facing page translations

[DeeBee]

I want to prepare a document in which a Latin text is displayed on the left
hand page, and the English translation on the facing right hand page. the
Latin text is about 5 pages long, and so is the translation. The translation
should roughly line up with the original text. Is there a way to do this
with Word? Any suggestions would be *Very* gratefully received!

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

There is no really satisfactory way to do this in Word, but for a text of
this length, a bit of handwork might give the results you want. You'll need
to set this up so that each page contains a certain number of whole
paragraphs of the corresponding language. Figure out, for any given page,
which is longer, the Latin or the English, and establish page break points
accordingly. For example, if four paragraphs of the Latin nearly fill a
page, and the English translation will also fit on a page, then that is
where you will have a page break. Once you've established your page break
points:

1. Insert your first pageful of Latin, followed by the corresponding page of
English. Repeat for each of the following pages.

2. If that's parallel enough for you, you can just insert page breaks and
call it done. If you want the individual paragraphs to be parallel, select
all the text and use Table | Convert | Text to Table, separating at
Paragraphs. Make sure that the dialog shows that the result will be a
one-column table.

3. Remove any borders Word may have added (Ctrl+Alt+U). Select the entire
table, go to the Row tab of Table Properties, and clear the check box for
"Allow rows to break across pages."

4. The next part will be rather tricky. Although you can display two pages
side by side in Print Layout view, they won't be facing pages, so you'll
have to do a bit of back and forth. For each paragraph, determine which is
longer, the Latin or the English, and set the height of that table row to an
Exact amount that will just accommodate it. Then set the height of the
corresponding row in the other language to the same height.

 

[CyberTaz]

There are others who will offer ways to force such a layout in Word, but
IMHO it would be far more practical to use a program such as Publisher. You
could still do the Latin as a Word doc, do the translation as another, then
insert each into a simple Publisher layout.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Agreed. This would also allow you to control the text flow from odd page to
odd page and even page to even page.

 

[DeeBee]

Two problems with that: (1) I don't think I have Publisher on my PC, and
more importantly, (b) I have to submit this article as a Word document. Even
if I managed to get my hands on a PC with Publisher on it and set up the
pages with it, would I be able to export it as a word document and still
retain all the special pagination?

 

[CyberTaz]

Two problems with that: (1) I don't think I have Publisher on my PC, and
more importantly, (b) I have to submit this article as a Word document.
Even if I managed to get my hands on a PC with Publisher on it and set up
the pages with it, would I be able to export it as a word document and
still retain all the special pagination?

In all probability, not with any satisfactory degree of success.

With all due respect, whoever *requires* that this be done in a word
processing program must have a severe sadistic streak If it *must* be
done in Word I strongly recommend that you follow Suzanne's instructions in
her first reply... & Good Luck!