Permissions in biblical terms cleanup

Question

There has been a 4-step process proposed (I think originally created by John Nystrom) for cleaning up biblical key terms. It is described in French here (Chapter 10 in PT8 manual, so you can probably find in English as well):

Outilingua

Outilingua | TB- Un processus de 4 étapes pour les termes bibliques cohérents

Pour la formation en logiciels linguistiques

But I’m wondering how that is supposed to work with permissions and project plans. If I have a task which is cleaning up biblical terms (and the task says I can edit the text), then Paratext will give me editing rights on the current book, but cleaning up biblical terms often involves changes in other books. E.g. I decide that the way we translated this term in our latest book is better than the way we used to do it. So I can change the term, and confirm/update any instances in the current book, but I don’t have permissions to modify any other book. What is the intended way to do this? Insert a note in places where a change is needed? I think translators would say that it is at this point that they know best how to make the required change, and if they have to come back and make the change later, it won’t be as good.(I guess they could put the entire reworked text in the note, for somebody to just copy/paste into the verse later.) I would hate to have to encourage people to set manual modification permissions for this task. Would another possibility be to give someone the permissions on that key term task (which allows text modification) on all books at a time? I believe PT9.1 makes that easier. Then when they are done, they mark the task finished and they lose their write access. Although you would have to mark that task unfinished when you translate another book, to be able to modify the text again.

Anyway, it seems kind of messy to me. Is there anything I’m missing, or a way this can be done more easily?

Answer 1

How about this crazy idea: Could we change the “Requires Editing” dropdown (when you are defining a task in the project plan) to have three options:

• No
• Scripture Text (XYZ)
• Scripture Text (XYZ) - ALL BOOKS

This last option would give the person who has been assigned that task temporary permission (while that task is active) to modify all books in the project. You would want to limit the amount of time that that task is active, so you don’t have the potential for lots of conflicts. But I would think that this option for global tasks like working on biblical terms might be helpful.

There is a similar issue for spelling - when you are checking spelling, you might want to change the spelling in another book. Since that’s not a task, but a check, you wouldn’t be able to use the same mechanism… But I guess putting in a note that indicates the correct spelling (to be corrected later) in another book wouldn’t be as bad as having to put in a note for a biblical term, since it is just a simple word replacement. Still it’s a similar sort of task, so it would be nice to have a similar way to manage it.

Maybe there should be “super-checks” (biblical terms and spelling) which allow changes to all books. Then when a person is assigned that check, they would have access to all books. But it would be good to limit the amount of time that those permissions are activated. Maybe don’t activate the permissions accorded by the check until that stage has been started (i.e. the stage in the progress says “In Process”), or at least the permissions on other books?

So there is an immediate need now to know how translators should be handling these tasks (with the current version of Paratext), but also possibly some feature requests/changes for Paratext.

Comments

This issue arises for other kinds of checking as well.

It would be helpful to have a clear model for how projects work on these things. I don’t know if projects are too different for that or not. jeffh proposes one model - let someone do global changes for a limited time, in hopes that it will not generate lots of conflicts. But if there are already lots of uncommitted changes, then past work already can result in conflicts.

You could imagine a model where we ask all users to check in their changes before doing this kind of global operation, but that will not be feasible in some environments.

If users are online, you could imagine using Paratext Live to avoid conflicts, but many users are not going to be online. But if they are not online, there is no way to guarantee you aren’t creating conflicts.

Are there better options we haven’t thought of?

anon892024

Answer 2

In amongst the looking to the future… Please don’t lose sight of the request to figure out how translators are supposed to do this with the current version of Paratext. I have a Paratext course Dec 7-11; how should I tell them to treat biblical terms issues that they see in the non-current book?

Comments

You already mentioned the two possibilities that occur to me:

1. Use Notes

Insert a note in places where a change is needed? I think translators would say that it is at this point that they know best how to make the required change, and if they have to come back and make the change later, it won’t be as good.(I guess they could put the entire reworked text in the note, for somebody to just copy/paste into the verse later.) I would hate to have to encourage people to set manual modification permissions for this task.

2. Give write access to all books in scope for tasks that require it

Would another possibility be to give someone the permissions on that key term task (which allows text modification) on all books at a time? I believe PT9.1 makes that easier. Then when they are done, they mark the task finished and they lose their write access. Although you would have to mark that task unfinished when you translate another book, to be able to modify the text again.

I can’t think of another approach that would work offhand.

anon892024