Beginner comment

Previous topic - Next topic

GRI BUONGIORNE

Hello,

I am Silvia Griselda from Alaska. I've been searching for an affordable DP to use with my MBP. My works as a translator often calls for conversion of the dreaded PDF files  ::) into lovely looking brochures, diplomas, birth certificates, you name it...usually off a bad photocopied PDF....

Thus is the life of a humble translator.

I think that Scribus is actually quite advanced...for me, anyway. I have very painstakingly used a combo of Word (Office2011 for Mac), plus ABBY Fine readers (Mac version), plus the OmegaT CAT tool...which kind sorta does the job but needs a ton of tweaking. A DP expert I am not   

Feeling rather overwhelmed at the learning curve here with Scribus. Wondering if this is really what I need to make my job of transferring graphics (which need to stay the same) and then add the translated text into the saved graphics page. Am I making sense?

Like I said I use a number of programs which sorta work if the end client is not super picky about them being exactly like the originals, but have been wanting to learn something a bit more sophisticated without becoming a DP expert....

A translator should just be that...a translator and leave all the graphicy stuff to those who are experts in that field, however, in this fast paced business world a translator has had to become DP expert, editor, writer and translator.

Question: Is Scribus going to make my life easier or am I going to go over the edge here? Figuratively speaking... :-\

Thanks

Silvia Gri (Alaska)
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.
           -- Daniel J. Boorstin

utnik

hi silvia

Quote from: GRI BUONGIORNE on November 29, 2014, 07:34:36 AMIs Scribus going to make my life easier or am I going to go over the edge here? Figuratively speaking...

usually scribus is going to make things more complicated first – but that's the same (or even worse) with other dtp software...

if you're doing the whole layout work besides your translations, scribus may be a good help.
for the translations i would still use a text editor. for the use alongside scribus, 'libreOffice' or 'openOffice' are the better choice than 'word' – because you may import formatted text (including paragraph styles).

utnik

GRI BUONGIORNE

Quote from: utnik on November 29, 2014, 04:09:23 PM
hi silvia

usually scribus is going to make things more complicated first – but that's the same (or even worse) with other dtp software...

if you're doing the whole layout work besides your translations, scribus may be a good help.
for the translations i would still use a text editor. for the use alongside scribus, 'libreOffice' or 'openOffice' are the better choice than 'word' – because you may import formatted text (including paragraph styles).

Thanks utnik, not sure if I have libre office or open office capability, I use Pages/Word and so far using Scribus has me doing alot of tweaking as well since it's not compatible with my text program...or maybe I'm not getting what you mean... :-[


utnik
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.
           -- Daniel J. Boorstin

utnik

#3
hi silvia

Quote from: GRI BUONGIORNE on November 30, 2014, 12:51:14 AM...Scribus has me doing alot of tweaking as well since it's not compatible with my text program...

scribus is compatible with each text program. with oo and lo it offers a nice suplementary feature...

btw. you should write your text outside of the quotes from another post.

utnik

Nermander

If I understand you correct, your main goal is to import a scanned document as a "backgrouond" and then place the translated text on top of it?

Scribus can do that, but depending on your need Scribus may be a bit overkill. I think the same thing could be done in for example Inkscape, maybe even in Open/Libre Office (I haven't tried placing a scanned image as background in Libre Office so I'm not sure how easy it is).