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I have to spell-check a large book written in 2 languages (some 30% to
70%). The problem is, that words in those 2 languages are very
intertwined (it's a grammar book), plus they are very often wrong
marked, as belonging to the other language.
So what I get, when trying to spell-check the document, is that Word
underlines not only misspelled words from language "a", but also
correct ones from language "b", which are marked as belonging to the
language "a".
Is there any way of persuading Word to put some more effort and check a
"suspicious" word not only with one, but with 2 dictionaries - and
underline a word only if it cannot be found in either one?
Many thank for reading and - possibly - helping...
Greg
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The best way is to mark the words in the appropriate language. You need to
select the passages in a language and format it as being in that language.
Tools > Language.
--
Charles Kenyon
Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word
Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide
See also the MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/ which is awesome!
My criminal defense site: http://addbalance.com
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This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
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from my ignorance and your wisdom.
"greggorio" <greg_duda[ at ]hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1152370224.885564.145840[ at ]h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
[Quoted Text] >I have to spell-check a large book written in 2 languages (some 30% to
> 70%). The problem is, that words in those 2 languages are very
> intertwined (it's a grammar book), plus they are very often wrong
> marked, as belonging to the other language.
>
> So what I get, when trying to spell-check the document, is that Word
> underlines not only misspelled words from language "a", but also
> correct ones from language "b", which are marked as belonging to the
> language "a".
>
> Is there any way of persuading Word to put some more effort and check a
> "suspicious" word not only with one, but with 2 dictionaries - and
> underline a word only if it cannot be found in either one?
>
> Many thank for reading and - possibly - helping...
>
> Greg
>
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Charles Kenyon wrote:
[Quoted Text] > The best way is to mark the words in the appropriate language. You need to
> select the passages in a language and format it as being in that language.
> Tools > Language.
Well, I know that would be the most "regular" thing to do. Only - the
book is very large, so going through the whole text and individualising
words would take a lot of time.
To me, Word should offer to choose more than one main dictionary for
spell-check, just like now the user can choose 1 main dictionary plus
custom dictionaries. There would be cases of words overlapping (the
same spelling, but different meanings), but they could be easily marked
by a different underlying color.
Hey, are there any MS guys reading this?
Greg
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What an editor's nightmare! Why not take two passes; each with one language?
"greggorio" <greg_duda[ at ]hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1152370224.885564.145840[ at ]h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
[Quoted Text] >I have to spell-check a large book written in 2 languages (some 30% to
> 70%). The problem is, that words in those 2 languages are very
> intertwined (it's a grammar book), plus they are very often wrong
> marked, as belonging to the other language.
>
> So what I get, when trying to spell-check the document, is that Word
> underlines not only misspelled words from language "a", but also
> correct ones from language "b", which are marked as belonging to the
> language "a".
>
> Is there any way of persuading Word to put some more effort and check a
> "suspicious" word not only with one, but with 2 dictionaries - and
> underline a word only if it cannot be found in either one?
>
> Many thank for reading and - possibly - helping...
>
> Greg
>
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aalaan[ at ]tpg.com.au wrote:
[Quoted Text] > What an editor's nightmare! Why not take two passes; each with one language?
Because a number of words from one language are marked (Tools /
Language / Set language) as belonging to the other language. As a
result, when setting the main dictionary to the language "a", Word will
list as spelling mistakes not only actual mistakes from language "a",
but also correct words from language "b", marked as beloging to
language "a", because it cannot find them in the dictionary for
language "a" - and vice versa.
To go through well over 500 pages of text like this, possibly in two
passes, is a nightmare, indeed.
Greg
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<aalaan[ at ]tpg.com.au> wrote in message news:44b01a17[ at ]dnews.tpgi.com.au...
[Quoted Text] > What an editor's nightmare!
Having been there myself many times I can say it is indeed.
> Why not take two passes; each with one language?
Because checking with one language (say English) would mark all (or most) of
the words in the other language (say Turkish) as mistakes unless they were
specifically tagged as Turkish.
greggorio's idea:
>> check a
>> "suspicious" word not only with one, but with 2 dictionaries - and
>> underline a word only if it cannot be found in either one?
Has a great deal of merit for people who have to work with bilingual
documents in which someone neglected to tag the languages properly. It's
rather a niche market however and I don't think it likely that MS would be
very interested in it.
--
Bob
http://www.kanyak.com
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"greggorio" <greg_duda[ at ]hotmail.com> wrote
[Quoted Text] >> What an editor's nightmare! Why not take two passes; each with one
>> language?
> Because a number of words from one language are marked (Tools /
> Language / Set language) as belonging to the other language. As a
> result, when setting the main dictionary to the language "a", Word will
> list as spelling mistakes not only actual mistakes from language "a",
> but also correct words from language "b", marked as beloging to
> language "a", because it cannot find them in the dictionary for
> language "a" - and vice versa.
> To go through well over 500 pages of text like this, possibly in two
> passes, is a nightmare, indeed.
Having been there myself, I feel your pain...
If there is a lot more of one language in the document than the other, one
thing you could do (and which I have done on at least one occasion) to cut
back on the amount of work is this:
1. Let the language that's in the majority be the "main" language and change
everything to that: Control-A > Tools > Set language.
2. Using Find and Replace (control-H), find and replace the words in the
other ("second") language but be sure to enter the language information in
the "Find what" and "Replace with" windows. (It's under More > Format >
Language.) You must check "Match whole words only" when you do this; on the
other hand, I find I get better results when "Match case" is turned off.
(Word is pretty good at retaining the case info when it finds and replaces.)
This works pretty well if you don't have a lot of text in the second
language or a lot of different words in that language. Since you said it was
a grammar book, I assume it's a book written primarily in the main language
with examples from the second. (It's an added bonus if the examples are
repetitive.)
Personally I don't like working with big files but for your sake, I hope all
500 pages are in a single document...
--
Bob
http://www.kanyak.com
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"Charles Kenyon" <wordfaq[ at ]nospam.addbalance.com> writes:
[Quoted Text] > The best way is to mark the words in the appropriate language. You need to
> select the passages in a language and format it as being in that language.
> Tools > Language.
Another possibility is to check the "Detect language automatically"
box, it might actually work at least better than keeping the whole
document the same language, at least if the passages in each language
are long enough (and both languages are supported by the
language-guesser).
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Eventually, I'm going throught the text by assigning words to their
right language and then getting the regular reaction from the
spell-checker. Well, it's not what I expected to be eventually doing,
but it's not that bad, after all...
In the meantime I did some reseach and checked possible options. Yes,
there were people like me, who needed an option of running two main
dictionaries at a time and they couldn't find a satisfactory solution,
either. Among some interesting ideas people came up with, was:
* getting a full dictionary of one language in plain text and using it
as a custom dictionary for the main dictionary from another language
* tricking Word into treating a full other's language dictionary as a
custom dictionary.
All that isn't a piece of cake, however... Dictionaries aren't readily
available, and they are compiled which makes it difficult to trick
Word... Anyway, I gave up because I need to have this job done quick...
No time for dictionarology this time:)
I think from an American perspective this might seem a niche issue, but
from a European perspective dealing with different languages in
everyday life is quite common... Think for instance of an army of
editors and translators working for EU institutions. If MS was a
European company, I think this option would be embedded in early
versions of Word - possibly with some interesting solutions on words
which seem to be synonyms when written, but have different meanings in
different languages... Maybe...
Greg
PS. Funnily, I remember reading a text from a guy who had 2 Mac
machines and one version of Word for Mac. When installed on one
computer, Word gave the possibility of choosing several main
dictionaries for spell-checking, when installed on the other machine,
it didn't give that option. Sounds like a joke, doesn't it?
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