create interlinear text in word

[Guest]

I have tried and tried to figure this one out. I am translating alot of
text. I want to be able to post the original language, space it out a bit
(several pages worth) then type under each line the english -- without
disturbing the formatting of the original.

Is this possible at all any way at all?

Thanks so much this would be HUGE if it can be done!

 

[Summer]

Apply a one style to the foreign language and another style to the
translation.

 

[Graham Mayor]

This is not possible without a great deal of work, but a possible workaround
is to create two documents each at least double spaced - one in each
language. Then, with the aid of a screen capture application like SnagIt,
copy the translation, page by page, to a set of images. Crop the images
close to the text, then insert them on the relevant pages of the document
with the insertion wrap option set to 'behind text' . Set their properties
to 100% size and with the aid of the white selection tool on the drawing
toolbar, whilst holding the ALT key, move the image until the text it
contains appears between the lines of the document. It is fiddly but can be
done.

It helps if you set the colour of the translated text to something different
from the original eg grey so that it stands out. You can do this easily in
SnagIt's editor.

The translations will not be editable in the combined documents, but you can
retain the original translation and recopy any translated pages.

SnagIt has a fully working demo that you can use to evaluate the viability
bof this approach.

The only other method I can think of that will not upset the original
formatting would entail using a borderless table and copying each line into
every other row of that table. This I feel would entail far more work, but
would result in a fully editable document.


--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

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[Peter Jamieson]

I can't think of a /simple/ way to interleave two parallel texts so that
they both reformat as you might hope when, for example, you change the page
width.

As long as you are willing to determine the line length of your non-English
text at the beginning, perhaps the way forward is simply to break your
non-English text so that each line is a separate Word paragraph, each of
which is followed by a single paragraph of English text - either you can
keep that to a single line, or allow the English text to flow into more than
one line if the translated text is longer (and not forgetting, of course,
that different word order means that there won't be a 1-1 correspondence
between lines of text in the two languages.

You could split your non-English text into separate paragraphs using a
simple macro such as the following (untested except in a very simple
example). In the general case I would expect some formatting to change, but
perhaps it is worth a try.

Sub SplitIntoLines()

Selection.EndKey unit:=wdStory
While Selection.Information(wdFirstCharacterLineNumber) > 1
Selection.EndKey unit:=wdLine
' Don't insert a para mark if there is one already
If Selection() = Chr(13) Then
Selection.MoveUp unit:=wdLine, Count:=1
Else
Selection.TypeParagraph
Selection.MoveUp unit:=wdLine, Count:=2
End If
Wend

' Deal with line 1
Selection.EndKey unit:=wdLine
If Selection() <> Chr(13) Then
Selection.TypeParagraph
End If

End Sub

I have no doubt the real VBA people here have better ways to do this sort of
thing! But if you want to insert the extra paragraphs you need for the
English text, it should be reasonably easy to insert the necessary code.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

The others have suggested a number of clever ways to accomplish this, and if
you really do need your interleaved text to flow with the main text, it will
be very difficult to do. For large amounts it's a special challenge. For
small amounts of text that will not change, however, you might use a
variation of Graham's suggestion, just creating the interleaved text in a
text box set Behind Text and positioned appropriately.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Graham Mayor]

That would work better than my suggestion as it retains the editability of
the text

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

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