Bilingual spellchecker for Writer (German/English)

English
#1

Hello, does anyone know if there’s any way to spellcheck a doc that contains two languages (i.e. a file that repeatedly and alternately contains English and German text)?

I’m looking for a simple solution with minimal fuss and faffing around, so I’m NOT interested in having to mark certain sections of text as being a language other than English, which wouldn’t help me at all.

Ideally I’d like to install a bilingual German-English spellchecker for Writer if one exists or download a German spellchecker and merge it with the English spellchecker I already have.

Is this doable?

#2

Yes, but you excluded the usual solution in your next Paragraph.

Sure, create your own “Denglisch” dictionary and use. Things will get a bit complicated, when you try to get private language-codes to make your dictionary to Work elsewhere, but I doubt you wil try this…
Obviously this appoach will allow fully mixed sentences, If desired or not…

3 Likes
#3

Nolens volens, you must tag your sequences, otherwise how do you expect Writer to detect the language?

You didn’t mention how you format your documents but I suspect you practice extensive direct formatting. The adequate approach with any document, and more with multi-lingual ones, is styling. There are different styling flavours. The most powerful is semantic styling where styles (paragraph and character) mark author’s significance of the element (paragraph and words), not the way this element is rendered. One part of significance/value is language. Since this is an attribute of styles, it comes at no cost when you style the document.

So, the solution to your question boils down to designing a minimal collection of styles. Generally, customising built-in ones is a good start.

On the contrary, it is much more helpful and easier than you think. Read the Writer Guide for an introduction to styles and practice a bit.

#4

Try a word processor with automatic language recognition. Chances are though that such a word processor will set entire paragraphs as one language, so that won’t help if you mix languages in a single paragraph.
You seem to wildly overestimate spell checkers. Consider word pairs like ‘with’ and ‘witch’ or ‘rite’ and ‘write’. Check that the spell check won’t complain if you enter one word instead the other. Spell checkers aren’t perfect, and making one for two related languages will only make things worse.

1 Like
#5

Alternatively to use of styles, LibreOffice has a feature directly formatting parts of text with the language set up for system input. That currently only works on Windows and Qt5, but IMO this feature is superior to the style-based approach in this case, because having a set of styles for each language would make your set of styles double (or triple, if you use three languages).

To use the feature, you only need to configure several input languages on your OS (you may use the same keyboard layout for all the different input languages if you prefer), and just switch the language as you type (using OS-defined shortcuts for that, like Shift+Alt). That soon becomes a muscle memory, and you don’t spend time on that, avoiding all the potential problems with misdetections that would definitely appear when you create your “Denglisch” dictionary.

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#6

Wanderer: “Sure, create your own “Denglisch” dictionary and use.”
Could you please explain how I’d go about doing that?

#7

ajlittoz: “you must tag your sequences, otherwise how do you expect Writer to detect the language?”

If I have a bilingual spellchecker then I fail to see why Writer needs to know which text is in English and which is in German - the spellchecker will simply check to see if any words in the text aren’t in the spellchecker’s dictionary (which would contain English and German words sorted A-Z).

#8

floris_v: “Try a word processor with automatic language recognition.”
Do you know of one?

“Spell checkers aren’t perfect, and making one for two related languages will only make things worse.”
See my reply to ajlittoz.

#9

I read LibreOffice can use hunspell dictionaries, docs are on the net.
I assume one could add german an english and run sort|uniq over it to get some dirty output to test.

Check this, maybe more qualified: How do I edit .dic files?

PS: No more information available here. Good luck.

#10

Yeah, but I often have have sentences that contain a mix of English and German words/phrases. Having to mark all German text as German would soon become a serious PITA, hence my original question.

I don’t understand why people on forums often answer anything other than the question asked. It’s mind-boggling.

It’s like me asking “Does anyone know where I can buy cabbages?” and people then reply “No, but I know where you can buy courgettes/potatoes/asparagus”. Or “You don’t want cabbages, what you want Brussel sprouts instead.” Damn it’s infuriating.

#11

Wanderer: OK thanks

#12

The hunspell dictionaries are loaded with suffixes that add information about forming plurals and much more. The meaning of the suffixes (called affixes) sit in separate files, different for each language. The same suffixes may be used in different dictionaries, where they have different meanings. German has, after all, different rules for forming plurals than English, but they share many words. You will probably get an enormous mess if you mix them.

#13

The last version of MS Word that I used, was Word 2003, and that had llimited anguage recognition - it would set the language of a paragraph based on the perceived language of the first few words or sentence. It may have improved since then.

#14

That is vital information that you should have put in your question right away. If you had, our answers would have been different.

#15

Because people on forums know that, despite there might be no direct answer to the question, there may be something that questioner didn’t know / take into account, that could help in their situation.

It’s your problem. You simply have wrong expectations and wrong attitude. When anyone gave an effort to read your question, think about it, and offer something that in their opinion could make your life easier, then it’s simply rude of you to take that the way you do. The worst thing is the answer didn’t fit you, and you just politely skip it.

And you know what, I write in Russian and English; and I have sentences that contain both. And switching languages is automatic for me, not creating any kind of PITA - just because I have to, because the keyboard layouts are different. It was made sub-conscious, not taking any effort. But well, people who never tired, indeed know better that that’s a wrong way.

1 Like
#16

PITA ? Do you mean pity? If PITA is just another internet abbreviation, don’t forget many contributors are not the same generation as yours, live in a different country with different culture and background (this is the magic of Internet) and speak another native language than English. So please, use standardised “Globish”.

An easy maintainable document requires methodic markup. Styling is a synonym for markup. Even if this is a pity it doesn’t work automatically, consider that the same-looking “word” may mean something absolutely different for another author. Consequently it is much better that the author himself forwards the meta-information to Writer.

There are considerable advantages with such a fully styled document: separation of contents and appearance, capability to change dramatically formatting and layout without reviewing the text, minimal file size, …

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