Now that you have your first document created and opened (see step 1 if you haven’t done this yet), the screen will look something like the following picture. (There may be more or less text showing on each line, depending on the window size you are using.)

Here is a brief explanation of the things you are looking at in the view of your document. (You don’t have to read the explanations below, just skip them if they do not help you and just go straight to the steps you are to do.)

• At the top are the menus. Click on each one, and just have a look at the menu items which are available. Don’t worry if some do not make sense to you, you will learn what they do and how to use them later on.
• Below the menus is a row of buttons, this row is called a Toolbar. Each button selects a tool, or does some useful operation. You will learn to use some of these buttons in this chapter. To use a button you click it once with the left mouse button. Some of the buttons can be used by pressing special keys on the keyboard – these special key presses are called “keyboard shortcuts”, we will tell you about some of them in this chapter.
• Below the toolbar is a row of checkboxes. You use the mouse to click these, to turn on or off special behaviours. These special behaviours are called “modes”. When Adapt It is in a certain “mode”, certain behaviours will take place, and other behaviours will not be available until that “mode” is turned off by clicking the checkbox again. Some of these checkboxes are not for modes, but other special effects. We will show you how to use these checkboxes in a later chapter. For now, do not click any of these checkboxes as you work through Chapter 2 of the tutorial.
• Below the checkboxes you can show an additional bar called the “Compose Bar”. It is normally hidden, but you can show it by choosing the View menu, and clicking the Compose Bar item. Click that item again to make the Compose Bar be hidden again. The compose bar is where you can type text which you want to keep for a while.
• Then follows the main window. The source text of the input file is shown in blue (because that is the colour we chose), the target language text is black, and navigation text is bright green – but you can change to other colours if you wish. The text is organized in “strips”, the top line of each strip is the (blue) source text, including any punctuation; the second line in each strip is (black) target text, also including punctuation. However, as the picture shows, the only target text so far is 1JN, and it is visible in a box at the top left of the window. This box is called the “Phrase Box”, it is where you type your target language adaptations – this box moves to a new location each time you press the ENTER key; and the box will expand or contract as you type into it, or delete text from it. The place where the box is, at any point of time, is called the “active location”. Currently, the active location is at the very first word of the input file.
• As you work, typing adaptations for source words or phrases, your adaptations will become visible under the source words. We are ready to do some adapting now, so let’s go to our first exercise.

Adapting a single source word

We want to adapt the word “Yupela” at the start of chapter 2, verse 12. The active location is not there, so before we do this exercise let us first get the phrase box to appear underneath the word “Yupela”. Hit the ENTER key several times – notice what happens each time; stop when the phrase box is underneath “Yupela”.

Exercise 2.1 Adapting “Yupela” (which means “you” – referring to more than one person), by giving it the meaning “You”. (Note: in these exercises, text you are to type will often be shown between quote marks (” … “). Do not type the quote marks, just type whatever is between the quote marks.)

Step How to do it What happens when you do it
12. Adapt “Yupela” • in the phrase box, if “Yupela” is not already selected, then select it
• type “You”
• Press the ENTER key (You can select a word either by double-clicking it; or by clicking at one end and while holding the left mouse button down drag the cursor to the other end of the word.)
When you press ENTER, an entry is made in the knowledge base, and the phrase box jumps to the next “empty” location, and Adapt It copies the source word at that location and puts it in the phrase box for you, in case the adaptation for it is spelled the same way.

Extra Practice
Adapt the following two words in the same way.
The word “liklik” means “little”. Type “little” in the phrase box and then hit the ENTER key.
The word “pikinini” means either “child” or “children”. When you adapt it, use the meaning “children”.
When you have finished those two source words, the phrase box will be underneath the word “bilong”.

Merging source words to make a source phrase (the quick way)

The following explanation might help you understand how Adapt It stores its information, and why the next exercise is needed. You can skip the explanation if you wish, but this operation is probably the most important one in all of Adapt It’s features, so it may be worth your while to understand what is happening.

Sometimes you will not want to translate each source word with a single target word, or target phrase. Sometimes you will want to combine, or “merge” several source words into a single phrase, and then type an adaptation for that source phrase. The most likely times you would want to do this are:
(a) when adapting each individual source word would not result in a natural sounding translation, or
(b) the order of the words in the adaptation needs to be different from the order of the words in the source text.

The source words are stored in document storage elements, and the storage elements are arranged in the strips one after another from left to right. Each storage element stores the source text and its target text adaptation, as well as other information. The source and target text is arranged on your screen, for each storage element, in a “pile” – that is, one piece of text piled on top of another; for example, “Yupela” and the adaptation “You” are in a single pile. When your document is created from the input file you specified, Adapt It “cuts up” the input text into a series of single words, and stores each single word in a single storage element, and each such storage element is shown on the screen as a single pile. Here is a diagram of how the piles are arranged in a strip containing 15 piles, as shown on the screen.

If each pile shows just a single source word, then you need a way to cause Adapt It to take two or more source words and combine the words into a single phrase, stored on a single storage element – and therefore displayed on the screen in a single pile.

This operation of combining source words into a phrase is what we are going to do next. We want the two words “bilong” (meaning “of”) and “mi” (meaning “I” or “me” or “mine”) to be combined into the phrase “bilong mi”; and then we want to give this phrase the adaptation “of mine”. We also want the knowledge base entry for this adaptation to be stored with all the other 2-word phrases – this will be accomplished automatically by merging the single words on the two piles into a single phrase containing the two source words.

Exercise 2.2 Merging two words to form a 2-word source phrase.

To do a merge operation, Adapt It needs to first know how many words have to be combined, and which ones are involved. The application gets this information by you selecting the words you want to be merged into a phrase. So we have to learn how to make a selection. There are several ways to do this. The way we will show you now is probably the most useful one, because it is easy to do and your hands do not need to leave the keyboard. You will be using an
ALT + right arrow key combination to do the selecting. Then for the merging, you can either just type your adaptation, or use the ALT+ENTER key combination as a shortcut to make the merge happen without typing, and then do the typing after that. We will show you other ways later on. Most people would probably prefer to cause the merge to happen by just typing after getting the required selection. That is the easiest way to do it.

Step How to do it What happens when you do it
13. Merge the source word “bilong” and the next word “mi” to form a source phrase “bilong mi”. • make sure the cursor is in the phrase box somewhere, if not, click in the box somewhere (and make sure the box is below the word “bilong” – if it isn’t, click in the white space under “bilong” and the box will be placed there
• hold down the ALT key
• with your other hand, press the right arrow key once only
• (optional step which can be omitted) keeping your hand on the ALT key, press the ENTER key
• type the adaptation “of mine” (if you omited the previous step, as soon as you type the “o” of the word “of” the merge happens)
• press the ENTER key to go to the next empty pile One press of the right arrow key selects the source word at the active location, plus the next source word to its right; so “bilong” and “mi” will both be selected. Selections have a yellow background.

When you press the ENTER key with the ALT key also held down, any words in a selection get merged into a source phrase (and if they have existing adaptations, the adaptation words will be added together to form a potential adaptation for the new phrase, and will be shown in the phrase box)

The final press of the ENTER key stores the phrase and its adaptation in the knowledge base

Note: if you intend to type a translation in the phrase box after the merge is done, you can skip the third-last step (that is, do not bother to press the ALT+ENTER key combination), and instead just start typing the adaptation text “of mine”. Whenever you type something into the phrase box while the phrase box is a part of a selection, Adapt It will assume you intend a merge to take place first, and so it will merge the source words before it shows you the first character of your typing.

Unmerging a source phrase

If you want to separate the words of a merged source phrase into a sequence of single words, each shown in its own pile, there is a button for this purpose. There is also a keyboard shortcut, the SHIFT+END key combination (that is, hold down the SHIFT key while pressing the End key).

In this exercise we will unmerge the phrase “bilong mi” which we made in section 2.3. Then in section 2.4 we will make the same phrase again, but in a different way.

Exercise 2.3. Unmerging “bilong mi”

This can be done in two slightly different ways, depending on the location of the phrase box. The most general way uses a selection, so it does not matter where the phrase box happens to be, since Adapt It will know which phrase to unmerge by the location of the selection. We will do that way first.

Step How to do it What happens when you do it
14. Unmerge the source phrase “bilong mi”
(Method one: using a selection) • it does not matter where the phrase box is, so leave it under the source word “long”
• select by clicking on the source phrase to be unmerged (that is, click on “bilong mi”)
• click the Unmerge button (or type the keyboard shortcut SHIFT+END) The phrase becomes two separate words again.
The knowledge base is adjusted appropriately (ie. the old phrase entry is removed, in this case)
The phrase box is placed at the first of the unmerged words, making that the new active location.
Adapt It will try to put the most sensible text possible in the box for you, so it will look up the knowledge base and try to find a suitable adaptation for the first source word. If it cannot find something suitable, it will just show the old translation of the source phrase you have just unmerged, which you will then probably need to edit manually.

The second method for doing this does not use a selection. But this method requires the phrase box to be located underneath the source phrase you want to unmerge. If there is no selection, Adapt It looks for a phrase at the active location, and if it finds one there, it will unmerge it when you give the command to unmerge.

Step How to do it What happens when you do it
15. Unmerge the source phrase “bilong mi”
(Method two: using the active location rather than a selection) • the phrase box has to be under the source phrase “bilong mi”; it currently isn’t there, so click the translation “of mine” and the phrase box will be put there. (It would be a good idea to delete the word “long” in the phrase box first, so that it does not get stored as an adaptation.)
• click the Unmerge button (or type the keyboard shortcut SHIFT+END) The phrase becomes two separate words again.
The knowledge base is adjusted appropriately (ie. the old phrase entry is removed, in this case)
The phrase box is placed at the first of the unmerged words, making that the new active location.
Adapt It will try to put the most sensible text possible in the box for you, so it will look up the knowledge base and try to find a suitable adaptation for the first source word. If it cannot find something suitable, it will just show the old translation of the source phrase you have just unmerged, which you will then probably need to edit manually.

Merging source words to make a source phrase (two other ways)

Now we will merge “bilong” and “mi” again, using two different ways. These can be used regardless of where the active location might happen to be. You make a selection, but in a different way than in section 2.2; and the selection can be distant from the active location.

The phrase box can be anywhere for these exercises.

Step How to do it What happens when you do it
16. Merge the source word “bilong” and the next word “mi” to form the source phrase “bilong mi”
(By clicking once to start a selection and then extending the selection) • the phrase box can be anywhere, or it can be under the word “bilong” or under “mi”, it doesn’t matter
• click the source word “bilong” once to select it
• extend the selection by holding down the SHIFT key while clicking on the word “mi”
• type the adaptation, which for this source phrase is “of mine”
• press the ENTER key to go to the next empty location The two separate words become a phrase.
The phrase box is placed under the merged source phrase, making that the new active location.
The phrase box will show a guess for the adaptation, and it will be selected. When you type “of mine” it replaces the selection with your typing.
When the phrase box moves on to a new location the knowledge base is adjusted appropriately (ie. in this case a “bilong mi” phrase entry is added, plus its adaptation “of mine”)

In the above exercise, notice that you skipped pressing the merge button, and just instead typed the phrase “of mine”. Notice that the merge still took place and your typing appeared in the phrase box.

A third way to form a selection is by clicking and dragging. Let’s do the preceding exercise again, using this method. First, unmerge the phrase, and then do this exercise.

Step How to do it What happens when you do it
17. Merge the source word “bilong” and the next word “mi” to form the source phrase “bilong mi”
(By clicking and dragging to extend the selection) • the phrase box can be anywhere, or it can be under the word “bilong” or under “mi”, it doesn’t matter
• click the source word “bilong” once to select it, keep the mouse button down while you
• extend the selection by dragging the cursor until it points within the word “mi”, then release the mouse button
• type the adaptation, which for this source phrase is “of mine”
• press the ENTER key to go to the next empty location The two separate words become a phrase.
The phrase box is placed under the merged source phrase, making that the new active location.
The phrase box will show a guess for the adaptation, and it will be selected. When you type “of mine” it replaces the selection with your typing.
When the phrase box moves on to a new location the knowledge base is adjusted appropriately (ie. in this case a “bilong mi” phrase entry is added, plus its adaptation “of mine”)

Practice merging words

Exercise 2.5 Merge the words “long” (a preposition which can have many meanings such as in, on, over, to, from, etc.), “nem” (meaning “name”), “bilong” (meaning “of”) and “Krais” (meaning “Christ”).

Step How to do it What happens when you do it
18. Merge the next four words into a 4-word source phrase. Give it the adaptation “in the name of Christ”. • the phrase box can be anywhere
• click on the source word “long”
• extend the selection by holding down the SHIFT key while clicking on the word “Krais”
• click the merge button (or you instead can use the ALT+ENTER key combination discussed in 2.2)
• type the adaptation, which for this source phrase is “in the name of Christ”
• press the ENTER key to go to the next empty location The four separate words become a phrase.
The phrase box is placed under the merged source phrase, making that the new active location.
The phrase box will show a guess for the adaptation, and it will be selected. When you type “in the name of Christ” it replaces the selection with your typing.
When the phrase box moves on to a new location the knowledge base is adjusted appropriately (ie. in this case a “long nem bilong Krais” phrase entry is added, plus its adaptation “in the name of Christ”)

Accepting a default adaptation without changes

The phrase box will now be under the source word “God”, and the default adaptation (copied from the source text) shown in the box will also be the word “God”, and it is selected. Since the adaptation text is already what we want, we will accept it without changes.

Here is an explanation of the word “default”, if you are not familiar with it.
Default text is text which Adapt It supplies when it cannot find something better. For example, Adapt It will try find an adaptation for a source word in the knowledge base; but if it cannot find something suitable, then it will instead make some default text to put in the phrase box instead. It makes the default text by taking the source word, doing any consistent changes you require (if you have consistent changes turn on), and then showing the result in the phrase box.
So “default” text is the text you get when every other avenue for getting some suitable text has failed.

Step How to do it What happens when you do it
19. Accept a default adaptation supplied by Adapt It in the phrase box, without making changes. • press the ENTER key to go to the next empty location The phrase box is placed under the next source word having no adaptation yet, making that the new active location.
The phrase box will show default adaptation text constructed by copying the source word at the new active location. In this case the default text will be “i”

Retranslating a section of source text

Sometimes you may wish not to adapt a certain section of the source text. Instead, you would like to make a new translatiaon for that part of the text. You might want to do this if you think the meaning of the original translation (the source text) is not very accurate in that section; or perhaps the order of the words in the target text needs to be very different than the word order in the source text.

Exercise 2.7 Retranslate the section of source text “i lusim pinis ol sin bilong yupela”. A literal translation of this section would read: “he released already sins of you”. But that is not quite the meaning we want in English, and some words are hard to express in English, such as “i” which indicates that a verb follows, and “pinis” which indicates that an action has been completed. So this section is a good one to retranslate so that we can make the translation sound natural in English.

Step How to do it What happens when you do it
20. Retranslate a section of source text. • click on the word “i” and keeping the mouse button down drag the mouse to point at “yupela” so that all the words “i lusim pinis ol sin bilong yupela” become selected. (The cursor does not have to touch each intervening word as you drag, it just needs to end up pointing to the last word of your intended selection.)
• click the “Do a Retranslation” button to open the retranslation dialog (or you can use the ALT + up arrow key combination as a shortcut; or the F9 function key as a shortcut.
• In the dialog’s text box, type the new translation:
“has taken away all of your sins.” (Remember to include the punctuation at the end.)
• Click the OK button to close the dialog. The selected source text appears in the dialog; also shown in the dialog is the surrounding context – text which precedes the selection is a the top, and text which follows the selection is at the bottom. (A button allows you to switch to target text for the context, or back again to source text.)
You use the retranslation box to type your new text. (You may have to delete what it is in it first.)
When you close the dialog with the OK button, your new translation is laid out under the selected source words; extra piles are inserted automatically at the end if your new translation is longer than the source text. These each contain a “null source phrase”, and their source text is just three dots (…). If your translation is shorter than the original selection, then some of the source words will have nothing under them. In the present case, source and target text are the same length.
Notice that your retranslation has #* above it to show where it starts. Also, each word has * above it. The * means that this text is not stored in the knowledge base. Retranslations never go into the knowledge base.
If you have chosen a unique colour for retranslation text, it will have that colour.

This tutorial will not discuss the buttons in the retranslation dialog. If you want to know more about what those buttons do, they are discussed fully in the “Adapt It Basics.doc” reference document, on pages 19-20. Click the buttons, it will not do any harm, to see their effects.

Retranslating a long section of source text

Retranslating a large section of text is similar to retranslating just a few words, but there is a potential problem which requires an extra step.

When you try to select a large section to be retranslated, if there is some punctuation in that section you will find that your attempt to select everything will stop short, in fact, it will stop at the first punctuation character Adapt It finds (but it does not stop at commas). The reason the selection stops at the punctuation is because there is a hidden boundary there. The boundary is put there automatically when the document was first created; it is there in order to protect you from making merges of several words into phrases which are unlikely to be grammatically sensible choices. However, these boundaries are a nuisance when you want to retranslate a large section of text. Fortunately, there is a button you can press which will instruct Adapt It to temporarily ignore all boundaries – then you will be able to make a selection be as long as you like.
You can demonstrate the problem exists in the following way:
• Click on the source text word “Olsem” to select it
• Hold down the SHIFT key and then click on the source text word “yupela.” at the end of VERSE 13 (not the one at the end of verse 12, but the one later still – at the end of verse 13)

Notice that the words were selected only up to the end of verse 12. That is because there is a period (.) after the word yupela, and so there is a boundary there. In the exercise below, we will show you how to make the selection cross this punctuation boundary with just a click of a button.

Exercise 2.8 Retranslating a long section of source text, from “Olsem” in 1 John 2:12 to “yupela” at the end of 2:13.

This requires just one extra step, otherwise it is just the same as exercise 2.7.

Step How to do it What happens when you do it
21. Retranslate a long section of source text, which spans punctuation breaks (other than comma). • click on “Olsem” to select it
• click on the “Respect Boundaries” button to toggle its setting so that it looks as follows:
• hold down the SHIFT key and click on “yupela” at the end of verse 13
• click the “Do a Retranslation” button to open the retranslation dialog (or you can use the ALT + up arrow key combination as a shortcut)
• In the dialog’s text box, type the new translation:
” So I am writing this letter to you. You fathers, you know well the man who lived long ago and who still lives. So I am writing this letter to you.”
(Remember to include the punctuation.)
• Click the OK button to close the dialog. We changed the selection method for this exercise. For a long selection, it is much quicker to click at one end of the intended selection, then hold the SHIFT key down and click at the other end.
The extra step was the click on the button. This switches Adapt It to an “ignore punctuation boundaries” state, making it able to select across punctuation breaks – at least while the phrase box remains at the current location. (Adapt It will automatically restore the earlier state once the phrase box moves elsewhere from its current location.)

Adapt It lays out the long retranslation. It has fewer words than the Tok Pisin, so some of the source words at the end do not have any of the retranslation under them.

The phrase box is placed at the first available location after the retranslated section.

It is also possible to have boundaries ignored when you make a long selection using the click and drag method. Just hold down the CTRL key while you do the drag.

Removing a retranslation

It is very easy to get rid of a retranslation. When you remove it, the piles will show a single source word on each pile. The old retranslation may appear to have been completely lost, but that is not so. It will be preserved in the Compose Bar, and it will stay there until you change the contents of the Compose Bar. The Compose Bar is normally hidden, we will show you have to make it visible as part of this exercise.

Exercise 2.9 Remove the long retranslation we made in exercise 2.8.

Step How to do it What happens when you do it
22. Remove the retranslation we made in the previous exercise • Click to select any source word in the retranslation, it does not matter which one (it also does not matter where the phrase box currently is)
• Click the “Remove A Retranslation” button Adapt It will remove the old retranslation, and restore the phrase box to the first empty location in the place where the retranslation used to be.
23. Display the Compose Bar (only if you want to access the old retranslation text) • Click on the View menu, and click the Compose Bar menu item A new toolbar appears above the main window. In the text box you will see the old retranslation text. You can do anything you like with it: e.g. cut and paste parts of it somewhere, or delete it (the Clear Contents button is a quick way to do that), or select all of it using the Select All button, or ignore it, etc.
24. Hide the Compose Bar. • Click on the View menu, and click again the Compose Bar menu item The Compose Bar will be hidden. If you hid it with text in the text box, the text will remain there – at least until you later on remove a different retranslation, or do some other operation which changes the contents of the text box.

Editing a retranslation

You can edit an existing retranslation at any time; shortening it, or lengthening it as you please. Adapt It will lay out the display of the document again, taking account of your changes.

Exercise 2.10 Edit the retranslation at the middle of 2:12.

Looking at the first retranslation we did, we may feel that we want to remove the word “of”, so that it will read “has taken away all your sins.” That sounds a little better in English.

Step How to do it What happens when you do it
25. Edit the retranslation “has taken away all of your sins.” • Click on any source word in the retranslation, so it is selected
• Click the “Edit A Retranslation” button to open the retranslation dialog for editing
• In the dialog’s text box, make the editing changes you require. In this case, remove the word “of” and a space.
• Click the OK button to close the dialog. The retranslation is displayed again, but with the target text showing the edited form.

Inserting an extra word or phrase

Sometimes your adapted text does not quite sound right unless you add an extra word or phrase somewhere. The problem with adding the extra information to an already existing translation of a source word or phrase is that Adapt It may later try to insert that extra information at some other place where it does not belong. What you need is some kind of “place holder” in the source text which allows you to insert an extra word or phrase in the target text. There is a button for this purpose, we will use it in this exercise.

To prepare, look at chapter 2 verse 13; click underneath the word “long”, and then using what you have learned earlier merge the words “long dispela man” into a phrase and give it the translation “about this man”. Press the ENTER key, and then merge the two words “i stap” into a phrase and give it the translation “existed”, press the ENTER key. Now we are ready. Notice, the English does not read well at all: “about this man existed” is certainly not good English. What we need is the word “who” preceding the word “existed”. We don’t want the “who” to be part of the meaning for “i stap” because sometimes “i stap” will just mean “existed” without any preceding “who”. The solution is to insert the word between the two phrases you just made.

Exercise 2.11 Inserting the word “who” preceding a pile.

Step How to do it What happens when you do it
26. Insert “who” before “existed” • The phrase box can be anywhere provided we use a selection – so select the phrase “i stap”
• Click the “Insert A Null Source Phrase” button to get the placeholder inserted into the source text and the phrase box moved there ready for your typing.
(If you hold the CTRL key down when you click, the insertion will be done AFTER the selection, or after the active location if there is no selection.)
• Type the word “who”
• Press the ENTER key to move to the next empty location. Selecting “i stap” tells Adapt It where it is to insert the placeholder – it will be inserted immediately preceding the selected pile. (If you did not use a selection, the placeholder would, by default, be put immediately preceding the current active location – that is, where the phrase box currently is located.)
The knowledge base saves your entry, but these never get later inserted in the text automatically, because no … elipsis exists beforehand.
Read the note below for some special behaviour.

When you insert a placeholder at a location in the source text where there is punctuation (either punctuation at the end of the preceding context – for example, a period at the end of a sentence, or punctuation at the start of the following context – for example, opening quotation marks, or both), Adapt It will show you a message asking you how it is to associate the newly typed text with the surrounding context. You can associate it to the left, so that it is considered part of the preceding context; or to the right, so that it becomes part of the following context. Depending on your answer, Adapt It will then move the appropriate punctuation to the proper place. (If you delete a null source phrase, punctuation which has been moved will be automatically moved back where it originally was.)

You can try this out by selecting the word “Olsem”, choosing the “Insert A Null Source Phrase” button, and then when the message dialog comes up, click the No button to cause the association to be to the left. Then type a word, hit ENTER, and then observe where Adapt It places the period. It will be put after the inserted word that you typed. Then get rid of the inserted word – how to do that is the subject of the next section. Note: using the button or the shortcut while holding down the CTRL key, results in an insertion AFTER the relevant location, instead of BEFORE it.

Removing an inserted extra word or phrase

Exercise 2.12 Removing an unwanted insertion.

First make an insertion somewhere (see section 2.11).

Step How to do it What happens when you do it
27. Remove a null source phrase which is no longer wanted. • If the phrase box is not under the … elipsis, then you need to tell Adapt It which null source phrase to remove by clicking the … elipsis text to select it. (If the phrase box is already under it, no selection is needed.)
• Click the “Remove A Null Source Phrase” button to get the placeholder removed.
• Press the ENTER key to move to the next empty location, or click a target text translation somewhere to have the phrase box placed there. When the ellipsis is removed, the target text which was under it is deleted from the document at that location, and its entry in the knowledge base is removed.

If Adapt It earlier moved punctuation to the start of end of the inserted target text, when the removal takes place, the puctuation is automatically moved back to where it would be had the insertion never been done.

Reading your translation without the source text being shown

This is accomplished by a button. It is a “toggle” – each click changes the view to the opposite state. The “target text only” view is useful for reading through your work without the distraction of the source text and the more cluttered window appearance.

Step How to do it What happens when you do it
28. Read just the target text.
29. Restore the view showing both source and target text. • Click the “Show Target Text Only” button
• Click the “Show Source And Target Text” button When the button is clicked, the view changes to show only the target text. You can still edit the translation, you can move the phrase box by clicking on any word or phase, and so forth. In fact, any operation that makes sense in this view is permitted; those which cannot be done (such as those requiring a selection be made first) are temporarily disabled. You can also print this view, or the normal view.

Clicking the button again (it has a new appearance) restores the normal view again.

Single Step mode versus Automatic mode

So far you have been working in Automatic mode. On the left of the toolbar above the main window you will see a checkbox called “Automatic” and it will be checked. If you click this checkbox, it will become unchecked and the mode will shift to Single Step mode.

In Single Step mode, Adapt It works like this: when you press the ENTER key, the application looks for the next empty location. After finding it, it then “looks ahead” at the next 10 source words – checking in the knowledge base for a matching phrase, and if it finds one, it will merge the words into a 10-word phrase, supply the translation which you gave ealier for that phrase, and then stop and wait for you to do something. If it could not find a 10 word source phrase at that location, it shortens the test to 9 words, merging and adding the translation if it finds a match in the knowledge base and providing the translation is unique. Failing to find a 9 word phrase it tries 8, failing that it tries 7, and so on until it tries to match just the single word at the new location. If nothing matches in the knowledge base, then it copies the source word to the phrase box as the default translation, and then waits for you to do something. If the application finds a matching source phrase in the knowledge base, but that phrase has two or more possible translations, then it puts up a Choose Translation dialog (discussed later) for you to choose which translation you want, or to type a new one.

In Automatic mode (the default mode) all of the above happen except that Adapt It no longer waits after it inserts a translation having found a match for the phrase (or word) at the new location; instead, it goes on to the next empty location and repeats the procedure – continuing indefinitely in this way until one of the following two things happen:
1. multiple translations are possible for a matched source phrase, so the Choose Translation dialog is put up and processing halts while you interact with the dialog; or
2. nothing in the knowledge base is matched, so processing halts for you to type a translation for the unknown word or phrase which has been encountered in the source text.

Multiple translations – the Choose Translation dialog

The insertion of a pre-existing translation takes place only when that translation is unique. If you have previously given a single source word (or source phrase) two or more different translations, Adapt It cannot decide for you which is the one required at a new location. So it asks you to supply the correct one by putting up the following dialog:

This dialog is discussed fully in the Adapt It Basics documentation, see there for details. Briefly, to choose a translation listed in the box on the left, just double-click it; if none of the translations is suitable for the current active location, then type a new translation in the editbox at the bottom, and then press the OK button. Clicking the OK button will close the dialog and cause whichever translation is selected to be inserted in the phrase box. You can use the Move Up or Move Down buttons to reorder the translations in the list so that the most commonly wanted one occurs first. You can also remove an unwanted translation from the knowledge base using the Remove From KB button. (It removes the entry from the knowledge base, but does not remove instances of that translation in your documents – to do the latter, you would need to do a Consistency Check, – see the Adapt It Quick Start document for how to do that.)

It is possible to force the Choose Translation dialog to be shown at any location. Just click to place the phrase box at the desired location, and then click the “Show The Choose Translation Dialog” button , or click the F8 function key which is a shortcut.

If you want to see Adapt It handle multiple translations, do the following exercise. The exercise assumes that you have translated the first instance of the word “Yupela” as “You”.

Step How to do it What happens when you do it
30. Observing Adapt It’s behaviour when there are multiple translation possibilities. • The sentence at the start of verse 13 begins with “Yupela”. Click under this word to put the phrase box there, then type “You all” as its translation.
• Press the ENTER button.
• Click under the last word of verse 13 (which is “yupela” with a lower case y); type something there – perhaps “you” would be good.
• Press the ENTER button, and the Choose Translation dialog will appear showing the two translations for “Yupela” which are currently known: “You” and “You all”.
• Double-click one of the translations, and it will be inserted into the phrase box, and the dialog will be closed automatically. Whenever a source word, or source phrase has two or more existing translations stored in the knowledge base, only the human being using the application knows which one is the correct translation at any given place in the text. So Adapt It will always show this dialog to you whenever it cannot decide which translation is correct.

Note: on the toolbar there is a checkbox called “Force Choice For This Item”. If you click that checkbox to ON after typing a translation, and before you hit the ENTER key, then even if the translation is unique the next time Adapt It encounters the same source text it will show the Choose Translation dialog. You would do this when translating a word of phrase for the first time, but you know that later on the word or phrase is going to have other meanings that you will need to type, so you don’t want Adapt It to keep inserting the first meaning you typed every time it comes to the same word or phrase. You want to force Adapt It to give you the chance to type a second meaning when the same source word is next encountered – that’s what the checkbox is for. (Turning the checkbox ON sets a flag in the knowledge base entry for this translation; you can unset the flag if you wish, either in the Choose Translation dialog, or in the Knowledge Base Editor, by using the button for that purpose.)

Placing the Phrase Box at an arbitrary location

When you press the ENTER key, the phrase box moves forward. Sometimes you may want to move back, or place the box at some translation you made earlier and now wish to edit. To do so, just click the translation you want the phrase box to be located at. It will then move there. When the phrase box moves, the translation at the earlier location is then automatically added to the knowledge base. If you wish to place the phrase box at an “empty” location, just click immediately underneath the source word at that location. (The knowledge base “look up” procedure is also attempted automatically whenever the clicked location is empty, so if there is a translation for that source word or phrase in the knowledge base, it would be inserted for you automatically – same as what happens when you press the ENTER key.)

Three kinds of “nothing”

Quite often you will want to leave a source word untranslated. There are three ways you can do this. The first way is easy, but not recommended. The second way is the one you should use in most situations, it gives you behaviours which are more flexible. The third way is a little more general – the translation can be either nothing, or something, but you know that you don’t want any of these translations stored in the knowledge base. Let’s consider these 3 ways now.

Way 1.
Just press the Backspace key, or the Del key, to delete the target text in the phrase box. Then press the ENTER key. The source word will have no translation, nothing will appear under it, and nothing will be entered in the knowledge base. One unfortunate result, however, is that if you one day have the phrase box at an earlier place in the document, and you press ENTER, the box will stop at this location (although you probably don’t want it to) and copy the source text there again, and you will be left guessing why it stopped there and whether or not the text you see in the box should really be there. Then you will have to read the meaning all over again, and delete the translation text again. Clearly this is not what you want to do, so do not use this kind of way for having no translation.

Way 2.
Click the toolbar button called and the box will then be cleared, and an empty entry will be inserted automatically and instantly in the knowledge base (before you hit the ENTER key). If you look in the knowledge base you will see the “meaning” is shown as . This is just for your convenience; under the hood, Adapt It has actually stored an empty translation. In the main window you will see that the translation is nothing at all. There are two benefits to using this kind of “nothing.” First, if you press ENTER when the phrase box is at an earlier location, this location will be skipped by the phrase box when it moves – which is probably what you want to happen. Secondly, this kind of nothing can co-exist with actual translated words or phrases in the knowledge base; so the source word (or phrase) could be translated by something in one place, and by nothing in another place. When Adapt It comes across the source word (or phrase) again, it would then show you the Choose Translation dialog, and one of the entries would be , and you can choose which one you want in the normal way.

Using the button is, for most situations, most likely to give you the behaviours you would want. It does not limit you in any way, and it causes the phrase box to skip such locations. And if the entry is the only one for that source word or phrase, it will automatically be inserted for you in other places, just like any other translation.

Way 3.
(From version 1.4.0 and onwards, this option has a slightly different behaviour.) Click the toolbar checkbox “Save To Knowledge Base” to turn if off. (It stays off only while at the current active location.) This will force a special entry, , to be put in the knowledge base. This special entry tells Adapt It that this source word will NEVER have a translation stored in the knowledge base. It will allow you to add a translation for that source word at that location in the document, it just won’t get stored in the knowledge base. The phrase box will never stop there when it is located earlier in the document and you then press the ENTER key. So when it comes to that location it will just continue moving on – whether there is an adaptation at that place in the document or nothing at all.

When Adapt It is looking ahead, in Automatic mode, after you press the ENTER key, every time it finds that same source word (or phrase) it will continue to treat it as having no stored adaptation in the knowledge base, and so it will just insert nothing as a default adaptation and move on – so in the main window you see nothing at that location, except for the expected asterisk above it, which reminds you that that word or phrase has no meaningful entry in the knowledge base. You are free to later click on any of these empty locations to put the phrase box there, and you can type some adaptation text there – but the new adaptation text just won’t be stored in the knowledge base when you move the phrase box to some other location by clicking, or by pressing ENTER or TAB or SHIFT+TAB. So as long as the asterisk shows above that source word or phrase, whatever adaptation is there is there only in the document; the knowledge base will know nothing about it.

If you want to make this kind of “nothing” into one of the other kinds of “nothing”, or if there is adapted text there and you want to make it be stored in the knowledge base, just place the phrase box there and then click the Save To Knowledge Base checkbox again, and you will then get the normal behaviour because you will have restored the normal state (even though the asterisk still shows, it won’t be there any longer as soon as the box moves somewhere else.)

Use this kind of “nothing” when you are certain a word or phrase should never be translated; or when you want to give a different translation each time you encounter this particular source text and you don’t want any of those translations stored in the knowledge base.

Other operations

The preceding tutorial gives you enough for you to begin doing real work. Some topics have not been treated, but you can find out about them either in the “Adapt It Quick Start” document, or in the “Adapt It Basics” reference documentation.

Remember, when your document is long, it is not all shown at the one time. Adapt It “cuts up” the document into small working-sized chunks; and the scroll bars only scroll within a single chunk. There are toolbar buttons, “Step Up”, “Step Down”, “To Start”, and “To End” which enable you to move to the next or previous chunk, or to the start or end of the document; and if you are working at adapting, the movement to the next chunk is automatic and you will probably not even notice it happening. If your document contains \c and \v markers for chapter and verse, then you can also navigate using the Go To… command on the Edit menu.

Note that “under the hood” Adapt It maintains four lines per strip. Normally only two are shown; but you can switch to 3 or 4 line display using the buttons for that purpose on the toolbar. Find and Replace operations automatically switch the display to 4 lines, and after using those commands the application will automatically switch back to the normal 2-lines per strip display, or to however many lines you were formerly displaying.

Finally, on the Tools menu, you will see a “Knowledge Base Editor” command. You can inspect the knowledge base using this command. The dialog it puts up has 10 tabs, one for each phrase length, to simplify finding things. Read more about this editor in the above more detailed documentation files. You can also edit the source text if you wish – there is a command for doing that in the Edit menu, and then you can also fiddle with the standard format markers in your source text data safely, if you feel you need to do that.

And don’t forget the Export commands on the File menu. Use these to get text files of either your edited source text, or the current translation text, or the current contents of the knowledge base. In the latter case, this is another good way to safeguard your knowledge bases; because you can always Import the exported data back into the same, or a different knowledge base. Using the Import and Export knowledge base commands together can allow all the members of a team, each using a computer to adapt a different book, to share their knowledge bases on floppy disks, each person Importing each of the other Exported knowledge bases – so that everyone benefits from everyone else’s work by having knowledge bases which “know” everything done by each of the other team members.

Hope you like Adapt It. Bruce Waters