Show the Backward P (Paragraph Mark)
When working in Word, it is useful to see the paragraph marks at the end of each paragraph, such as when you press Enter on the keyboard. This is also useful when selecting paragraphs. Here is a screenshot of this paragraph selected without the mark:
To always show the backwards P, go to Tools > Options > View Tab and select Paragraph Marks in the Formatting Marks section.
Alternatively, you can press the backwards P icon if in your toolbar, but that will also show tabs and spaces, making your document appear rather confusing.
If you copy the formatting of a paragraph, selecting also the P mark will copy the formatting of the paragraph, while selecting without the P mark will copy the formatting of the text only. It works similarly if copying the text itself, if you do not want to apply the paragraph’s format when pasting into a new location. Or you can just use your created ctrl+alt+v shortcut to Paste Special a selected paragraph, even if the P mark is also selected, and simply choose Unformatted Text from the resulting window (example here:)
This will paste your selected text into the new area where you place your cursor, but mimic the formatting of the area you are pasting into and not the paragraph formatting you are pasting from. A trick you will very frequently use in translation.
Viewing a Document
When working in a document, from the menu, choose View > Normal View (or ctrl+Page Down according to my suggested, created shortcut key), and then use your created shortcut key ctrl+alt+w (my choice) to adjust the text to Page Width. This will make the text as large and easily readable as possible.
Alternatively, with the mouse (slower), press the zoom icon on your toolbar and select Page Width (screenshot left)
and the Normal View icon on the bottom left (the Print/Page Layout icon is two to the right of it):
Sometimes you may want to jump to Page Layout view (my suggest shortcut key ctrl+Page Down) to see how the text sits relatively to the margins of the page. But it is certainly more pleasant to see the text as large as possible while translating.
Once you have completed your translation and performed some elementary formatting on its text, you can view the file in Page Layout view for final formatting. Either access VIEW > PAGE LAYOUT VIEW or press the small Page Layout view icon at the bottom left hand corner of the screen. Once in Page Layout view, you can see the page in Page Width view by pressing icon “11” or Whole Page view by pressing icon “12” (picture of toolbar icons). These views are useful for final formatting of your document.
In Page Layout view, you can view the vertical ruler bar and also manually change the page margins by positioning the mouse cursor over either end of one of the ruler bars until it turns into special arrows, dragging it elsewhere afterwards. Page margins can also be set by accessing FILE > PAGE SETUP.
Two Panes
Sometimes you might want to divide the view of a document into two panes, so that you can see two parts of a document at the same time (for example, when you are copy/pasting from one section to another, or need to refer to a particular section when translating in another). To do this (works in Excel and most programs), you will notice a small horizontal line above the right scroll bar.
Simply hold your mouse over top of this horizontal line until the mouse arrow turns into something else (should be a horizontal line with two arrows, one pointing up, the other down). Once the arrow changes, press down with your left mouse button and keep holding while you drag your mouse downwards, as such creating a new pane for your file. You can resize the pane in a similar manner any time. You can remove the ruler (ctrl+alt+r custom shortcut key) from either pane to increase the text area. If you plan to frequently jump from pane to pane, you can even create a shortcut key for this through the usual Tools > Customize > Keyboard > select “Window and Help” in the left window, and “OtherPane” in the right window. I like to use CTRL F1 as a shortcut key for this, since I use ALT F1 to jump between files.
Next – Selecting Text
- Translation memory software - August 4, 2018
- Work on an older, slower computer - August 3, 2018
- Machine translation - August 3, 2018
