Text side by side word

How to show original text and a translation side by side in Word.

The recent versions of Word have had an in-built translation feature that, like so many things in Microsoft Office, doesn’t quite go far enough.

The basics are simple enough. On the Review tab there’s a Translate button. Click on that to translate the entire document or the selected text.

Choose the language you want and Word will go online and get a translation from Microsoft’s online service. You can either Insert the translation (the default) or copy to the clipboard.

Side-by-Side

What’s missing is a side-by-side option – to show the original and translated text next to each other. This allows comparison between the two texts.

There’s two obvious ways to do it in Word – columns or a table.

A two column format works for short amounts of text, less than a page. Put a column break below the original text so the translation starts at the top of the next column. More than a page and columns don’t work well because columns wrap from bottom to top of each page.

For larger side-by-side text you need a big table instead. A table column will extend down through two or more pages.

Create a table with two columns and two rows.

The top row is the heading and you’ll probably want that at the top of each page. Do that by putting the cursor in the top row then select Table | Layout | Properties | Row and check the option ‘Repeat as header row at the top of each page’.

Type in your headings then paste the original text into the large second row cell.

Selection falls short

At this point you’d expect to just select the original and use the Review | Translate option in Word … but not so fast. You can select a block of text but Word will only translate the first paragraph or so.

We tried various combinations in Word 2010 but it was always the same result – the translation was incomplete. See this attempt where we selected the entire speech text on the left and got back a translation of only the first part.

To work around that, select the original text and use the online translation service of your choice.

http://www.microsofttranslator.com/ – which is used by Word and will take you to the Bing translator if you use it outside of Word.

http://translate.google.com/

Both services have additional features you can explore at your leisure. Both have a ‘side by side’ display.

Paste the result into the other table column.

There are a few frills you can add:

• Insert some spacing so the original and translated paragraphs start on the same line.
• Change the language setting for the translated text to match the language. That will get rid of the red squiggly lines.

Is it a good translation?

Us mono-linguists have no idea whether the machine translation is accurate or not, but there’s a simple way to see if the translation is reasonable.

Simply get the service to translate the translation back into the original language. For example – An original English text is translated into Norwegian, then select the Norwegian version and translate it back into English.

Then you can compare the original text and the return translation to see how closely they compare. As you can see above, the Microsoft/Bing translator does a good job with Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address. Any of our Norwegian friends would accurately appreciate the great man’s words.

View and compare documents side by side

1. Open both of the files that you want to compare.
2. On the View tab, in the Window group, click View Side by Side. Notes: To scroll both documents at the same time, click Synchronous Scrolling. in the Window group on the View tab.

Can I split screen two Word documents?

You can even view two parts of the same document. To do this, click on the Word window for the document you want to view and click “Split” in the “Window” section of the “View” tab. The current document is split into two parts of the window in which you can scroll and edit different parts of the document separately.

How do I open two Word documents in separate windows?

Go to File > Options > Advanced, scroll down to the Display section, and check the box for “Show all windows in the Taskbar”. Now each document will open in a separate window, and you can drag each window to a separate monitor. When that box is unchecked, all documents open in the same window (as child windows).

Why can’t I view Word documents side by side?

To enable this view, first click the “View” tab in the Ribbon. Then click the “View Side by Side” button in the “Window” button group. Notice that this is a toggle button. So, to turn off View Side by Side in Word, click the “View Side by Side” button again.

How do you put two Word documents together?

In this article

1. Select the Insert tab.
2. Select Object, and then select Text from File from the drop-down menu.
3. Select the files to be merged into the current document. Press and hold Ctrl to select more than one document. Documents will be merged in the order in which they appear in the file list.

How do I display two documents at the same time?

See two documents side by side in Word

1. Open the 2 documents.
2. Select View > View Side by Side. If you scroll up or down, the other scrolls as well. If you want them to scroll separately, select Synchronous Scrolling to turn it off.

How do I split my screen into two documents?

Open two or more windows or applications on your computer. Place your mouse on an empty area at the top of one of the windows, hold down the left mouse button, and drag the window to the left side of the screen. Now move it all the way over, as far as you can go, until your mouse won’t move anymore.

How do I turn on view side by side?

View two worksheets in the same workbook side by side

1. On the View tab, in the Window group, click New Window.
2. On the View tab, in the Window group, click View Side by Side .
3. In each workbook window, click the sheet that you want to compare.
4. To scroll both worksheets at the same time, click Synchronous Scrolling.

Why view side by side is not working?

Make sure that Vertical is enabled. And of course you must have two documents open. This allows you to visually compare two documents side by side. If you want to use the Compare feature, that’s on the Review tab.

How do I open two Word documents side by side on a Mac?

Open both documents in word 2016 for mac. Click and hold the green expansion dot in the top left hand corner of the window. This puts the first document in the left hand side of a split screen and displays all other open windows on the right. Just select the document and you have side by side view.

Why can’t word compare two documents?

Sometimes, when comparing two documents using native Word, or DocXtools (while using Word as a comparison engine), Word will raise an “unable to compare” error. This is usually due to long tables, and can be overridden with a registry change.

How do I put multiple documents into one PDF?

The simplest method is to use File > New Document, and choose the option to Combine Files into a Single PDF. A file-list box will open. Drag in the files that you want to combine into a single PDF. You can add PDF files, or any combination of text, images, Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documents into the list.

How do I combine Word and PDF documents?

Combine multiple documents into one PDF file in Word

1. Create an empty Word document, click Object > Text from files under Insert tab.
2. In the Insert File window, select the Word documents you will combine to a PDF file, and click the Insert button.
3. Then all selected documents are inserted into current document.

How do I put two pages side by side?

Open your document in Microsoft Word and then follow these steps.

1. Click the View tab and in the Views section of the ribbon, select Print Layout.
2. Next, on the View tab, go to the Page Movement section of the ribbon and select Side to Side.
3. You’ll immediately see the window adjust to show two pages at the same time.

How do I do side by side on Windows 10?

Show windows side by side in windows 10

1. Press and hold Windows logo key.
2. Press the left or right arrow key.
3. Press and hold Windows logo key + Up arrow key to snap the window to the top halves of the screen.
4. Press and hold Windows logo key + Down arrow key to snap the window to the bottom halves of the screen.

How do I compare two Word documents for similarities?

Open one of the two versions of the document that you want to compare. On the Tools menu, point to Track Changes, and then click Compare Documents. In the Original document list, select the original document. In the Revised document list, browse to the other version of the document, and then click OK.

How do I create a subdocument in Word?

Click before the S of the title Selecting Text Quickly with a Mouse. The subdocument will be inserted above this point. In the Outlining tab, in the Master Document group, click Insert. The Insert Subdocument dialog is displayed.

Can you split screen on Mac with Word?

On the View tab, click Arrange, and then click Split. If the window is wide enough, Word displays Split directly on the View tab. To adjust the relative sizes of the panes, move the mouse pointer to the dividing line, and when you see the split pointer, click and drag the dividing line to a new position.

How do I use two screens on my Mac?

Press and hold the Option key and drag one display icon onto another display icon to mirror those two displays.

How do I split my screen between two monitors on a Mac?

How do I have a window span multiple monitors on macOS?

1. Please open ‘System Preferences’ and select the ‘Mission Control’ preference pane, where you will see an option labeled ‘Displays have separate Spaces’
2. When this checkbox is selected, OS X will snap a window to whichever display that window has the most area on.

How do you redline a document?

About This Article

1. Click the Review tab.
2. Click Track Changes.
3. Click Simple Markup.
4. Click All Markup.
5. Click Show Markup.
6. Highlight text and select New Comment.
7. Edit the document and click Accept.