FLEx and Paratext - best practices

[Cameron and Valerie Hamm]

Dear FLEx users,

 

I want to explore the ways that FLEx (8.1) and Paratext (7.4) can communicate with each other and what the intended result is for the functionality that exists (feel free to comment on features that will be coming out soon). 

 

What I understand now is:

 

-Paratext can look up lexical entries in FLEx (when a lexical database is specified in the Paratext software)

-FLEx can import translated materials from Paratext in the texts and words area.

-both Paratext and FLEx have ways to interlinearize texts

-both Paratext and FLEx allow the creation of a (vernacular) spelling dictionary

 

What are the intended ways that Paratext and FLEx interact in the domains of text interlinearization and spelling dictionary?

 

I have a FLEx project with a lexicon of more than 2000 entries, and more than a dozen natural texts interlinearized, many to the morpheme level.  There is also a Paratext project for translation of the Bible, in which the gospel of Luke has been drafted, but only about half of it is approved by a consultant.  I want to get the most out of the interaction between the two projects and not duplicate efforts where possible.

 

Some things I want to do only once for both pieces of software:

-have one authoritative vernacular spelling dictionary that would notify me of spelling mistakes (or non-entries in the spelling dictionary) in texts in both FLEx and Paratext.  Currently that authoritative vernacular spelling dictionary is the list of wordforms in FLEx (based on vernacular texts), but I don't know how to get that in use in Paratext so I can see 'misspelled' wordforms in translated drafts.

-a way to more easily add lexical items to the dictionary I'm building in FLEx, gleaned from translated texts stored in Paratext.  Currently I have some Paratext translated texts imported into FLEx (some that are approved by the consultant), but I still need to interlinearize those texts in FLEx before I know which lexical items found in Paratext translated texts are not present in the lexical database in FLEx.  I'm aware that imported Paratext texts have their wordforms added to the list of wordforms in FLEx.  But to move them from wordforms to lexical items often takes some parsing/interlinearization before we get to forms that are appropriate for the lexical database.  Does anyone have experience with this?  I have partially set up the parser for grammatical facts I am aware of, but the results are not great yet (it still offers noun prefixes attaching to verb stems!).

 

Has anyone written a 'best practice' for using these two pieces of software or know of important procedures or limitations?

 

Looking forward to your responses,

 

Cam Hamm

 

[Richard Gravina]

Hi Cam,

 

I don’t have a best practice for this, but it is something I’ve done. I’ve used FLEx to spell check two NTs. This was with slightly earlier versions, but the principles still apply.

 

In both languages I had FLEx set up so that the parser worked most of the time, i.e. accepted well-formed words and rejected badly formed ones. The morphology in these languages wasn’t too complex, i.e. the number of possible forms for each verb was nearer 100 than 1,000. This means that the number of different word forms in the NT wasn’t too huge.

 

I linked the FLEx and Paratext projects, then went through and approved the spellings of words which were correct, i.e. parsed correctly and looked good to me. I did this when each book was ready for checking or revising, so I didn’t have masses to do in one go. After a while, the number of words with wiggly lines under them reduced a lot, so the process became quicker.

 

If you are working with a language with lots of morphology, but you can get the parser to work well, you could try using the Predicted Analyses field in Word Analyses or Word list concordance views to find all the words that won’t parse.

 

I haven’t used the Paratext interlinear function in actual work. I’m not sure what it would tell me about the translation. If it links its translations with the word gloss in FLEx, that would be handy.

 

Best wishes,

 

Richard

--
You are subscribed to the publicly accessible group "FLEx list".
Only members can post but anyone can view messages on the website.
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "FLEx list" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to flex-list+...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to flex...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/flex-list/007901cff8c7%249e2a5af0%24da7f10d0%24%40org.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Cameron and Valerie Hamm]

Thanks Richard.

 

Did you approve the spellings in FLEx or in Paratext?  If in FLEx, which view?  And how did you get Paratext to use the FLEx vernacular spelling dictionary?

 

Cam

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/flex-list/1E36651C2CD2461580626EDD12FA075D%40RichardTOSH.

[C. Waag]

Hi Richard,

How do you link the FLEx and Paratext projects? I deal with several projects which are close to finishing the NT, but do not have a decent dictionary. All the projects have mother tongue translators only, without any outside translation assistant assigned to them (the speakers had to work through the process themselves, only with help of consultants that do not know their language, because of personnel shortage) They use the Paratext for spell checking, though the glossing in Paratext is often messy. Now they want to have a dictionary, and I also need some more natural texts glossed (preferably in FLEx).

How can I get interlinearized, checked texts from Paratext to FLEx? I would like to get the texts (something like one chapter in Paratext as one text in the Texts&Words section of FLEx) with the gloss of Paratext into the Word Gloss of FLEx. The "Export Project to FLEx texts..." is useless, because it breaks up the texts of Paratext too much and I do not know how to merge them together in FLEx (that I have one text as one text and not one clause or sentence as one text in FLEx).

The only thing I can do right now is to copy the approved/spell checked text from Paratext into the Baseline of FLEx and re-do all the glossing. That is very time consuming!

Christine

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/flex-list/1E36651C2CD2461580626EDD12FA075D%40RichardTOSH.

[Richard Gravina]

Hi Christine,

 

First you need to create a FLEx project for the language, if you don’t already have one.

 

In Paratext you go to Project|Project Properties and Settings.... In the dialog box you click on the Associations tab. The first item is Associated Lexical Project. Click on Choose... and choose the FLEx project for this language.

 

Now all the Scripture should appear in FLEx. If you click on the red Filter texts icon, you can choose which parts to show or hide. You can interlinearise them in FLEx and set up spell checking, but you can’t edit the text.

 

FLEx divides up the Scripture into one text per section heading. However, it keeps the headings and footnotes separate, which I don’t find to be ideal.

 

Does this help?

 

Best wishes,

 

Richard

 

From: C. Waag

Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2015 7:50 AM

To: flex...@googlegroups.com

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/flex-list/54ACE52D.90904%40suremail.org.

[azul]

Hi Christine

If you want to import your Prtxt glosses. You then need to

1) Look for a file called "Lexicon.xml" that is stored with your paratext projects in the same place where your program files are stored
Convert this file to sfm format with THIS (download it to your desktop and without opening it drop the Lexicon.xml file on that app):

Tweak your results in word so they are cleaned up from empty \g (glosses) and so they look like the following example (utf8):

\w Vernacularword
\g gloss
\g anothergloss (optional)

\w
\g


You then go to Flex to Text and Words -> File -> Import Words with glosses in Standard format

You can then follow FLEX instructions (make sure you map \w to Vernacular and \g to your glossing lannguage)

Import Standard Format words and glosses

You can import words and their glosses if they are marked up with standard format markers. These words and glosses could come, for example, from a Toolbar export <name>.db file.

In Word Analyses, you will see the imported words appear in the Form column and the glosses in the Word Glosses column. Nothing is added to Baseline tabs in Interlinear Texts.

Do the following:

1. Open the project into which you will import the words and glosses.

2. In the Navigation Pane, click Texts & Words.

3. Back up that language project (recommended).

4. Stop the parser, if it is running.

5. On the File menu, point to Import, and then click Standard Format Words and Glosses.

   The Import Standard Format words and glosses dialog box opens to Step 1 of 3: Import Files.

The bad news: If you gloss

gato
cat

and in another instance you gloss

gato
jack

You will have both words glossed as "cat" with a second option available but hidden for jack...

We hope that FLEX will handle this problem, because we could move lots of glossed texts and even morphological analysis back and forth.

[Derek]

I'm using FLEx 8.2.8 and Paratext 7.5.100.79.

I'm in the process of checking spelling.  In FLEx it usually underlines spelling errors in the baseline view of texts.  However for all texts from Paratext viewed in FLEx there are no red underlines.  Is there some place to click to change this.

If I copy and paste texts from Paratexts into a new text in FLEx the red underlines show up but I hope there is a way to avoid cutting and pasting. 

Thank for your help.

Derek

[Paul Nelson]

The language codes in Paratext and FieldWorks must match exactly to make the connection.

Paul

On Thu, Mar 19, 2020 at 4:52 PM Isaiah Peterson <623...@gmail.com> wrote:

Richard,

If you're still there, can you help me with a similar problem? I have (after some doing) finally associated my FLEx and Paratext projects. I'm confident that the projects are connected (at least Paratext to FLEx) since I can insert an entry to FLEx from Paratext. However, when I go to the red 'choose texts' icon in the Texts and Words section of FLEx 8.3 the Bible doesn't show up. Is there a setting I need to change, or is there some association I have to make on the FLEx side, since I only made the association in Paratext. 

Thanks for your help.

Isaiah

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to flex...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to flex...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/flex-list/007901cff8c7%249e2a5af0%24da7f10d0%24%40org.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You are subscribed to the publicly accessible group "FLEx list".
Only members can post but anyone can view messages on the website.
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "FLEx list" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to flex...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to flex...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/flex-list/1E36651C2CD2461580626EDD12FA075D%40RichardTOSH.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You are subscribed to the publicly accessible group "FLEx list".
Only members can post but anyone can view messages on the website.
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "FLEx list" group.

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to flex...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to flex...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/flex-list/54ACE52D.90904%40suremail.org.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
"FLEx list" messages are public. Only members can post.
flex_d...@sil.org
http://groups.google.com/group/flex-list.

---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "FLEx list" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to flex-list+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/flex-list/4f7f2943-47bf-4fcc-9fcd-64ca06647360%40googlegroups.com.

--

Paul Nelson

Director, Language Software Development

SIL International

7500 W. Camp Wisdom Rd., Dallas, TX 75236

Phone: + 1 972.708.7471

Mobile: + 1 425.802.8332

Skype: paul.nelson323

Time Zone: GMT-6, USA Central Zone