Separate project for publishing?

Question

Do other users make a separate copy of a translation project for the purpose of print or electronic publication? Is this considered “best practice”?

I do this for electronic publishing, and my reasons are below. First, one sentence too set the scene: as I guess is becoming common these days, I publish electronically from an active translation project, publishing each book, as it is approved by the translation consultant, by adding it to our SAB-built app, to the copy of our text in the DBL, and to other outlets.

Reasons:

• My publishing project contains only the books that are consultant checked; no books that are still at a draft stage are in it;
• If half a book has been consultant checked (e.g. GEN chs 1–22), I copy that book and then delete the chapters that are not consultant checked;
• In the above example, I add chapter 23 with:

\cp remaining chapters
\p In due course the remainder of Genesis will be ready. Please check regularly for updates to the app [or translation].

• I can use Regex Pal to remove the endnotes (the translation team and the SE team have agreed that these will only be included if and when we publish a study Bible).
• The translation team are doing a late revision of many key terms, and this is still in progress. I want the readership to see all the key terms changed at one time, so I don’t update books that we’ve already published by re-copying them from the main project: the publishing project therefore serves as a temporary archive of how these books were when they were first published electronically;
• I can make minor changes to the punctuation where a standard has not been agreed, and where the translators prefer one variant and the SE folk another.

Answer 1

I’m surprised that no one else has answered this one yet… so let me pass on our experience.

Yes, because we publish incrementally, (either a single book or set of books each year) we have a separate project that we copy those “finished” books into once they have been typeset and sent to the printer. Our main reason for doing so is that we have been doing the audio recordings (using HearThis) of these books to go along with the Android App. Meanwhile the “main project” continues to be refined - with key terms, spelling and other improvements (which often mean that the latest living text is then out of sync with the audio). We never edit that copy of the project. It is a static snapshot of what went to press.

And yes, when publishing partial books (like GEN or PSA) we can copy across the whole book and delete what isn’t yet checked and approved. It gets a bit tricky later when you have to just add new chapters to these partially completed books (because you don’t really want to copy the whole book over - instead you want just the new chapters).

And now as we complete the NT, it may be helpful for the final revision consultant to see what all has changed in the live text since these books were approved for publication several years ago (by comparing the static copy with the current/latest copy of the project). Of course, you could also do this with project history, but then you would have to know exactly which point in history was relevant for each book)

So, I don’t know what the “best practice” is, but this certainly has worked well for us.

Comments

Mark+P:

It gets a bit tricky later when you have to just add new chapters to these partially completed books (because you don’t really want to copy the whole book over - instead you want just the new chapters).

In my experience, the best way to do this is to turn off By Chapter view in the main project, and then simply copy-and-paste the second half of the book into the publishing project. I don’t think you even need to turn off By Chapter in the publishing project, since, if you enter more than one chapter into a chapter, Paratext sorts it all out.

There almost seem to be too many ways to copy data from one project to another in PT: which one do you use?

If you use the Import Books command, I think the effect is exactly the same as the copy-and-paste method above.

And then you can make a backup and then restore it to a new project (by choosing a new name). This method enables you to copy the spelling data, etc. if you wish.

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Has anything changed in how you publish partial books? Do you still use a “working” version of the project and a “published” version? Or are there better solutions available now?

Our project plan calls for about 2/3 of Genesis, and some of the omissions are in the middle of chapters. I’d be interested in seeing the best way to mark this up in the “published” project.

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I know that this isn’t specifically a PTXprint question, but we are soon planning to support the printing/publishing of Bible modules* where you can specify what to include and therefore what to exclude. That’s probably the best way to go about it, but certainly isn’t the only way.

*This is already possible in PTXprint if you use one of the XXA…XXG books. But we also plan too support printing directly from a module definition file.

A good principal is to never duplicate data or on this case an entire project (ie. make a copy of it) unless there really is no other way around the problem. And if you really must duplicate the project, ensue that you don’t edit the downstream version.

Answer 2

Thanks, Mark. That’s helpful, and sensible.

Our situation with Genesis is a bit complicated, in that we had our MTTs go ahead and draft everything, but we won’t check or publish certain portions (e.g., 19:30 through the end of chapter 20) until we’ve finished the New Testament and cycle back to the Old.

We’ve seen that \sts might be used to mark portions that we don’t want to publish at present, but it has certain limitations, too (it can only appear at the paragraph level, I think, so it can’t be used before \c). Any suggestions for a better markup scheme?

Comments

Hi viverechristus,

I suggest you try using a Bible Module to define the selections you want to print. You can find a good discussion and some examples at .

If you don’t want illustrations you can use Paratext’s File > Print Draft (PT8) or Export Draft PDF (PT9) to create a basic, nice-looking document that includes only the verses you have specified in the Module spec. You can also include section headings, footnotes, x-refs, etc. I think you have to do something special with chapter numbers, but I haven’t tried this lately.

If you want a nicer, more professional publication, I highly recommend checking out PTX Print, the amazing new program being developed by Mark and others.

It is still in development so be sure to update the program often if you use it.

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Thanks, KimB.

I wonder whether you could fill in the blank above: “You can find a good discussion and some examples at ___.”

Answer 3

Somehow the links got lost from my email to the list. See if this works:

LingTranSoft Wiki

LingTranSoft Wiki | Bible Modules

LingTranSoft Wiki

PTX Print
https://software.sil.org/ptxprint/