CALICO Software Review Word Ace! for French 1.01 Paul Robberecht

CALICO Software Review CALICO Journal, Volume 17 Number 2, pp. 334-350 Word Ace! for French 1.01 Paul Robberecht - University of Alberta Product At A Glance Product type: English-French/French English Language learning software Language Level: Beginner to advanced Activity: Translate, conjugate, verb game, synonym game Media format: 1 CD-ROM Computer platforms: Windows 3.1/95 / Macintosh System 7.1+ 1. General description WordAce! Version 1.5 is a product of Transparent Language, Inc., a New Hampshire company specializing in language learning and language reference software. Its main products consist of The LanguageNow! Series, language learning software for Spanish, French, German, Italian, Latin, Russian, and English language learners, and Transcend, advertised as a "professional-quality translation program." The company also offers a number of other products, among them:Survival Phrases, KidSpeak, GrammarPro, etc. Describing itself as "The Indispensable Language Reference Set," WordAce! offers a translation dictionary and a French verb conjugation engine. The program can be combined with other languages in the following combinations: Spanish, German, Italian, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, European Portuguese, Dutch, Finnish, Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian. Users have the option of purchasing and integrating any other language module. In this way, WordAce! becomes an extensive language center allowing multiple use and combinations set in the Source and Target fields of the program's Translate page. Transparent Language is obviously a company that has built its reputation in the field of language learning and translation (its multilingual translation program is licensed form Soft-Art, Inc., and its dictionaries from Linguistic Software Inc.). The company's web site describes all its products and provides useful information regarding its corporate set up. Technical support is easily reachable and product updates are offered. The company claims that Transparent Language products are employed by more than 6,000 schools and colleges and 200,000 users worldwide. Customer quotes are eloquent and product information includes references to awards from American Booksellers and others. A summary of critical reviews drawn from a variety of sources is available on the site. WordAce! Version 1, was first released in 1996. The Spanish module was reviewed in January 1997 in The Educational Software Report Card and on a scale of 10 obtained an overall rating of 6.8. (Educational Value 7). The user level of the Spanish module was described and evaluated as Middle to High School. A more recent CALICO review (September, 98) of version 1.5 described the Spanish module as appropriate for beginners to advanced level. We believe that the French module can likewise be adapted for use with a range of learners up to college level. In fact, the language games component of WordAce! can be very challenging, even to advanced users. In this review, we should like to focus on the product's educational usefulness at this higher level. The product is shipped with a very comprehensive User's Guide. Installation of WordAce! is effortless and it is obvious that, in spite of sound effects that can be a bit surprising to the unwary, great care has been taken to make the product as user friendly as possible. 2. Evaluation It is obvious, from the start, that WordAce! benefits from sound technical design. In our evaluation test, we tried to push the product as much as possible (product tested on a Pentium II 267 MHz machine). Regardless of the pace it was put through, it functioned as a regular "work horse". The product's main window consists of five tabs, Translate, Conjugate, Verb Game, Synonym Game, and Set Up pages. The program defaults to the Translate page. At the user's discretion this page can be set to two sizes, big and small.WordAce! cannot be made to fill the entire screen, but this is not a hindrance at all since one of the features of the program is to work in conjunction with other programs, particularly word processors. All five pages are designed in a very functional compact fashion. All functions are clearly indicated and Windows or Macintosh users will find buttons and configurations with which they are familiar. Many of the program's features are self-explanatory. A beginner could start using WordAce! with a minimum amount of prompting. For instance, it is immediately tempting to type in a word in order to test the translate program. In the case of accented languages, however, some preliminary precautions must be taken to type in accents. WordAce! simplifies the task through the use of the up or down arrow key which gives all possible accented combinations to the base word. To carry out our evaluation of the program, however, we decided to use our regular "French Canada" system keyboard. Many national keyboards do not use the QWERTY configuration familiar to North Americans, but this keyboard offers easily reachable accented characters placed in the familiar configuration. It is easily learned and works seamlessly with all word processors and e-mail programs set to MIME. WordAce! functioned quite efficiently with this keyboard, though, for some reason, it was not possible to compose a circumflex accent over the letter "a" (it works with other letters). 2.1 The Set Up Page Set Up allows users to establish the source and target languages (swapping languages is always an option). Other settings concern the number of words remembered and the action to be taken in the case of misspelled or untranslatable words (the program either automatically brings up the spelling checker or defaults to the dictionary or root word information). The sound settings allow users to turn on or off all sounds events and make it possible to listen to word entries while translating or conjugating. The Verb and Synonym pages also make it possible to turn sound on and off. The check box to do this is appropriately called "noisy." While sound effects may appeal to some users, this reviewer found them to be rather obnoxious. On the other hand, the possibility of hearing words pronounced is an interesting feature of the program. Set Up also asks for the CD-ROM drive designation. This is a convenient feature for multi-drive users. Very well designed Help screens are available for this and all other windows. In most cases, a mouse-over the graphic representation of the window activates a hand giving access to pop-up descriptive windows. WordAce! 's French module functions as a word translation program, that is from French to English or English to French, or as a thesaurus, that is from French to French or English to English. This handy feature increases the program's versatility. This flexibility is also evident with the Conjugate page. Different users can use the program in any combination. For instance, the conjugation engine functions from language to language, or within a language, as in the case of English verbs (appropriately, tense/mood and person designations change for each language and "verb help" describes specific usage). As stated earlier, WordAce! can be used by both beginners and advanced language learners. We believe, nonetheless, that the intermingling of simple and complex language can be daunting to beginners. This is why we suspect that the optimal value of WordAce! is best achieved when the program is used in conjunction with another language learning program, for instance the company's LanguageNow Series. Used alone, however, WordAce! functions like a dictionary and, as with paper dictionaries, a certain degree of sophistication is required on the part of the learner. Unfortunately, too many learners rely almost exclusively on the vast choice of synonyms without really understanding the difficulties associated with the passage from one language to the other. This is particularly pertinent to cross-language learning, as for instance translation studies. The problem is less acute in the case of reading programs because learners tend to integrate translated words into the contextual reference schemes of their own language. On the whole, however, it is evident that lexicographers working in the electronic reference field must take great care to adapt their programs not only to the target language, but also to the target audience. This is particularly important whenever international audiences are targeted. Dictionaries are cultural products that display a nation's deepest relationship to "words" and "things", if not to "self" and "world". English language dictionaries are different from French language dictionaries because the attitude toward language is different. The question of bilingual dictionaries, however, is interesting and pertinent. Their evolution is evident in the transition from the tradition of the great "national" dictionaries such as the Harrap's to fairly new enterprises such as theRobert & Collins. Changing attitudes towards language have in fact brought national (monolingual) perspectives a little closer. The Oxford Learners dictionary, with its use of examples taken from everyday life, is perhaps an early example of a dictionary in this tradition that views language as a living entity. This practice is best exemplified by the Petit Robertand fully explained in the excellent "Présentation du dictionnaire" signed by the eminent Alain Rey. The Robert & Collinsprefaces and introductions offer a similar view on the evolution of lexicography. Jan Collins describes a truly international dictionary as one that provides the same degree of confidence to speakers from either language group (Preface, vii). This remark is not without importance because it underlines the point about national preferences (The Robert électronique is indeed different from the American Heritage). This is not the place to discuss or compare monolingual or even bilingual dictionaries, but we believe there are enough good examples to reveal the advances made in the field of lexicography. Electronic dictionaries, particularly bilingual ones must follow suit. Changes have also taken place in the field English-language lexicography.

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