Correct and translate words as you type with a free program

Although sophisticated programs such as Microsoft Word have options to check spelling, vocabulary and translate languages, wouldn’t it be useful to have that facility no matter what program you’re using? Meet Etype, a clever, free program that ‘watches’ what’s being typed and tries to guess what the word is before it’s completed. This saves time with long words and ensures they’re spelled correctly. And, as if that were not enough, it can translate words to and from 21 different languages as you type.

Step 1
Launch a web browser and visit Etype Dictionary and Translator. When the page loads, click the Download Free Now button. If the File Download Security Warning dialogue box appears, click Save and choose a location for the downloaded file. Firefox users should select Save File to save the download to Firefox’s default download folder. Now locate and double-click the downloaded file to install Etype. Ignore any security warnings and click Run. Click to remove the tick from the option that installs the Etype toolbar (it’s not needed) and click Next. At the next screen click Skip to decline the Dealfinder installation (again, it’s not required and almost certainly unwanted) and the program will install.

Step 2
After a moment, the web browser will open a new tab and the ‘successfully installed’ message appears on the screen. To see Etype in action, launch a tool such as Notepad, the text editor that is included with Windows, and start typing. As soon as a few characters have appeared on the screen, the Etype window pops up and attempts to guess the word that’s being typed. Here for example, typing conf has produced a series of suggestions, starting with the word ‘conference’.

Step 3
To replace the word that’s being typed with any of the words in the suggestion list, use the cursor (arrow) key to select it and press Enter. As more letters are typed, the program refines its list of suggestions. Here, for example, adding an ‘a’ results in a single suggestion – ‘confabulation’. Let’s imagine the suggestion is not quite right. Hover the mouse pointer over the word and a little plus (‘+’) sign appears to the left – click this and two new icons appear.

Step 4
Click the pencil button and the suggested word will appear in an editable field that allows changes to be made. Here for example, for a bit of fun we’ve changed it to ‘confabulationism’ and clicked the ‘+’ button to save it to the dictionary so it will appear in future suggestion lists. This feature allows specialist dictionaries full of hard-to-spell words to be created so that, having got a word correct once, it’s not necessary to remember how to spell it ever again.

Step 5
As well as auto-completing and spelling words, Etype can translate them. With the Etype window open, click the cog icon and when the Settings dialogue box opens, click the Manage dictionaries tab. Click the ‘+’ button and select the native language and the secondary language from the two dropdown menus - here English and Spanish have been chosen. There will be a pause as Etype downloads the relevant dictionary. After that, select the two languages from the list and click the ‘Set as active dictionary’ button. Click OK.

Step 6
Start typing something else in Notepad and you’ll find, alongside the word suggestions in English, Etype has added Spanish translations, too. This feature makes the program fantastically useful for quick, on-the-fly translating. Start typing the word in English, pick the correct Spanish translation from the list and press Return to replace the English word with the Spanish one. Etype occasionally displays adverts in a pop-up window; these can be ignored and dismissed.