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Bible Translation Tools

Text editors are different from word processors in that they do not have many of the presentation features that a word processor has. For example, a text editor may not be able to print out a document in various font faces or sizes. However, a good text editor shines in its handling of plain old unvarnished text. One of my favorites is a shareware program (try it for free; pay if you like it) called TextPad, which has a number of capabilities that may be of interest to you:

Unwrap Text
It allows you to unwrap text. That is, to have each paragraph begin at the left edge of the screen and simply continue to the right until it ends. This means it may extend far off the right edge of the screen. While this is bad for reading, it is great for doing things such as checking verse numbers. In the unwrapped mode, each verse number is right below the previous one without any interupting text.

Block Cuts
It lets you do block cuts. A block cut is the ability to highlight a vertical block of text and copy, move or delete it. This might be useful, for example, if you wanted to remove all the verse numbers from a chapter. Instead of going line by line, you could simply unwrap all the verses (as described above) and do a block cut, selecting all the verse numbers and delete them.

Multiple Document Search And Replace
You may at some point change your mind about the spelling of a word you have translated. Perhaps the name "Matthew" shouldn't be translated "Matty," but "Matt." You could open each document separately, search for "Matty" and replace it with "Matt," or with TextPad you could open all your documents once, then search for "Matty" and replace with "Matt" using the "All Documents" feature. Instantly the changes will be made to all your documents.

Manipulate Invisible Characters
Perhaps for editing purposes, you'd like a blank line between each paragraph. You can easily do this by searching for one carriage return and replacing it with two carriage returns. (Use the Replace function; click on the "Regular expression" box; search for \n and replace with \n\n. (the symbol for carriage return). Done. ("Regular expression" means to treat the search and replace entries not as literal backslash-n's, but to use their symbolic meaning: carriage returns.)

If you want to undo the double spacing, just search on \n\n and replace with \n.

Comparing Files
If you would like to see exactly what the differences are between two versions of a document, TextPad has a Compare Files feature that allows you to enter two files (Matthew Version 1 and Matthew Version 2, for example) and see exactly what is different about each.

Side-By-Side Scrolling
Like other text editors and word processors, TextPad allows you to open two windows side by side. But it also lets you "synchronize scrolling." This means if you have version 1 of Matthew open on the left and version 2 of Matthew on the right, you can scroll one and the other will scroll in sync, so you can easily compare.

Macros
Any series of commands that you want repeated is a macro. For example, you may make comments throughout the text you are editing, preceeding each comment with a double pound sign (##) and ending the comment with a carriage return. When you are done, you will want to remove all the comments. After unwrapping the text, you can use a macro to tell TextPad to a) search for "##" b) highlight from ## to the first carriage return, and c) delete all the highlighted material. It is as simple as turning the macro recorder on, performing the operation once, turning the macro recorder off, then playing the macro. If it is an operation you may need to perform repeatedly, you may want to save your macro. While they are simple when you get the hang of it, you should play around a bit to get a feeling for macros, as they can be a bit tricky at times.

Contact me at brad@sacklunch.net: Brad Haugaard