Paratext Features

October 11, 2019 By Doug Higby

What’s New in Paratext 9

Menu system

The menu system in Paratext has changed from having menus visible all the time (above the toolbar) to having menus that are accessible by clicking on a menu icon: .
The series of menu items to open various items has been reduced to a single “Open” command on the main menu.

Enhanced Resources

An Enhanced Resource is a resource text in which many words and phrases are linked to source language research material. That research material assists users to complete a high-quality translation by helping them do exegetical study or other research tasks on source-language words and phrases.

Window framework

You can open items in panels, tabs, floating windows, or the autohide area and can then arrange them in a layout to help you do your work.
The default for opening a tool is to open it as a floating window.
You can close everything that is open in Paraetext without closing Paratext itself. (Click the main menu icon, then from the Window menu, select Close all.

Layouts (formerly called Text Combinations)

If you save a text combination in Paratext 8, you can open it as a layout in Paratext 9.0 (and later).
You can share a layout with others.
If you open a shared layout but your computer is missing resources or projects in that layout, Paratext will offer to Send/Receive the projects you are missing and to Download/Install the resources you are missing.

VPN Internet Access

You can disable Internet use in sensitive locations but still connect to the Internet through a Virtual Private Network (VPN).

Ruby Glossing

You can add ruby glossing to Chinese characters (called “Han characters”).

Registration issues

You can change your Paratext Registration Name.

USFM

You can change the USFM version used in an existing project.
You can select the USFM version used in a new project when you create that project.

Parallel Passages tool

You can choose to either display a single check box per set of parallel passages, or display a check box for each verse in a set of parallel passages. Depending on your choice, clicking to put a tick in the check box either approves all verses in a particular set of parallel passages or approves an individual verse.
The verse references in the Parallel Passages tool have fewer color distinctions.

Resources

In the Download/Install Resources dialog box:

Enter text in the “Filter Text” box to limit the resources displayed to those that contain that text in their “Name”, “Full Name”, or “Language”.
In the “Full Name” column, resources that have been updated since you downloaded them are labeled “Update” and resources that are new are labeled “New”

Biblical Terms

Instead of marking and unmarking occurrences of Biblical Terms renderings as having a glossary entry, you now link or unlink occurrences of Biblical Terms renderings to a glossary entry.

Miscellaneous

You can import words from a spell-checking dictionary into the Wordlist.
The address to which to report problems, bugs, or errors is: [+support@paratext.org+](mailto:support@paratext.org).
If a back translation is in the active tab, Status of Back Translation appears on the View menu. If status check boxes do not appear, click Status of Back Translation to display them.
You can ignore whitespace differences in anything that includes one or more whitespace characters.
In a Text Collection, a slash in a text in the left pane indicates that there is a line break or poetic marker at that point in the text.
For a project on the Paratext registry, you no longer need to Send/Receive it when you modify user permissions.
If data in your project uses a mix of composed and decomposed characters (likely due to using different keyboard layouts), you will no longer have false errors when either comparing texts, reviewing recent changes, or looking at project history.
There is a new command to Send/Receive this project. (Click the project menu icon on a project and find the Send/Receive this project menu item.)
There is a new way to report a bug or to make a feature request.
If open items in Paratext belong to more than one scroll group, there is a letter (or symbol) at the lower right of the tab icon to indicate which scroll group each open item belongs to.

January 31, 2018 By Doug Higby

Setting up for Progress Tracking

Organisations that want to track the progress of their various translation projects may now do so through Paratext. This is possible through the use of the project plan, and assigning tasks to team members. As tasks are completed, the progress is recorded. This data can be accessed by people in the organisation with the appropriate roles.

However, the tracking will only work with the proper set up and planning. The following features must be in place before progress can be tracked successfully.

Set the scope

First, the team has to set the scope of their project. Which books will they translate? This new feature was added for the purpose of tracking progress. If a New Testament is the goal, then only those books are selected for the scope. All projects must have the correct scope set in their Project Properties and Settings.

Apply a plan

Next, Paratext comes with a standard set of boilerplate project plans from SIL, UBS, and Seed Co. The project administrator must select and apply one to the project. We recommend that projects choose the plan provided by their organisation or a locally approved variant. All projects must have a project plan applied.

Customise the plan

The boilerplate plan will not be accurate for any given team, since each team has their own unique set of tasks. We recommend that teams preserve the main stages that have been established by their organisation. Within those stages they are free to customise the specific tasks for their project. All projects must customise the project plan for their situation.

Set a target completion date

While Paratext is designed to show progress, it can’t interpret that process unless the team actually sets a target completion date. Without a target date, the project members or observers won’t be able to interpret the status of the current rate of progress. Paratext can provide a helpful chart that shows whether the team is ahead behind schedule by comparing their current rate of progress with the anticipated rate of progress to reach their goal. All projects must set a target completion date in the Paratext registry.

Mark progress

Now, a blue button will appear in the top right corner of the project window, allowing administrators to assign tasks to translators, and allowing translators to see their list of tasks. When a task is completed, the translator must mark the task as complete. Progress is noted in the system when tasks are marked as complete. All projects must actively use the Assignments and Progress window to mark their progress.

Now we’re tracking!

Having done all of the above, we can now track project progress. The mechanism to do this is a bit rudimentary for the moment, but working. The first thing to note is that there are two ways to view progress: Through the progress website, or through the Paratext progress API — a way to extract the progress data and view it in whatever format we want to, using our own tools and interface.

Progress.paratext.org

This site has been set up with the goal of allowing an organisation to review and approve the recorded progress by a team, acting as a check and balance before that progress gets recorded on the progress.bible website. Not all organisations will do this as part of their workflow, but for now, it allows people who are granted the role of Progress Reviewer to see the reported progress of projects today.

Paratext progress API

Paratext organisations will be able to set up their own systems to report on the progress data accessed through the Paratext progress API. This is the intended way for organisations to view and interpret their progress data.

April 29, 2016 By paratext

Project management comes to Paratext 8!

Paratext 8 brings a powerful new project management feature with a lot of potential. I’m afraid, though, that without taking the necessary time to set the system up properly, many teams won’t ever benefit from it. That would be a shame. So here’s an overview of how it works so that you can better understand and start preparing for the new Project Plan tool in Paratext 8.

Every Bible translation project, no matter how it is organized, has a set of tasks that need to be completed in a certain order in order to make progress. Whether you are the translator and trying to remember what step comes next, or an administrator and trying to assure that your team follows those steps, Paratext 8 can help its users to know what to do and when.

Stages

First you must divide the project into stages. Paratext comes with stages one through four as a default, but it is very easy to name them and to add additional stages. Let’s take a four stage model:

Drafting
Team review
External review
Final revision

These are stages that every book must go through and the number of stages differs between teams and between organizations. You’ll need to decide on these stages together as a team before continuing.

Tasks

Each of those main stages will contain a number of tasks. Deciding what those tasks should be is where you need to do the bulk of your planning.

Let’s say that for each chapter, your process of drafting involves reading through the TEV and then reading through the UBS Handbook. Your first three tasks are:

Read through the TEV
Read through the UBS Handbook
Draft the text

In practice, these are checkboxes that the translator must check off manually. But Paratext makes it very easy to do this, by providing an “Assignments and Progress” button in the top right corner of the editing window. Clicking on this will open the dialog box and allow the translator to check that stage as complete.

Tasks may be independent or dependent on other tasks. In the above example, the drafting task would be conditional on having first read through the TEV and the UBS Handbook. You can’t check off a dependent task until the prerequisite tasks are also completed. Reading the Handbook and the TEV, however, don’t have to be completed in order, so they are independent tasks.

Most tasks will be set to be completed per chapter, but you can also set tasks that must be done once per book. An example of this might be “Add important Biblical terms to the glossary”. You wouldn’t want to require that after each chapter! Instead, you might choose to assign that task for the Final Revision stage, and set it to take place after the Biblical terms checking is complete for the whole book.

Checks

In addition to tasks, Paratext also helps you to work through the maze of inventories and checks that are available. One never knows which of these checks to run and at what stage in the project. At what stage to you start to worry about spelling? When do you work on correcting punctuation? At what point do you work on Biblical terms renderings? You probably don’t want to be verifying the consistency of Biblical terms in the first draft. So now you can tell Paratext to enforce a Biblical terms check at a later stage of the project. Maybe before the external review, you could have Paratext prompt you to work through the Biblical Terms tool and account for your choice of renderings.

Not only does this tool help keep teams consistent in their practices, it also provides a very visual record of progress for the whole team to see what is taking place and when. This will help keep project members consistent in their methods and accountable to each other.

Paratext 8 and Project Plans may get off to a slow start as individual teams try implementing different stages and tasks. But you can be sure that we will continue to help you find your way by sharing success stories in the news section of this site.