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I have a 200 page manuscript which I need to translate from English to Portuguese. I am looking for the best software application authors use for this purpose.

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Translation is best done by humans. There is no software available to push a button and Make This Portuguese, and even if there is, word-for-word translation simply can't capture the nuance and meaning of idioms and language-specific phrasing. Saying someone "has horns" in European countries means something very specific which doesn't exist in English, for example.

Translation services are a big deal. There are entire companies which do just this, and you should vet and review even their work and not assume it's right.

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    Shoot, even within the English language, I have a hard time some times understanding my friends in Scotland and New Zealand. Some things just cannot translate because it's not a part of our slang as you said.
    – ggiaquin16
    Jul 24, 2017 at 16:43
  • I understand it perfectly but my thinking here is that I really need to obtain a piece of software that would "coarsely" translate my book and then pass it on to a Portuguese speaking expert that would "totally edit" it instead of having it totaly translated by a human before Editing and designing.
    – JAMES FERNANDES
    Aug 4, 2017 at 16:11
  • I have the same issue.
    – JAMES FERNANDES
    Aug 4, 2017 at 16:13
  • if that's all you want, you can throw it into Babelfish babelfish.com or Systran store.systran.us/lp/storeSystran?Langue=en_US, but since your translator would have to have the original ms to compare against anyway, you aren't saving any labor or brainpower.
    – Lauren-Clear-Monica-Ipsum
    Aug 4, 2017 at 18:28
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    A machine-translated version would be worse than useless as a starting point for an actual translation. It's very hard to edit sense into something that makes no sense; it's much easier to just start with the original and translate it all correctly.
    – JPmiaou
    Dec 21, 2017 at 20:46

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