There are plenty of programs to help learn a new language but pure translation programs are rare.

This is because this type of software is still very much in its infancy.

Enter Linguatec Personal Translator 2008 Home Edition, a reasonably priced package that integrates with a word processor for instant translation of words, sentences or entire documents between English, German, French, Portugese, Spanish, Italian and Chinese.

The program has a logical, friendly layout. The screen can be divided into two areas, vertically or horizontally. One area displays text to be translated, the other shows the results of the translation. We found it easier to split the screen vertically on our widescreen notebook, but the results box can be totally collapsed, leaving what is essentially a text-editor similar to a basic word processor.

Firstly, select the pair of languages to use, type or paste the source text into the first language box, click on translate and, pretty quickly, the translation appears in the result box. We found the results to be accurate enough to get the gist of the text, but certainly not a flowing translation. The program attempts to automatically detect the subject matter but to improve accuracy you can select this yourself.

We were able to save our documents in rich text format which could be easily exported into Word. If you prefer to use your regular word processor, simply hover the cursor over the word to be translated and the program displays the dictionary entry in a small permanently visible window. You can also jump to the word's Wikipedia entry in a single click.

For those who want to translate web pages, the web address can be typed into the address bar of Personal Translator and it will load the page directly into the translation area - from here it can be translated as any other document. We found this to be quite a slow process, though. Despite that, Personal Tran slator will be invaluable for students or anyone who needs to work in different languages.

Vista compatibility: Yes