Re: [latexusersgroup] Workflow wanted for translation of .tex-files by non-tex people

[Peter Flynn]

On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 10:14 AM, Heinz Wäscher <csb.f...@googlemail.com> wrote:

Hello everybody,

I was wondering if anyone knows about a good way to handle the translation of contents of a tex-file by people unfamiliar with tex.
The translators in my case would basically be happy to work with their MS Office programs. Any installation of new software on their end would be undesirable. So I do assume some kind of file conversion would have to be done.

If they need to translate the TEXT (and not change the formatting) then they should just edit the .tex file using Notepad so long as you teach them not to delete any of the markup. They do not need to install anything: they can give you back the translated file and you can re-typeset it.

If they are not competent to use Notepad, then you can transform a LaTeX document to OpenOffice format using TeX4ht, then open it in OpenOffice or Libre Office and save it as a Word file. Most of the formatting will be preserved but you will lose the markup.

If you need to preserve the markup, then use the TeX4ht method, but when you create the Word file you must edit it all to use Word's Named Styles and instruct your translators that they must not change the style names (they should do their editing with the style margin visible so that they can see the styles names so they know not to change them).  You can then write an XSLT transformation to convert back to LaTeX afterwards (it won't be 100% but close enough).

If this is a frequent or regular occurrence, then the master document should be created and maintained in XML anyway. Word with rigorously-applied Named Styles in a Template is also possible. 

///Peter

[Werner Grundlingh]

Some valuable information may be found by reading this post:

  My phd supervisor wants me to use Word because they can't edit LaTeX. What to do?

On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 2:14 AM, Heinz Wäscher <csb.f...@googlemail.com> wrote:

Hello everybody,

I was wondering if anyone knows about a good way to handle the translation of contents of a tex-file by people unfamiliar with tex.
The translators in my case would basically be happy to work with their MS Office programs. Any installation of new software on their end would be undesirable. So I do assume some kind of file conversion would have to be done.

If you need any further information to answer my question, feel free to ask me.

Thx in advance,
Heinz

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[Heinz Wäscher]

Thank you, Peter and Werner.

I will re-think the setup here from the ground.