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 2 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 1 day ago (3 children)

I could imagine using a word processor, such as LibreOffice's writer. Just make a 1x2 table :)

[–] evenwicht@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I might try to use the latex2rtf tool then convert the rtf to libreoffice. But I am expecting disaster with 2 columns. A table sounds like high effort but it may be the only option in this situation.

[–] Tuuktuuk@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 day 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 1 day ago

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.