Bulk Consultant Notes?

Question

Hey everyone,

Any idea how I might make bulk (consultant) notes? I want to make the same note in a lot of different verses.

For example, some languages prefer Reason-Result word order and others prefer Result-Reason word order. It would be nice to create notes as quick prompts so teams with a preference different than their source would know to consider the change. Does that make sense? Teams could choose the linguistic issues that are relevant to their language.

Answer 1

One option is to create a note tag (under the settings) that says what you want in a template. Then when you create the note you simply apply that template.

Comments

I guess I didn’t explain myself well. Is there a way to make lots of notes at the same time? Maybe copy and paste something in the xml and just insert different verse references?

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The only feature like what you are talking about is the Multi button in the project note or consultant note dialogue box. If you search on “copy notes” in Help you will find the topic "How do I add a note to multiple projects." This will copy one note to one or more projects. Paratext does not have a tool for copying several notes at one time.

image1437×1163 139 KB

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Hi anon044949, thank you for responding. I am not trying to copy multiple notes, but to create the same note in multiple places in the same project.

The only way I can see to do it is to copy <Comment … in the xml, but I don’t know how to calculate the Thread’s eight digit hexadecimal code. Any ideas?

Since the notes are the same, I might experiment with making a duplicate note (same Thread code and other details) except with a different VerseRef and see if it puts the same note in two places or throws an error.

Any ideas on how to calculate the Thread’s eight digit hexadecimal code?

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anon062569:

Since the notes are the same, I might experiment with making a duplicate note (same Thread code and other details) except with a different VerseRef and see if it puts the same note in two places or throws an error.

Do not do this!
Paratext will not throw an error, but it won’t handle it correctly either. It will put all the comments in the same thread and a thread is only put into the verse reference of the first comment. Having the comments have the same date/time will cause Paratext to get confused with how to order the comments and how to determine which comments have been read by the current user.

The best way to come close to what you want is to do what @anon848905 said:

anon848905:

One option is to create a note tag (under the settings) that says what you want in a template. Then when you create the note you simply apply that template.

Create a note tag template with the contents of the note you want to duplicate, then create new notes and just apply the template. Takes five seconds to create each new note and you don’t have to mess with the XML file and possibly corrupt it.

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@anon848905 That is a clever idea for using a template that I have not thought of anon848905.

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@anon062569 I would like to step back from the details and asks why you want to have the same note so many times. Two cases where I have wanted to do this is for spelling questions and key terms, because these issues can occur all over the text. If the issues that you are dealing with are related to spelling or key terms, I recommend you look into spelling discussion notes or Biblical term discussion notes.

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Hi @anon044949
I do know about the spelling and Biblical term notes, but that isn’t at all what I’m trying to do.

So, we have been having discussions with various consultants about how to help translators produce better drafts. If we can avoid problems in the first place, it makes everything else easier. If we know some things about how a particular language works then we can put in prompts that are specific to those linguistic preferences. Then the team can correctly translate it before getting to the consultant check.

Three examples:

1. Some teams have a difficult time distinguishing rhetorical questions from content questions. This means that the consultant has to keep asking about them the same question at every instance. But if I could make a consultant note saying “Rhetorical Question” and apply it to the hundreds of instances, then teams would be much more likely to do it right from the start.
   The basis for the list would be the Logos searches
   {Label Figure of Speech WHERE Description ~ “Interrogating” AND Name ~ “Erotesis”} or
   {Section <Sentence ~ Interrogative>} INTERSECTS {Section <SpeechAct = Info.:Assert.>} but manually checked for false hits.

2. In English it is grammatical to say, “To buy milk, I went to the store.” but it is more natural to say, “I went to the store to buy milk.” Languages differ on preferred phrase order but because of the cognitive load of translating, translators often don’t consider the possibility while they’re drafting. One of my teams can follow the Spanish word order and it is perfectly grammatical, but in certain circumstances it is more natural to use a different word order. If I use <LDGNT = Reason-Result Frame> and <LDhb = Reason-Result Frame> I could make four or five hundred notes where they probably don’t want to follow the Spanish word order.

3. The most common source text in Spanish is the Reina-Valera, which is equivalent to the KJV (or maybe NKJV). But there are lots of instances where it deviates from what most scholars agree is the original text. (A friend of mine who teaches seminary won’t let his students use it in class because he got tired of correcting them.) The teams should be comparing versions and noticing all these differences, but the reality is that they usually miss them. I have started a consultant note project just dedicated to the textual issues in the Reina-Valera because they’re maybe 10-15% of all my notes for the project. If I could find a list of these differences, it would save me hours, let alone the time for my team.

These could each be their own consultant note project which could be shared with the dozens (if not hundreds) of teams dealing with these specific issues. Of course there are many other issues that would work well, these are just a few off the top of my head.

Many teams don’t have great tech skills so Logos visual filters aren’t a great option. It is hard to get them to use the commentaries and resources that they have, so adding another file to check probably wouldn’t get integrated into their workflow. There is some talk about this being an option in the CLEAR dashboard, but that is dependent on whether it gets programmed in and whether teams use the dashboard in drafting. So my best idea so far is issue-specific consultant notes projects, and you can see why I’d rather make a note once instead of 400 times.

Also, for what it is worth, I only experiment on my own projects that I set up specifically to test on. I know the dangers of messing with code and I do incremental changes that I can easily undo. Or if I really mess it up (hasn’t happened yet) then I can delete the project with no harm done.

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Actually, although this sounds like something quite worth doing, I am uncertain whether the Paratext Note system is the place to do it.

I routinely ask that all Notes be resolved before I typeset, particularly Consultant Notes so that I am sure that the team has actually responded properly to their consultant. And teams hate to see lots and lots of notes. So I rather flinch when you say “hundreds”.

Of course, Notes can be flagged for a special type and we use a special flag for those notes approved as being postponed for action, but changing the flag is rather tedious and with hundreds of notes you won’t want to do that, either to start with or later.

It seems to me that the Biblical Terms Tool might be a better location for this type of notation. I believe it might already have something like this in the semantic markup already and it would probably be much less work for you to make your own list if it doesn’t fit your particular need.

Blessings,

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@Shegnada

Hi Shegnada. Thank you for your work on typesetting. I know there is a ton of work involved in that.

There is some ambiguity here and I realize I wasn’t clear enough. Ideally I’d like to use the “Consultant Note” (Ctrl-Shift-I), not “Project Note” (Ctrl-Shift-N). I know that the terms are generally used interchangeably, which is a headache. (You probably already know all of this, but I’ll put in the explanation in case anyone reading the conversation isn’t familiar with them.) Project Notes are what you require to be resolved. Consultant Notes are generally just used to share information amongst consultants and CiTs.

Consultant Notes are just information and aren’t To Do’s. They don’t have to be / can’t be resolved. The prompts would simply be up to the translators to follow or ignore and the consultant to check. Consultant Notes are great because you you can show/hide all of them on any project with three clicks (Project Menu / Show consultant notes / check the consultant notes you want to see).

I don’t know of any semantic markup in the Biblical Terms Tool. Could you explain more?

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It is a very interesting project. Sounds somewhat like the Global Consultant Notes, but for a specific area.
Rhetorical questions and implied information are all marked in Dr. Diebler’s T4T project but that has not been translated into Spanish as far as I know. Besides you want to add specific information such as the preferred order for Cause-Result constructs and so forth.
The Idea behind Enhanced resources was to give more translators more information about the sources text as they are working through the text without having to do a lot of clicks and searches. Might not be able to enhance Enhanced resources with all the information you are dealing with, but maybe the owners of that tool might be willing to but in marking for Rhetorical questions.

I know that in some parts of the world regions have made “front translations” into English, Swahili and a few others that have had adjustments to word order, implied information etc that are known to be problematic in that region. Could you get permission to take the preferred Spanish text and mark it up in a way similar to T4T but with the information you want? Then you could ask teams to translate from the front translation. You would not need to develop a new style of resource with new functionality. You might need a custom style sheet just like T4T or the Handbooks do. Just a thought.

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Hi anon062569,

Thank you for reminding me of that tool. I haven’t used it in my role and had forgotten its existence.

The Biblical Terms Tool has a column for Semantic Domains that you can filter on. If you go to the BT menu, you can toggle the column to be visible. And there is a Biblical Terms list called Major Biblical Terms (SIL Semantic Domains) I was thinking back to my dictionary days and thought that semantic domains would include types of questions. I did not see them now that I am glancing through it on my computer but I admit that I did not search rigorously and they could still be in there.

Still, you should be able build your own Biblical Terms list on types of questions and include references. This would allow the team to see your various groupings all together in a list. I would think that could prove quite valuable to others also.

Blessings,

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Have you thought about making a “Project” with these prompts on all the verses - which would be a huge task in itself - that could be shared with the translators for which they’re relevant and added to their Paratext workspace (perhaps by an Expat, or even an Expat on Zoom with remote assistance on)? This may get at what would be helpful for national translators, but sadly, doesn’t get at your original post of how you put 500 notes saying the same thing in different locations in the text.

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Following up with bbrollier’s suggestion. Back a number of years ago using a separated project for the notes was the way we suggested folks did this, but when the notes tool was introduced we moved away from this option. However, for what is being asked for this might be the best way to go.
There is (was) a check in the \cms folder that is called “InsertCrossReferencesOrNotes”. This is normally unavailable because of the first line being “\check DELETED”. If you comment out this line with a # then the check becomes available. There should be an rtf file that describes the use of this tool.
Basically you would create a list of the locations where you want the note and it would insert the note(s) into a project. The examples in the rtf are for cross references, but you should be able to insert any kind of text there. It does not even need to be marked with USFM.
Here is my test info:

\ref MRK 1:1
This is a test
\ref MRK 1:2
This is a test

This came into Paratext as: \c 1 \v 1 This is a test \v 2 This is a test

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If I understand you correctly, that is my intention. I plan on creating a separate Consultant Notes project for each linguistic difficulty so that teams can choose which prompts would be most helpful for them. Right now I’m working on Rhetorical Questions but one of my teams asked for prompts for the first person plural exclusive so that would be the next project.

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Hey anon848905, thank you for the suggestion. I’ll definitely consider that. Off the top of my head, I’d include an unusual symbol like # to make it easy to search for the notes and to make sure they’re not confused with actual text. But I wasn’t sure if the InsertCrossReferencesOrNotes would take a # as code. We might need to use something else. It seems like the tool could be very useful for pre-populating verses. Hmmm.

Answer 2

Hola.
I also consider that the most practical thing we have in Paratext is to create the template that anon848905 mentions, if what you need is to put the notes in the same text. And manipulating the notes file can bring more problems than benefits.

I just want to add that: we also have options to put notes in the WordList. In this case the note does not appear in the text because it does not apply to a specific verse, but a word in question is added and this makes possible the observation of that note to all the verses where this word is present.

As an example, in the following image, a note on the word “chaynullami” will refer to the 272 verses (the red circle on the right) where this word is present according to my filter:

image1126×802 252 KB

When we create a note in the WordList, the note (the red circle on the left) is marked in blue, to warn that there is a note (like the red flags in the text).

This option is also available for Biblical Terms.

Saludos,
anon689242.

Answer 3

Just an update for everyone following this conversation. I wrote a macro so the computer creates Consultant Notes in a list of verses, but it isn’t in a format that can be shared yet. Hopefully I’ll have that next week. It is a dumb program (no feedback check to make sure notes were created correctly) so it randomly stops and does make some errors, but it isn’t hard to go back and check for mistakes. I’ve let it run when I go to bed (because you can’t do anything else without interrupting the macro) and in the last few nights it has made 1945 Consultant Notes for rhetorical questions. Of course I’ll share that rhetorical question project once it is done. This is a kludgy work around until someone can program it correctly or come up with a better solution. Anyway, that’s what I’ve been working on.

Answer 4

Here are the files for creating bulk notes. This is a beta so I’d probably want to meet with anyone who’s interested for 15 minutes to walk them through it once. I have a few days to ask the programmer for revisions so if you’re interested, I’d like to make sure it works on a variety of machines.

Also, I have the projects for Rhetorical Questions and for Reason-Result that are ready to share. Does anyone know if there is a repository or shared space for Consultant Note projects?

Bulk Notes Program

onedrive.live.com

Bulk Paratext Notes.exe

Application

Paratext.xlsx

onedrive.live.com

Paratext.xlsx

Microsoft Excel Workbook

Answer 5

@anon848905 @anon044949
If I make more of these Linguistic Specific Notes (and people think they’re useful), could we find somewhere on the Paratext webpage to share them? I can share them via word of mouth and on a Seed Company page, but the end user is much more likely to find them on the Paratext site. Thanks.