German-English translation software

[Vinnie O'Mahony]

I made the mistake of taking French in school and so can read perhaps 20 German nouns relating directly to military affairs. The rest of the language continues to elude me.

A few years ago I purchased "German Assistant" by Global Link Software. This does a MUCH better job than a pocket dictionary alone does, but at least 10% of any German text I type in comes back as meaningless sentences where the intended combination of verbs and prepositions is so tangled that I have to simply GUESS as to what is being said.

Can anyone recommend a better translation package? Cheap, of course.

I think I'm currently using a version of OmniPage for OCR, but then I got a LOT of software with my scanner. It seems to get more than 90% of the source converted correctly, but the two-column style popular with the US government results in hundreds of tiny lines which must each be reassembled into flowing sentences. Full conversion still takes me perhaps an hour per page, including scanning. I think straight typing is still FASTER.