April 19 2016, 15:10

An interesting device was discovered in the office. It’s a so-called postage meter. The bright top part is a scale. They weigh correspondence on it, then insert the envelope below, and the machine prints a stamp (frankotype) of the respective denomination. But where do you insert the money?.. The money is on the account, managed through the computer. So, people who know the language are not needed anymore when mailing!

Postage meters have been around for a hundred years. In Russia, such devices are still not present (or no longer present due to progress, as everyone is switching to Mail.Ru and such 🙂 )

April 17 2016, 10:04

After Google (31%) and Facebook (6%), the top spot in the ranking of sites I visit every day goes to the translator context.reverso.net (5.5%).

This is the most useful tool I’ve seen for written communication in English. A contextual translator is not merely a dictionary, but a database of bilingual texts with a search function. When you need to say something in English, you search for a fragment, find a host of examples, choose the one that fits the context, and borrow words/phrases. Usually, this is followed by using Google to double-check the assumptions.

I also rarely use multitran, but generally, it is almost unnecessary when reverso is available. I have not seen other good contextual translators (there is Abbyy, but it has a smaller database).

http://context.reverso.net/перевод/