Translation Studies

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Two-column documents, one column for each language-- how do people make them? What’s the low-tech approach? (lemmy.sdf.org)

submitted 3 weeks ago by evenwicht@lemmy.sdf.org to c/translator@sopuli.xyz

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I use LaTex to create 2-column documents, one column for each language. Works great for me, but I wonder what other people use.

I have a 2-column latex doc where one column is my mother tongue and the other column is a machine translation. I will need a collaborator to manually improve the machine translation. I cannot expect them to handle LaTeX. My code-heavy doc would be painful for someone who does not know latex. So I wonder what 2-column format and tools would normal people use.

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[–] Tuuktuuk@sopuli.xyz 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

In LibreOffice a table is very low effort. You click the table icon, choose 2 as width and 1 as height and you're good to go. Takes about 2½ seconds.

[–] evenwicht@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Right, but the effort is in the manual entry. I am starting with a document coded in LaTeX which produces a 2-column PDF. So using latex2rtf will be my attempt at an automatic conversion but I imagine it will be a disaster. So from there, alternatively, I have a lot of copying and pasting to do. A table does not feel right, but I guess the first thing I have to look into is whether a table can span many pages. If each page must have a separate table, then what happens as the table grows? I anticipate a lot of pain, but nonetheless I'll see what I can do.

Journals and newspapers commonly do multiple columns though not for different languages, so the right column is a continuation of the left. I suppose a table might be a hack around that, assuming L/O even supports 2 columns of text in the traditional sense in the first place.

[–] Tuuktuuk@sopuli.xyz 1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

I double-checked, and yes: A table can span an infinite amount of pages. That's also the reason I like to use a 2x1 table instead of two columns: The two columns are basically just one text flow that jumps back to the top of the page from the page's end if there's enough space to the right of that column. A 2x1 table is simply two separate flows of text separated by a line between them. Or a transparent "line", if you prefer not having a visible box around the table. (If you want to have the box, it has a horizontal line in the beginning and end of each page, which I find ugly.)

Tables work that way because word processors such as that of LibreOffice's or Microsoft Office's don't really internally have a consept of "page". They have a page break "character" that tells that "now a page ends". And, if you're printing a document and it doesn't fit on a page, the rest is continued from the top of the next paper when printing. They do show a "page" when writing a document, but internally, it's just a long flow of text and images and such, and the text gets thrown on whatever page it ends up on. This means that if you change the font size in a long text, text from the bottom of a page might move to the top of the next one, or vice versa.

May I ask you: You don't seem to use a GUI at all, and it seems like you have never seen a GUI. I only know one other person who lives like that, and they are 100% blind. Is that the case with you? If you are using Lemmy without a GUI, how?! I'd like them to be able to browse Lemmy!