Comments on: How to create a parallel text!

Question: How to create a parallel text!

anjamu — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 15:37:55 -0800

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?

By: allen.spaulding

allen.spaulding — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 16:11:07 -0800

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.

By: littleme

littleme — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 16:11:34 -0800

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...

By: onalark

onalark — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 23:08:02 -0800

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.

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 06:07:17 -0800

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.

By: dagnyscott

dagnyscott — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 11:38:38 -0800

I know Adobe Pagemaker did this well; I imagine InDesign would too.

By: aberrant

aberrant — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 14:12:03 -0800

I'm almost 100% sure Microsoft Publisher can do this as well.