How to submit multiple editions or translations of the same book

Prepare a book with not one but two different editions or translations.

TLDR: We ingest books by paragraph. So, in order to add multiple editions and/or multiple translations, of a book you simply have to save them as separate text files, ensuring each line number on each file maps to its equivalent paragraph.


Having multiple editions or translations of the same exact book enables us to render easy access to multiple "versions" of any of the paragraphs of the book. This feature comes handy for academic research and also for the reading enthusiast that wants to take his analysis of a given work to the next level.

If you are adding translations of a book that does not yet exists at all in the site:

  1. Find the editions of interest and export them into a plain text file (".txt" extension). As you do this, mark down each file's headers, so when we get the files, our system knows when a chapter begins for example. For full details please read our article about how to prepare a book for ingestion.
  2. Open both text files, use a professional text editor like Sublime Text, Atom or Brackets, makings sure the editor shows you line numbers, and word-wraps the text so you can see both the beginning and the end of each paragraph.
  3. Resize the window so each of the two files are side by side.
  4. Determine which of the files will be your "primary", or the one that will in other words, determine the paragraph number. This is important because some translations may split sentences and paragraphs differently.
  5. Start splitting or joining the paragraphs of the secondary translation file, to match the ones from the primary. If a translation does not have a paragraph that the other does, then leave the line blank. The idea is that every line number should correspond to its content match on the other file.

If you want to add an additional translation for a book that already exists in the site:

  1. Find the existing book's landing page and copy it.
  2. Contact us to get you a text file with the already existing book's contents. Make sure to provide the URL of the title landing page you copied from the previous step, to ensure no ambiguity or misunderstanding (this is an example).
  3. We should be able to get back to you on the next business day.
  4. Once you receive the text file from us, consider it the primary, and then proceed with the steps above that indicate how to line-up two different translations.
  5. When done lining them up, send us back both files, zipped, via email to admin@textopian.com.
  6. Depending on the volume of requested work, we should be able to get the additional translation loaded within 1 or 2 weeks.

Using Sublime Text (free edition), you can see both text files side by side (View > Layout > Columns: 2). We recommend this setup as it makes it easier to compare the texts paragraph by paragraph. Make sure the line numbers correspond to the equivalent paragraph on the secondary edition.


Contact us for any help or further details at help@textopian.com.