interlinear or parallel text

[Mateusz]

I need to prepare a document in two languages, where the text would go in
alternate lines. From the googling I have done, it could be called parallel
corpora, or interlinear or parallel text.

There seems to be a lot of research on translation software that would do
it: http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=75238
http://tcc.itc.it/people/forner/multilingualcorpora.html

However, my case is much simpler (I think). I'll try to keep it short:
I have a leaflet in English but I need to add Polish text directly below
English for the people who don't speak English. I have the text in both
languages already and I want it to appear so that the Polish text is roughly
below its English counterpart. I would like Word to control the breaking of
text into lines, so that I don't have to insert new paragraphs or manual line
breaks when getting to the end of the line. In a way it would be 'double
lined' text. I'm not asking much, I'm fine as long as consecutive sentences
do not overlap (i.e. the last part of an English sentence is not hanging over
the beginning of the next Polish one and vice versa).

I would imagine Word detecting sentences either automatically using full
stops, or manually by some hidden formatting symbols that I am happy to
insert.

Below is a simple example, with | marking the imaginary end of line (margin
of document). You have to view this text in a monospaced font to make proper
sense out of it! (Paste it into notepad?)

+++++
MS Word is a useful tool for a|
MS Word to przydatne narzedzie|

university student. It makes |
dla studenta. Sprawia, |

report writing quick and easy.|
ze pisanie raportow jest |

It is very |
szybkie I latwe. To bardzo |

important to format the |
wazne aby formatowac swoje |

documents correctly.
dokumenty prawidlowo.
+++++
Question is, how do I get Word to keep the lines the way I want them, even
when I edit text in one of the languages? I don’t want it to get messy when I
add or remove a sentence etc.
Separate formatting the text in two different languages would be a nice
bonus (smaller font, faded colour etc.
Or is this the point where Word fails and I need DTP software?
I tried using all sorts of google searches before I came here.

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

That kind of layout is common in linguistics, where you commonly have
three or even four lines that go together.

The only way I've found to deal with it is to use tabs instead of
spaces between words, and line breaks (Shift-Enter) at the end of each
sub-line (in your case, at the end of each English line) and paragraph
breaks (Enter) at the end of the last sub-line (in your case, at the
end of each Polish line).

Then, with the cursor in each line, click in the ruler at the top of
the window to place tab stops at places that space the words in the
sub-lines nicely. (Before you add tab stops, the tabs between words
will make the words go to the next available default tab stop, which
might be 0.5 inch or 1 cm or some such, so the lines could temporarily
break until you put in the "real" tab stops.)

You can format sub-lines however you'd like -- put the cursor in the
left margin until it turns into an up-left-pointing arrow, click, and
a sub-line is selected.

There doesn't seem to be any way to automate all of this. It can be
quite time-consuming to get it to look nice.

 

[Mateusz]

Thanks DeanH. I knew using a 2-col table would be the simplest solution. I
like the Text to Table trick, I probably wouldn't have been able to come up
with it myself. In this case, the document is going to be 1 page only anyway
so using a page break to jump to the next column seems to work for me.

I am still interested to see if anyone has an idea on how to do it with
interlinear text, that's why I marked your answer as 'not solving the
problem' - sorry!

If it gives anyone a hint, I once saw a bilingual version of the New
Testament that (if I remember right) was done the way I want my document to
be.

PS I took long to get back to this thread, sorry. I'm new here and had
trouble finding the thread. Strangely, I didn't get a response email
notification either. Nevermind!

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

Did you not see my reply on how I do it for linguistics examples? I'll
copy it here:

That kind of layout is common in linguistics, where you commonly have
three or even four lines that go together.

The only way I've found to deal with it is to use tabs instead of
spaces between words, and line breaks (Shift-Enter) at the end of
each
sub-line (in your case, at the end of each English line) and
paragraph
breaks (Enter) at the end of the last sub-line (in your case, at the
end of each Polish line).

Then, with the cursor in each line, click in the ruler at the top of
the window to place tab stops at places that space the words in the
sub-lines nicely. (Before you add tab stops, the tabs between words
will make the words go to the next available default tab stop, which
might be 0.5 inch or 1 cm or some such, so the lines could
temporarily
break until you put in the "real" tab stops.)

You can format sub-lines however you'd like -- put the cursor in the
left margin until it turns into an up-left-pointing arrow, click, and
a sub-line is selected.

There doesn't seem to be any way to automate all of this. It can be
quite time-consuming to get it to look nice.

 

[DeanH]

Mateusz - you don't seem to be seeing the other posts for your problem.
The notification system has not worked for sometime :-(

Anyway I will paste here the posting from Peter T. Daniels
Quote:
That kind of layout is common in linguistics, where you commonly have
three or even four lines that go together.

The only way I've found to deal with it is to use tabs instead of
spaces between words, and line breaks (Shift-Enter) at the end of each
sub-line (in your case, at the end of each English line) and paragraph
breaks (Enter) at the end of the last sub-line (in your case, at the
end of each Polish line).


Then, with the cursor in each line, click in the ruler at the top of
the window to place tab stops at places that space the words in the
sub-lines nicely. (Before you add tab stops, the tabs between words
will make the words go to the next available default tab stop, which
might be 0.5 inch or 1 cm or some such, so the lines could temporarily
break until you put in the "real" tab stops.)


You can format sub-lines however you'd like -- put the cursor in the
left margin until it turns into an up-left-pointing arrow, click, and
a sub-line is selected.


There doesn't seem to be any way to automate all of this. It can be
quite time-consuming to get it to look nice.

Unquote
Don't worry about the "did not help". At least you learnt the Text to table
trick. ;-)
If you dont want a two column table, another possible solution would be to
have two styles, one for English paragraphs, and one for Polish paragraphs.
The English style would have no Space After, so the Polish paragraphs sit
right next to the one above. It would also have Keep With Next format
attribute so they always stay together.
The Polish style would have a Space After, of say 12pt, so it will push the
next English paragraph further away, also it can have an indent as well if
you want.

You can also have on the English style that the style to follow would be the
Polish style, and the Polish style would have the English style following.
This means that as you type, you finish the English para, press return and
you automatically get the Polish style.

Make sense ;-)

All the best
DeanH