Bitexts To Go

One of the strengths of LogiTerm bitexts is that they are standalone documents that you can share with colleagues, clients, etc., without imposing on them any need for special software: a Web browser or word processor can open them.

Here are a few tips and tricks for sharing bitexts.

Finding the bitexts on your hard drive

If the bitexts you want to share with others are scattered among a number of folders and subfolders, it could become a tedious process finding them one at a time in the Windows Explorer and transferring them manually. We suggest this simple procedure instead:

• In Windows Explorer, navigate to the folder or folders containing bitexts.
• In the right part of Windows Explorer, right click the folder and select Find.
• In the Find window, type "*_BT.htm or *_BT.xml" (or whatever profile you use for your bitexts) in the Named field. Click Find Now.
• A list of your bitexts is then displayed. If you want to group the bitexts by folder, click the In Folder column header.
• Select the bitexts you want to sent to your colleagues. If you have WinZip installed, right click and select Add to Zip.
• You can now send the ZIP file by e-mail to anyone.

How your colleague can view the bitext

To consult one bitext at a time, you need only open each one with a Web browser or word-processing software. However, if you want to consult more than one at a time, you can use one of several means:

• Open all the bitexts one after the other and merge them all into a single word processing document, then use the find feature to search through the document you just made.
• Use document indexing software to index all the bitexts and search them.
• Use Window's find function:
• In Windows Explorer, select the folder containing the bitexts.
• Right click and select Find.
• In the Find window, type your search term in the Containing text field, and click Find Now. A list of the documents containing the words in the search term is displayed. You can now open and search each document manually.

If you want to use LogiTerm to merge multiple bitexts

If you want to send a large number of bitexts to someone who does not have a handy means for consulting them simultaneously, you can facilitate matters by merging the bitexts yourself, as follows:

• In LogiTerm's Tools menu, point to Data Conversion and select LogiTerm to Translation Memory.
• Click Select to locate and select the bitexts you want to merge. Next, select a translation memory format, source and target languages, and provide a file name. Click Go.
• LogiTerm will then create for you an unformatted text file, complete with the tags used for a translation memory. Your colleague can search this file as is and ignore the tags.

You can take this a step further so your colleague can view the document in parallel columns, as follows:

• In LogiTerm's Tools menu, point to Data Conversion and select Translation Memory to LogiTerm.
• Select the translation memory you just created and convert it back to LogiTerm's bitext format. Merging bitexts is of no benefit to LogiTerm users, but can be for those whose means for searching a file are limited.

You can create a bitext from almost any format like a Web page. You just save Web pages in HTML-only format and align them, easy!

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