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Pascal Garin
Pascal Garin
Inspiring
January 9, 2025
Answered

Bilingual face-to-face books

  • January 9, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 2029 views

Dear Adobe InDesign community, I would appreciate advice for the following problem.


Output: a bilingual face-to-face book with, after the first introductory contiguous pages:

  • Even pages: original text (English, Hindi…), in general poems
  • Odd pages: their translation (in French)
  • All top pages must properly face each other, the bottom pages being in general asymmetric (French is an analytical language, much longer than English or Hindi for example). To be complete, poems can be longer than one page and then arises the problem of page breaks between non-contiguous pages (even to even, and odd to odd).

Input: a Microsoft Word document, where original and French texts alternate, with page breaks.

But I can also prepare two documents: one with only the original text, the other one with only the French translation, poems being separated in both documents by section or page breaks.
_____________________________________________________


I already used the following method:

  • Prepare an InDesign template, with even pages text blocks threaded together and odd pages text blocks threaded together
  • Prepare two Word documents, one for the original poems, the other one with their French translation
  • Import the original foreign text (first Word document) in the first even page
  • Import the French translation (second Word document) in the first odd page

This works fine: poems correctly face together, and bottom adjustment is easy, except if the book contains notes in both languages (endnotes or footnotes, same problem): in such a case, notes are not properly numbered (contiguous numbering along the book).
I am thus looking for another technique and help from anybody having already prepared such books is more than welcome!
Thanks in advance and regards,
Pascal Garin

Correct answer Pascal Garin

Once again, thanks a lot, dear FRIdNGE and Robert, for your invaluable help.
I have already made macros for Microsoft Word in Visual Basic (and of course many JavaScript functions for my websites), but never for InDesign.
So, your help is appreciated indeed!


For your information, I am a former engineer (having managed large research projects), and I am now retired, working for free for a small editor. As you may know yourself the world of edition is in great danger, so my help (although not one of a professional) is welcomed!…

Kind regards,
Pascal Garin


Thanks to your help, I could download and install the TextStitch add-in.
I used it successfully to unthread text blocks: my notes are now numbered “logically”, i.e. according to page numbers: wonderful!
I could not thread again the pages, but I will try later, when I am less in a hurry (my book mock-up is ready for printing).
Fortunately, there is an active community of developers, in complement of the – very improvable – software.
Thanks again and kind regards!
Pascal Garin

2 replies

Robert at ID-Tasker
Robert at ID-Tasker
Legend
January 9, 2025

@Pascal Garin 

 

So my solution - from your earlier thread - doesn't work for you?

 

Either this - or my ID-Tasker tool?

 

Pascal Garin
Pascal GarinAuthor
Inspiring
January 9, 2025

Thank you, Robert, for your reply.
I did not try yet your solution (I am still exchanging with the editor for contents adjustments, and I think I should use extra tools only when the book content is stabilized). Before going to a third-party (and costly) tool, I want to find an answer using only InDesign. I understand that this program is far from being perfect (there are many bugs), but I want to give it a chance.
I welcome your generous offer, but the problem will arise later, as I do regularly bilingual books. So I try to find a generic – and free – answer.
Regards,
Pascal Garin

Pascal Garin
Pascal GarinAuthor
Inspiring
January 9, 2025

For those who are patient (and thanks to them), I summarized my problem in the flowing picture, assembly of 4 InDesign screenshots.

  • Top left: contiguous pages, footnotes
  • Top-right: contiguous pages, endnotes
  • Bottom-left: face-to-face, footnotes
  • Bottom-left: face-to-face, endnotes

It is clearly shown that,

  • If you choose contiguous, all notes are correctly numbered (according to pages I mean) BUT YOU LOSE THE VERTICAL THREADING, very useful for text vertical alignment
  • I you choose face-to-face, all notes are NOT correctly numbered (neither footnotes nor endnotes), but you have a good vertical threading, much easier for text alignment between even and odd pages

My question is: is it possible, without using third-party addons or losing the page threading, to combine both advantages in InDesign???

FRIdNGE
FRIdNGE
January 9, 2025

Qu'est-ce que tu veux dire par :

 

"les notes ne sont pas correctement numérotées (numérotation contiguë le long du livre)."

 

Clairement, tu souhaites quelle numérotation ? [Commençons par l'otion "Notes de bas de page"]

 

(^/)  The Jedi

Pascal Garin
Pascal GarinAuthor
Inspiring
January 9, 2025

Thank you, FRIdNGE, for your quick response.
My problem comes from the fact that by doing as I described, InDesign considers the two sets (original poems on the one hand, French translation on the other) as two “articles” (or “stories” I think in the English terminology) and therefore numbers the first “French” note after the last “English” note, which gives something like (this is an example):

  • page 2, notes 1 and 2
  • page 3, note 68 (last “English” note + 1)
  • page 4, notes 3 and 4
  • page 5, note 69, etc.

instead of having:

  • page 2, notes 1 and 2
  • page 3, note 3
  • page 4, notes 4 and 5
  • page 5, note 6, etc.

The problem is the same regardless of the type of note (footnote or endnote). The choice “continuous” numbering or “restart at each article” does not solve the problem neither: notes are numbered according to InDesign logic ("articles") and not book logic (pages).

Kind regards,
Pascal Garin

 

P.S. For your information, I tried to get answers on another thread on this forum, without satisfactory answer, thus this new thread, devoted to face-to-face books. I thought that my problem was rather basic, but it turns out to be more complicate than anticipated…

    FRIdNGE
    FRIdNGE
    January 9, 2025

    So you want my 3rd solution?!

     

    (^/)


    I mean:

     

     

    (^/)

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