Editing of physical/mathematical formulas/special symbols
Thread poster: Robbie Jia
Robbie Jia
Robbie Jia  Identity Verified
China
Local time: 01:56
Member (2009)
Chinese to English
+ ...
Jul 1, 2020

Hi,

I'm going to translate a science paper that contains a lot of physical/mathematical formulas/special symbols (see the attached image)

页面提取自-Adaptive Asynchronous Parallelization of Graph Algorithms.pdf

The source file is PDF file
Generally, i will perform the following 3 steps
1. I will covert the PDF file into Word file
2. Edit/check the Word file into perfect layout
3. Import the Word file into Trados for translation.

How to input/insert these physical/mathematical formulas/special symbols in MS WORD ?

I only have a very stupid way - use screenshot function to cut each formulas/special symbols as image, and then insert image into Word file.

Who can share some better experience in dealing with "editing of physical/mathematical formulas/special symbols" in Word file.

thanks


[修改时间: 2020-07-01 15:58 GMT]


 
Andreea Giurca
Andreea Giurca  Identity Verified
Romania
Local time: 19:56
Member (2011)
English to Romanian
math formulas Jul 1, 2020

Hello,
In Word file, you can use Insert > Symbols > Equation.
Hope this will help you, good luck!


 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 18:56
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
@Robbie Jul 1, 2020

Robbie Jia wrote:
How to input/insert these physical/mathematical formulas/special symbols in MS WORD?
Who can share some better experience in dealing with "editing of physical/mathematical formulas/special symbols" in Word file.


I have no idea, but are you allowed to contact the authors of this paper and ask if perhaps they still have it in the original format (which I imagine may be LaTeX or some such format)? I googled the paper's name (found in the header) and saw it https://dl.acm.org/. If you have time (and money), you could maybe find out if someone from a tertiary institution that teaches this sort of thing are willing to type it for you (for a fee). But I suspect the source format for the PDF is not MS Word, and I'm not convinced that MS Word is able to handle those characters.

On the other hand, keeping those formulas as images may not be such a bad idea after all. It would mean that you don't have to worry about getting it wrong and you don't have to deal with superscript/subscript and all that precise intra-line layouts. It's just going to be a lot of work typing and cut/pasting the text and images. I would screencapture the formulas as big as possible, for maximum quality, and then see if I can figure out how to format the images' height to the height of the text in bulk afterwards. If you do this, make sure your client is aware that the translation will contain those characters as images and not as editable/copyable text.

(I also posted a private message to you.)

[Edited at 2020-07-02 05:42 GMT]


Robbie Jia
 
esperantisto
esperantisto  Identity Verified
Local time: 20:56
Member (2006)
English to Russian
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SITE LOCALIZER
LibreOffice (Apache OpenOffice) Math Jul 1, 2020

For a document loaded with such a huge amount of formulas, I’d recommend using LibreOffice (or Apache OpenOffice) Math. It allows input of formulas by typing in a kind of console (a real time saver) rather than using the mouse to pick up items from toolbars/menus.

Or use LaTeX or a derivative. As Samuel points, TeX (LaTeX is a name of a software package, not a format) is
... See more
For a document loaded with such a huge amount of formulas, I’d recommend using LibreOffice (or Apache OpenOffice) Math. It allows input of formulas by typing in a kind of console (a real time saver) rather than using the mouse to pick up items from toolbars/menus.

Or use LaTeX or a derivative. As Samuel points, TeX (LaTeX is a name of a software package, not a format) is a very common choice in the world of science. For example, the American Mathematical Society uses it:

http://www.ams.org/arc/resources/texresources.html

[Адрэдагавана 2020-07-01 17:15 GMT]
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Hans Lenting
Robbie Jia
 
James Plastow
James Plastow  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 17:56
Member (2020)
Japanese to English
Google Docs Jul 1, 2020

Google Docs also has math input (Insert>Equation) and several add-ons available that might be even better (go to Add-ons>Get Add ons and search for "math"). You might find it easier/quicker to work with than Word. You could make all the symbols you need (there seem to be many repeats) then download the document as a docx and paste the symbols into your work file.

If you have an iPad, try searching for "equation" in the app store. There is a handwriting LateX app available which may
... See more
Google Docs also has math input (Insert>Equation) and several add-ons available that might be even better (go to Add-ons>Get Add ons and search for "math"). You might find it easier/quicker to work with than Word. You could make all the symbols you need (there seem to be many repeats) then download the document as a docx and paste the symbols into your work file.

If you have an iPad, try searching for "equation" in the app store. There is a handwriting LateX app available which may be effective.

[Edited at 2020-07-01 17:30 GMT]
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Robbie Jia
 
Erik Freitag
Erik Freitag  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 18:56
Member (2006)
Dutch to German
+ ...
LaTeX Jul 1, 2020

I agree that the source file is likely to be LaTeX. Reproducing the text in LaTeX would be a major and laborious task, even with prior experience in LaTeX.

Trying to get hold of the source text is a good idea, but afaik there is no LaTeX filter for Trados (at least no one that works sufficiently well).

I handle the occasional LaTeX file I get as raw text, which works fine, but you really need to know what you‘re doing.

[Edited at 2020-07-01 17:27 GMT]


Dan Lucas
Adam Dickinson
Robbie Jia
 
Hans Lenting
Hans Lenting
Netherlands
Member (2006)
German to Dutch
Maybe this can help Jul 1, 2020

http://www.nemadeka.com/tagger.htm

Robbie Jia
 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 18:56
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
@Robbie II Jul 2, 2020

Robbie Jia wrote:
I'm going to translate a science paper that contains a lot of physical/mathematical formulas/special symbols.


If your client is someone who knows what these formulas mean and is someone who can type these formulas himself, and your client understands the target language well enough (and/or if the order of the formulas in the target language is going to be the same as the order of the formulas in the source language), then one thing you can do is offer that you'll do the translation of the normal text, and simply place little placeholders e.g. [a], [b], [c] etc. where the formulas go. This should reduce the cost of the translation (and be cheaper for the client, which may be of interest to him).

Or, if your client is e.g. a student who don't need the translation for publication purposes, you can go this route as well, because the student can read your translation side by side with the original. If you label the formulas with unique labels (e.g. a, b, c etc.), you can also add those labels as annotations to the PDF (and then print to PDF again, to ensure that the annotations don't shift around), so that the client can see more quickly which formula is which.



My experience with Aleksandr Okunev's taggers is positive, but it is always assumed that the user knows how the original format works and is able to tweak the tagging manually to suit his particular situation, and the LaTeX tagger in particular. Interestingly, in Tortoise Tagger's readme file Okunev explains that it is precisely because of LaTeX that he wrote the tagger in the first place. (I know nothing of LaTeX, but my googling suggests that Okunev's tagger should work with the most recent version of LaTex.)

[Edited at 2020-07-02 06:12 GMT]


Robbie Jia
 


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Editing of physical/mathematical formulas/special symbols






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