enjoy!</P>  


<P> <B>References:</B><BR>

<sup>1</sup><I>Harrap's Shorter CD-ROM Dictionary (English-French, French-English)</I>, <I>ATA Chronicle</I>, 30 (8), 2001, pp. 59-61.<BR>


<sup>2</sup><I>Harrap’s Unabridged 2001</I>, <I>ATA Chronicle</I>, 31(5), 2002, pp. 57-58.<BR> 


<sup>3</sup><I>Harrap’s Business Dictionary, French <> English</I> (New Edition), <I>ATA Chronicle</I>, 33(11), pp. 48-51 & 60.<BR>

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<P> <B>Figure 1: <I>HUP</I> Dictionary tool interface</B></P>

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<P> <B>Figure 2: <I>HUP</I> Communication Tool: Model consolidated statement of cash flows, with an open mouseover diamond box displaying cross-cultural comment</B></P>

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