For the purpose of my wife's translation work I have been doing the following procedure for years with Word 97 but have run into a problem with it using Word 2003:-
(It might look complicated but is actually very straightforward and effective.)

1. Scan original hard copy of a diagram into a bitmap program.

2. With the bitmap program erase any English text which needs translating.

3. Copy and paste this image into Word (best is as a Device independent bitmap).

4. In Word click on the graphic and do Edit Picture from the right mouse pop-up menu. This opens it as a picture object with ONE item, the bitmap, which can not itself of course be edited in Word.

5. Add text boxes with the original English text, i.e. type the English into the text boxes.

6. Format these text boxes to place them where the English text was.


The picture now looks like the English original but the text is in text boxes which are part of the picture object. The text boxes CAN be edited using Word alone but it is not possible to accidentally displace them from their correct alignment with the bitmap ? to edit or move them needs the picture object to be opened.

I now give the file to my wife who translates the text into German, which can be done in Word alone without her needing to use a bitmap program which would be very laborious, especially to carry our any corrections which might prove necessary.

The completed German language file is the sent to our client and they can then send it to translators for other languages to overtype with translations of the original English into French, Italian etc, again using Word ALONE.

The method has worked for years in Word 97, and still does, but it is not possible to do step 4 in my new version (2003) of Word. The right mouse menu option of Edit Picture is greyed out and inoperative. It IS possible to edit the files which were so created in Word 97 ? after the first use of Edit Picture (in Word 97) the menu option becomes Picture Object ? Open (or simply double click the picture).

My copy of Word 2003 is a component of an OEM Office 2003 preinstalled on my new Dell computer.

Any ideas how to cure the problem please?

Derek Shaw

Hi.

I know the answer to this, just can't remember d'oh. However, you can always open in mspaint and do your translating.

The whole point of using this procedure is to avoid the translators having to work with bitmap files and also to permit translators for several languages to use the ONE Word file and not have to send a separate file for each figure in addition to the text file in Word. This would be unworkable.
However I have discovered that this particular feature in Word 97 was removed for versions 2000 onwards ? so much for progress!

I am now trying to find out if any firm produced proofing tools for German with post reform spelling for use with Office/Word 97 and if so how to get a copy, possibly second-hand now.

Derek

I have sort of found an answer with a file I downloaded from a Microsoft page some years ago when they still supported Word/Office 97. It is a new speller file spdeu9x.exe, but I was not brave enough to try it then. Unfortunately it crashes Word frequently on my wife's system with Windows XP unless one is extremely careful with how one exits the speller, presumably because it was intended for Windows 95/98. We have now given in and bought another copy of Office 2003 - still to be installed at the moment. The graphics problem does have a work around but this is much more complicated and difficult than Word 97

Derek