How to create a parallel text!

April 29, 2006 3:37 PM

Help me find a piece of software that makes it easy to create parallel texts.

I am working on some translations of literary work, and I would like to set them up for the final copy as a parallel text, i.e. one language on each side of the page.

(It is theoretically possible to do this in Word, but it is tedious and makes them hard to edit later on).

Is there software that does what I am thinking of?

posted by anjamu to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

I'm sure LaTeX could do this, and you could even use Emacs to have two side-by-side windows to edit at the same time.
posted by allen.spaulding at 4:11 PM on April 29, 2006

Final Draft AV may do what you want. You can download a trial copy to check it out if it looks like it might be what you're after...
posted by littleme at 4:11 PM on April 29, 2006

Yes, it can be done in LaTeX. If you are serious about making your thesis look nice when it's published, you'll have a hard time beating having your source in TeX if you can handle the learning curve.
posted by onalark at 11:08 PM on April 29, 2006

It's not only theoretically possible in Word, it's relatively straightforward. All you need to do is set up text boxes on each side of each page, and set them up to flow to the same box on the next page.

Same technique works in OpenOffice.org.

Just read the Help entries for text boxes.
posted by flabdablet at 6:07 AM on April 30, 2006

I know Adobe Pagemaker did this well; I imagine InDesign would too.
posted by dagnyscott at 11:38 AM on April 30, 2006

I'm almost 100% sure Microsoft Publisher can do this as well.
posted by aberrant at 2:12 PM on April 30, 2006