I needed a program that would translate files to English. Oh there are plenty of them online that will do this, but I needed one that would also do pdf files. Those are the files that you have to use a program like Adobe Acrobat to read. The online translators can't handle this and having an on desk interpreter is very handy, even though the translation takes place on their website and only seems to be done on your computer.

Cute Translator Pro is $99 and change. I have used Cute products many times and still do and I love them.. I don't know how big a file Cute translator will accept, but the Pro version, loads files of unlimited size, according to their website.

On to the program. Cute Translator Pro 3.01 is very reasonably priced even at around $100, but beware the section of the program that dealt with speech did work on my computer. When I tried to run it, I got a message that stated "English Text-To-Speech engine was not found on your system". The message went on to state that I could download again and reinitialize, which I tried, but then got a message that there was not enough storage space to complete the installation. Hey I have 159 gigs free! Still speech was not important to me and may not be to you. I reloaded the software and now I get a message that it can't work with my sound card, this is on a new Gateway computer. Some of these programs can be very pricey. It does not have 40 or 50 languages as some of the other programs, but it has some of the most important ones and may be all that most people need. It contains English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Greek, Korean, Russian, Japanese, Chinese(T) and Chinese(S). Remember that the translations take place on their server, so you need a connection to the internet. Fast translations are advertised, but I found that a translation of a pdf document that was 1.08 megs in size, over a fast Cablevision connection, took 1 minute and 20 seconds. In all fairness since the document was pdf, the software has to change it first to something that is readable, then process the translation so that you now have a two step process rather than one. Web pages translated almost instantly. Any file that you download can be edited with a set of simple tools that are supplied in the edit menu, plus you can type into the translation.

The interface is quite simple. There is a tool bar and menus. The toolbar consists of icons that perform the following functions:
1. Create new document. This clears the top window on the two part window gui. The upper window receives the loaded file and the bottom window is the translation. The bottom window doesn't seem to be able to be cleared except by highlighting everything in it and using cut. If you don't do this then all you translations just keep getting added to the bottom of the last translation. This is not good if you want to save the translated file. There should be a button to clear the translation.
2. Open new document. You can open any supported document which are .txt., .rtf, .doc, .xls, .ppt, .pdf, .htm. I haven't tried them all, but all the ones I tried worked. They loaded, but an .htm page I loaded refused to translate correctly. I would get the first few lines, but not the rest of the page, however a second .htm page worked perfectly.
3. Save translation result to a file.
4. Print translation.
5. Cut
6. Copy
7. Paste
8. Bold
9. Italic
10. Underline
11. Type of translation, allows you to select the type of translation. It lists:
General
Automotive
Aviation
Chemistry and eighteen other topics for more accurate translations. I have used only General so far.
12. This is the box where you select the language you are translating from.
13. This is the box where you select the language you are translating to.
14. Translate Button
15. Source and target language switch
16. The speech button if you can get speech to work

Before I get into the menus let me mention that there is a cartoon character that comes out upon loading. like the one in Microsoft Word. I haven't figured out how to get rid of it yet, but I am sure there is a way to stop it from loading. It can be hidden.

There are six menus:

File Menu. Edit, Translate, Options, Tools and Help

The File Menu has the following standard options - New, Open, Save, Save As, Print, Setup Printer and Exit. There are also shortcuts listed that can be used from the keyboard. As stated before files can be saved as .txt or .rtf. An option that states " all files(".") appears on the save gui as all files, I don't know why?

The Edit File has the following standard items - Cut, Copy, Paste, Find, Find Next, Replace, Undo, Select all. Edits can be made in either screen, but only the translated file can be saved. Find only seems to work on the file that needs to be translated. Here is a strange one for you, leaving the Find gui open and going to the Find Next menu item, gave me a search in the translation and it wasn't what I asked for. The Replace command in the menu doesn't seem to work correctly, it only seems to operate in the non translated file screen, but won't replace anything. Undo does work, but if you wrote a sentence it will undo the entire sentence not just the last word. I tried writing three sentences in the translated file and undo erased them all at once. Beware of undo. Lastly select all, works in either screen.

The translate menu has only one entry, translate. This works nicely.

The next menu is the Options menu, it consists of Interface language, Character, Text-To-Speech, Misc.
The interface language controls things like the menus and little help balloons that appear to tell you what the buttons and boxes are for on the interface. You can have these items appear in any one of seven languages. The languages are English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese and Dutch.
Character refers to the cartoon character that you will see when the program is opened. I think it makes believe it is talking when you use voice translate, but since I can't get the program to speak, I am not sure. There are four choices of characters, Merlin, Genie, Peedy, and Robby.
Text-to-Speech has an option to read either the target text or the translated text. There are eleven different languages that the text can be read in. They are American English, British English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
Misc contains where you can identify the language before it is read aloud, Read aloud results after translation and Copy results to clipboard after translation.

The Tools menu has the following options, Install MS Agent Components, Install Characters, Install SAPI runtime, Install Text-to-Speech engine, Install all optional components.
Installing MS Agent Components makes the translator more usable.
Install Characters gives you the chance to load cartoon characters, there are the four to choose from.
Install SAPI runtime is for speech.
Install Text-to-Speech engine for the particular language that you want the software to speak in. See above for choices of languages.
Install All Optional Components lets you hit one menu entry to install everything.I did this and that is why I think I have the cartoon character.

The Help menu has the following entries, Manual, Update, Homepage and About.
Manual brings up the the online line manual. It is basically a one page brief on what the program does, a second page that discusses the features and several pages pointing out each menu option and button. There are two pages that tell you how to contact the technical support and two pages about registering.
Update lets you know if newer versions are available and they are free.
Home page brings you to the Cute Translator home page.
About gives you the version of the program who it is licensed to.

So here is my opinion, there are some problems, but hopefully they will be addressed in future updates. The program has flaws, but it is reasonably priced and fills a need. Think of it, with this program you can explore the websites of the world regardless of what language they are in and read all those foreign pdf files such as ufo documents and such, if you select one of the languages the Cute Translator has built in.

Things I would like to see:
1, Built in support to load pages from the internet for translation. Now you have to download them first.
2. Fix items in the edit menu to work correctly.
3. Allow searching of the edited document.
4. Fix the Text-to-Speech feature to work with more computers.
5. Speed up translation for pdf documents
6. A way to cancel the translation before it finishes.
7. A way to have undo work in steps not all at once.
8. A way to save the original, not translated file, in case I want to edit it.

Here are the menu screens: