2012/09/13

Household Polyglot Training

how to do household polyglot training:

1) make a one-per-line list of things you want to label
2) copy this from TextPad into Calc
3) also paste it into Google Translate, then copy each translation
(after having a native speaker check it, or at least look for obvious
bad translations, like 'ground' pepper into 'terre') into another column
in Calc
4) cut the whole spreadsheet and paste it into TextPad
5) replace '\n' with '\n\n\n\n\n' (or \n times N, the number of
languages) with 'Regular expression' checked off
6) copy the whole text and paste it into Calc (should be as before but
with N-1 blank lines between rows)
7) copy the first row and Special Paste into Sheet 2 with Transform
checked off
8) modify each of the cells so they have a dollar sign only before the
sheet, but not before the row or column numbers
9) in the next column, put a language indicator of some kind (e.g. 'en',
'fr', 'de', etc.)
10) format what you have how you'll want all of them to look (e.g. you
might want each language to have its own font, and the language
indicators to be on 45 degree angle with an underline, etc.) perhaps
putting the biggest font you'll be aiming for
11) extend what you have as far down as how many rows you have in Sheet1
(either by selecting all the cells with data and dragging the box that
appears in the lower-right-most cell, or copying the group and selecting
and pasting, or using Fill...)
12) copy everything in Sheet 2 and Paste Special in the exact same place
you copied from, having only Text and Format checked off (this unlinks
the data from Sheet 1)
13) roughly divide your rows into 3 chunks, cutting and pasting into
neighbouring columns (don't break up blocks of translations of the same
item though)
14) fix all rows and columns to the same size
15) for any cell that's overflowing, reduce the font size until it isn't
(I'd like to macro this some day, but for now you can ctrl-click all
such cells on a screen at a time and fix them in bulk)
16) delete Sheet1 so it won't print
17) print preview and use the Scaling Factor slider to get three columns
fitting each page
18) look for any widow/orphan rows within an item block (e.g. some
translations of an item being at the bottom of one page and some at the
top of the next) and fix them by inserting blank rows there
19) print
20) cut
21) tape 'em up!

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