If you sometimes look up online translation tools then you will no doubt be aware them many of them give you a garbled translation which makes no sense at all, while others have limited vocabularies which make translating even simple phrases impossible. It also usually involves the rather time consuming task of cutting the text and pasting it into the translation window or tab.

One clever way round this is to download Dicter, which is a free, easy to use and unobtrusive translation tool modelled on Google Translate.

The first thing you will want to check is whether it covers the language or languages you are interested in. Over 40 different languages are covered, including all the main ones and a few ones you might not expect to see on a free tool like this.

Once you download it to your PC it will sit nicely out of sight until you call it up. This can be done through the hotkey Ctrl + Alt or by opening the program from your desktop.

The interface is uncluttered and only gives you the options you really need. The translations are carried out quickly and without fuss. While the quality is not as good as that of a human translation it is as good as you could reasonably expect from a free machine translation. Getting the words onto the program and from there onto a document once translated is incredibly easy, meaning that lengthy translations can be done really quickly.

Once the piece has been translated to your satisfaction it can then be translated again into a different language by choosing the appropriate option from the Settings menu.

If you are going to use machine translations then for ease of use, reliability, variety of languages and for being free then Dicter is just about as good a choice as you can make.