The idea of Power Translator is as simple as the name suggests. Depending on the language options you opt for, you basically feed it words in one tongue and it spits them out in another. It does this through a series of component parts that you employ, depending on what you want to do.

We kicked off with the Clip Translator and used it in tandem with Microsoft Word. It worked a treat. We typed some material into Word and then highlighted it and selected Copy. At this point, Clip Translator works out that it needs to do a bit of work and takes the material into the program's window.

It then, after a second or so (depending on the complexity of the snippet) translates it. From there, you can right click on and copy the translation directly into the clipboard, from where you are free to paste it wherever it's required. It's simple, it's effective and it worked with pretty much anything we copied into the clipboard from any program.

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Mirror Trans, meanwhile, does what the name suggests. You drag a small icon to a window you want to mirror, and the program then does its translation work on it. We couldn't get this working with a web window, but with everything else it was fine. Word documents were translated quickly and on the fly.

FileTrans, meanwhile, allows you to drag a file icon onto the program's windo, and it'll set about converting its contents. This only works with plain text and HTML files, sadly, so you won't be able to drag Microsoft Office documents across unless you save them in one of those formats first.

LogoTrans? That gives you a two-pane window. You type into the top half and the translation immediately appears in the bottom. You can copy and paste into it, too, and likewise you can open files here for it to do its best on.

Finally there's TransIt, which works on the basis of quickly converting a couple of sentences, to have them ready to go directly into something like a chat program.

The assorted modules do make the program feel a little 'bitty', but it's hard to knock the speed and effectiveness of them. With little system overhead they work well, even if occasionally you may have one or two questions about the odd piece of translated work.

You're in little doubt that it's a computer that's done the translating, as you get very literal content spat out the other side, which often needs a bit of deciphering. Granted, there's a Dictionary feature built in so that you can train the program a little, and it's certainly more advanced than many web tools you might find, but Power Translator 12 is not infallible.

It is good, though, and the number of languages this edition supports - seven in all - goes some way towards justifying the sizeable asking price. You'll find English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Russian and Portuguese all incorporated, and they work with Microsoft's Speech Recognition technology too.

Power Translator 12 is, ultimately, a good package that makes a solid fist of a very tricky job. It's not cheap, but it does work hard for its money. It wouldn't be wise to rely on it alone, but it's an ambitious and generally successful collection of easy-to-use translation tools.