Is there a way to mark verses that have been approved by at least two users?

Question

I would like to make sure that every verse is approved by at least two members of the team. Previously, we used bespoke software (not Paratext), which allowed users to log in and mark verses that they approved, and so it was possible for us to say with confidence a sentence like: “every verse in this book has been approved by at least two people in the team.” The markers of approval only applied to that particular version of the verse text, so if a user changed the text, the changed text would not inherit the old markers of approval.

At this point, we have exported all the text into Paratext, and we are using Paratext. As far as I can tell, there isn’t a way to mark a verse as “approved” by a particular user. This is making me nervous. I have found mistakes (such as a verse that was deleted by accident), and I’m worried that if I don’t implement a solid system to make sure that each verse is checked by at least two users, that these mistakes might make it to the final version. (I also find the tools to see project history difficult to use, but that’s a different story for another forum thread.)

As far as I can tell, Paratext does not offer this functionality, but maybe it does and I’m just missing something. Maybe there is a way to hack the back translation functionality to do this?

Answer 1

There isn’t currently a good way to do what you want. You could use a back translation to handle one user’s approval, but I don’t think it would work well for multiple users.

This feature sounds like a good candidate for a Paratext plugin, though.

Comments

Thanks, that’s helpful to know. I’m interested in writing Paratext plugins some day, but I’m not available for it for the moment.

Answer 2

this sounds like a feature i would like to have also. anon441204