I speak some Spanish (my late wife was a Latina), but I am not fluent. A good friend who is a priest from Latin America has asked me to translate a book he is writing from Spanish into English. The only way I can do it is by using translation software. I have found that Bing translator and Google translator are both rather awful. Much better is a program from Germany called DeepL. DeepL has a free tier, and a couple of paid tiers. The paid tiers (which I can't afford) allow the user to choose between the formal and informal tones. The free version not only doesn't allow me to choose -- it alternates between the two at random throughout each block of text. Aside from that, the translations are very good.
For a book, I need everything (except quoted dialogue) to be in the formal tone. If I enable spelling and grammar checking in Spanish in TextMaker 2021, is there an option to check for formal use, and to change informal to formal?
Proofing question about Spanish
Re: Proofing question about Spanish
I do not use TM on Windows, but I do in Linux. Insidentaly, Spanish is my native language. Keeping those two facts in mind this I what I can tell you so far about TM and the Spanish dictionary/spell check tool:
TM's Spanish spelling dictionary gets the job done, but it lacks in vocabulary. In some cases the hunspell dictionary is a better option. Then again: neither of both dictionaries are perfect. TM does not check grammar in Spanish. I think it only checks grammar for German. You could use languagetool.org to check grammar. It works well and usually explains to you what the issue is (or could be...).
In regard of the use of formal and informal pronouns, you are out of luck, it does not to that neither. All you need to remember is that Tu (you) is the "informal" pronoun, while Usted (a singular version of "they" (I know... it's a weird way to explain it)) is the "formal" (or distant) pronoun.
Remember that translators can just give you an idea of what the text says, and it's accurate can be quite low, specially if the text you wish to translate has a complex grammar.
TM's Spanish spelling dictionary gets the job done, but it lacks in vocabulary. In some cases the hunspell dictionary is a better option. Then again: neither of both dictionaries are perfect. TM does not check grammar in Spanish. I think it only checks grammar for German. You could use languagetool.org to check grammar. It works well and usually explains to you what the issue is (or could be...).
In regard of the use of formal and informal pronouns, you are out of luck, it does not to that neither. All you need to remember is that Tu (you) is the "informal" pronoun, while Usted (a singular version of "they" (I know... it's a weird way to explain it)) is the "formal" (or distant) pronoun.
Remember that translators can just give you an idea of what the text says, and it's accurate can be quite low, specially if the text you wish to translate has a complex grammar.