Removing superfluous double byte characters (pet peeve)
Steven P. Venti
practice to be careful not to mix double byte characters in a file that
contained only English, and I've always tried to be conscientious about
editing out superfluous double byte characters from English text,
especially when the Japanese author has used double byte spaces instead
of tabs to align his text.
My question to everyone is: Is this now waste of the translator's time?
The main rationale for the previous practice was that the file would
neither display properly nor print out properly if it contained hidden
double byte characters.It seems to me that this concern has pretty much
gone the way of the horse buggy, and I can't help thinking that I'm
wasting my time doing something that the client is completely oblivious
to.
Comments, please.
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Steven P. Venti
Mail: spv...@bhk-limited.com
Rockport Sunday
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Cary Strunk
HTH.
Best,
Cary Strunk
Ginstrom IT Solutions (GITS)
> especially when the Japanese author has used double byte
> spaces instead of tabs to align his text.
>
> My question to everyone is: Is this now waste of the
> translator's time?
If you're working in an "office" program like Word/Excel/PowerPoint or the
Open Office equivalents, then the only difference is cosmetic: the
characters won't look quite right to someone not used to Japanese text.
If the translation is destined for a Web page, or might be in the future
(and this is becoming increasingly likely over time), then including
double-byte characters in an English document can cause problems. This is
because even the major Japanese websites (Toyota, Sony, ...) still use
shift-JIS encoding instead of utf-8. If that encoding declaration is
stripped out, then the browser will try to guess the encoding, leading to
gobbledy-gook where that parenthesis was supposed to be.
Regards,
Ryan
--
Ryan Ginstrom
trans...@ginstrom.com
http://ginstrom.com/
Steven P. Venti
> If you're working in an "office" program like Word/Excel/PowerPoint or the
> Open Office equivalents, then the only difference is cosmetic
> If the translation is destined for a Web page, or might be in the future
> (and this is becoming increasingly likely over time), then including
> double-byte characters in an English document can cause problems.
Thanks to Cary and Ryan for their comments. I guess it's time to start
defining for certain clients just exactly what 和文を上書きする does and
does not entail.
Additional comments also appreciated.
Alex Koolhof
alex
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martha mcclintock
Peter Clark
This should get you started.
http://word.mvps.org/faqs/MacrosVBA/CreateAMacro.htm
Do you do anything repetetively in Word, either at the start or end of every translation, or during translation? Then Macros can help you.
The Wordfast Knowledgebase also has some great hints.
http://www.wordfast.net/index.php?whichpage=knowledge&Task=view&questId=24&catId=9
Peter Clark
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Ben Bullock
> Alex, as a completely non computer sort who uses MSword constantly but
> without the benefit of the whizbang macros etc, how does one set up this
> macro for finding doublebytes? I always check for them as I am checking
> texts, usually it is double byte spaces etc that i find in text handled by
> my clients, and it is critical to get them out before the small house
> publishers i work with get them into press, and create more problems at
> proofing stage....
> please share this method for us basic sorts!
This is built into Word. You don't need any macros. To remove all the
double characters:
1. Press the "Ctrl" key and then press the "A" key with the "Ctrl" key
pressed down to select everything
--> All the text in the document is inverted into white on black
2. Go to the "Format" menu at the very top of the Word window.
3. Choose "Change case".
--> A box appears
4. Choose "Half-width" from the box.
5. Press "OK".
This will remove all double byte spaces and other "double byte"
characters from the document (side-effect: it will also convert any
katakana from the usual format into the narrow format.)
To remove other annoying things like too-wide degree signs which the
above doesn't catch:
1. Press Ctrl key + A to select everything.
(Alternatively, select the offending items by holding down the left
mouse button, and dragging the pointer with this button held down to
select the text)
2. On the font menu of the formatting toolbar, choose a font such as
"Times New Roman".
This way the "double sized" degree signs will all be turned into
normal-sized ones.
Ben Bullock
Alex Koolhof
and there are instructions on how to install whichever one you choose.
Alex
martha mcclintock
martha mcclintock
martha mcclintock
working in different versions of Word. I am in an English Mac OSX
version of Word 2004, with "upper case", "lower case" etc as the
"change case" options.......
Ben, what version of Word are you working with?
John Senior
own search & replace function. I often do this as a final check when
editing documents created or "corrected" by clients.
The method may differ slightly from version to version, but if you
open the search window and go into the options, you'll find you can
search for format-related things like tabs, line breaks, italics etc.
Most people know that, but there's also an option for searching by
language. If you select Japanese and leave the search text box blank,
it will find any double-byte character for you, including spaces.
Presumably this is the process that the macro performs automatically.
I'll be installing it forthwith to save time and mousework.
I definitely think double-byte characters should be avoided in English
documents. They can mess up line/character spacing when printed and,
as noted by others, may cause mojibake if used on the web.
--
John Senior
@Tokyo, Japan
Ben Bullock
> Ben, what version of Word are you working with?
interface pack. You may not have Japanese language support in your
version. The following links might help:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HP052510371033.aspx
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HP030845661033.aspx
Ben Bullock
2009/7/2 martha mcclintock <mjm...@gmail.com>:
martha mcclintock
using...
will check these options out
grins
Martha