Editing parallel texts (in the aligner)

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Håkan Jansson

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Dec 9, 2009, 4:30:11 AM12/9/09
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Hi,
I'm presently working on parallel texts in the aligner, and they are
not as "identical" as I had assumed. My material consists of news
letters in four Nordic languages that are supposed to be translations
of each other, without information which would be the original text.
However in most cases there is an almost one to one correspondence
between the texts, about 75-85 % of the total text in the entire
documents. Some documents include one or to paragraphs that are
totally absent in the corresponding document. In other cases there are
typographical difference e.g. difference in the number of blank rows
between paragraphs (0, 1 or 2). Another difference between the
documents is the order of the paragraphs. For the most part the
paragraphs (i.e. the separate news items) are in the same order, but
it is not infrequent that a single news item would have the number 2
position in one news letter but the number 4 position in the
corresponding language.
This nature of my material means, was something I first noticed, when
I started to align my material, which turned out all together
different then expected. This situation means that I would be much
helped if I could edit the .WAR-files side by side in the aligner. Is
that at all possible?
Greetings
Håkan J

Mike

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Dec 9, 2009, 5:11:47 AM12/9/09
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Håkan, hi

> different then expected. This situation means that I would be much
> helped if I could edit the .WAR-files side by side in the aligner. Is
> that at all possible?

It is a great idea. Not part of the present design but I do see why
you need it, and I think it represents a fairly common problem. I will
think about it and see if that can be managed.

Mike

Mike

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Dec 9, 2009, 6:03:34 AM12/9/09
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Of course there is another solution. Edit the second text in a second
copy of Viewer & Aligner and put them side by side.
Mike

Håkan Jansson

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Dec 9, 2009, 10:23:38 AM12/9/09
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Mike wrote:
> Of course there is another solution. Edit the second text in a second
> copy of Viewer & Aligner and put them side by side.
> Mike
>
That's right, but then I lose the advantage of immediately having the
result at hand in the parallel corpus view in the aligner (the .ali-
file). For now I solve the problem by running two simultaneous
sessions of Notpad2, which gives a good overview for the editing. The
down side is that I have to add one more procedure in the editing
process.

Mike

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Dec 9, 2009, 2:24:00 PM12/9/09
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I think you could run two copies of Viewer & Aligner and when each is
OK save the result as a .vwr file. Then align, and save as an .ali
file.

> That's right, but then I lose the advantage of immediately having the
> result at hand in the parallel corpus view in the aligner (the .ali-
> file). For now I solve the problem by running two simultaneous
> sessions of Notpad2, which gives a good overview for the editing. The
> down side is that I have to add one more procedure in the editing
> process.

Cheers -- Mike
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