Project Plan and Partial Books

Question

Is it possible to tell Paratext that we only want to complete selections from books for the project plan? For example: 2 Samuel 1-23 will be translated, but not 2 Samuel 24. We would like the progress report to reflect that if 2 Samuel 1-23 are complete, then 2 Samuel is 100% completed (for the current scope of the project).

Thank you,

SIL+LSS+PNG

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SIL+LSS+PNG
Language Technology Consultant
SIL PNG Language Resources
Ukarumpa EHP 444 | Papua New Guinea
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Answer 1

No, it is not possible. Just out of curiosity, why would you want to do this? What are you trying to accomplish by skipping the last chapter and having it be “complete”?

<sarcasm> Sounds like you’re wanting to lie in your reports. </sarcasm>

Comments

I do understand why this is requested. Let’s say that you are only translating the New Testament, but that the project scope could not be configured for anything but the whole Bible. Your progress chart would never be accurate, always showing you were much further behind in your progress.

Same thing here. If your goal is to produce the “Lives of the prophets” in the Old Testament, then there would be huge chunks of books that would not be included in your scope, but Paratext would have no way of knowing that since the scope is not configurable for chapters. People who aim at doing portions are always in this dilemma, and now it is worse with the public reporting showing that you still have a long ways to go.

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Thank you for the answer. I’m guessing there’s no way to hack the project progress file to “remove” chapters from the scope?

dhigby explained the reasoning well. The translators are doing portions of the OT books, and want to be able accurately (and easily) relay what portions they have completed.

SIL+LSS+PNG

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One very common “portions of books” scenario is to translate the liturgical readings, with an initial project goal of “Year A”; then a second goal of Year B, etc.

It would be wonderful if this type of customizable goal could be built into Paratext project progress. It is currently possible to extract these portions using the Paratext Module feature, which works great as far as it goes. I wonder if it would be possible to include specific Module specification files in the Scope, so that just the verses specified in a Module would be tracked?

Something like this would be very helpful, especially in today’s era of “limited project” funding.

Thanks,
KimB

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Thanks everyone, that’s helpful information. If you haven’t already, could you send in a feature request so we know that this is something that is wanted?

SIL+LSS+PNG:

I’m guessing there’s no way to hack the project progress file to “remove” chapters from the scope?

No, there is no way to do this. However, a workaround (which might cause other issues in Paratext - I haven’t tried) would be to create a custom versification with those chapters removed.

Answer 2

A user just asked me the same question: they only plan to translate selected Psalms, a common scenario.
Are there any more thoughts on the best way to work around this? I’m thinking that the Missing Verses check can be set to Denied, and then the relevant chapters ticked off by the admin for all tasks.

Comments

anon989803:

A user just asked me the same question: they only plan to translate selected Psalms, a common scenario.

Paratext 9.1 (coming sometime later) will have the ability to set a priority at the chapter level. So that you could set a priority (for assignments and progress) of individual chapters.

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I am working with a project that will only do NT, Gen and Ex 1-20. The want the exodus story and the ten commandments but do not want to translate all the details for making the tabernacle. Has there been any progress on this feature request. I can use Priorities to only assign chapters 1-20, but I think the chapter and verse checks will still produce a lot of “errors”,

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anon044949,

As a stop gap till this is provided for in another way, you might try using custom.vrs to define Exodus as ending at Chapter 20. I would expect Paratext to honor that in the plan but I haven’t tested it.

Blessings,

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If you look at your assignments and progress for the priority of Exodus 1-20 you should only see chapter verse errors for those chapters. If you run the basic checks for the entire book then you will see lots of errors, but that is the point of using the project plan with priorities - to only show the errors in that priority.

Answer 3

I was thinking that Priorities were the solution for this situation, but was unsure what happens when a team tries to make a Scripture App or upload to DBL with so many errors “under the surface” in such a project.