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• • April 18, 2012 at 11:33 am #62019
    fluid_poetry

    Member

    Hello,

    I am working on a bi-lingual document where some of the paragraphs are numbered. This particular secondary language is Greek and I would like to have the numbering list be in Greek. Of course I can hardcode it, but….

    So is there a way to add a Greek numbering Style to the “Numbering Style Format” in “Bullets and Numbering”? Or perhaps some suitable workaround?

    thank you,

    herb

  • April 18, 2012 at 11:55 am #62020
    Theunis De Jong

    Member

    Greeks don't count 1..2..3?

    (Insert Economical Joke Here :))

  • April 18, 2012 at 5:12 pm #62022
    fluid_poetry

    Member

    :)

    As far as I am aware, Greeks can use our “Arabic” number set (1, 2, 3…), but they also use alpha', beta', … (For Greek: not just the standard alphabetic letters + a ' are used; some older letters are also used). eg., 12 = Iota + Beta + ' ; 22 = Kappa + Beta + ' . (Iota = 10; Kappa = 20.)

    From what I've seen, Hebrew and Syriac, and I suspect Arabic and other Semetic languages (Coptic, Geez, etc…) use their alphabet as numbers, with slight variation. For example, if I recall correctly, various traditional Jews will not write “15” as “Yod-He”, since this number spells a name for God. So as a matter of piety or respect, it is written using different numbers which would sum to 15. (I forget which at the moment.)

    Hence, in many cases, any number list would require it be different from just working through the respective alphabet.

    So although this specific question concerns enumerating Greek, it potentially has much more broad applications.

  • April 19, 2012 at 1:46 am #62026
    Theunis De Jong

    Member

    That is very interesting information — thanks for spelling it out in detail! I'll add it to my mental list of “factoids to impress others with”. So it's not any different than “numbering” a list as “a., b., c.” — except, then, for the irregularities you point out.

    Unfortunately, you cannot make custom numbered lists with InDesign. You can change a bullet to some custom text, but only for one item at a time. So it would seem you have to do it the hard way.

    A slightly harder way (but potentially more useful) could be to initially use regular numbered lists, and then have a script change all numbers to the appropriate Greek text, one at a time. But for that one needs a good understanding of converting any number to Greek — the script would need to know how to write out “125” as “κ?τι”. Perhaps it's comparable to writing out a number in full English text.

  • April 19, 2012 at 10:25 am #62030
    joelcherney

    Member

    Number lists in translation in InDesign are somewhat awkward. One of my file-preparation techniqes for all InDesign documents is to replace automatic numbering with manual numbering. I have quite a few raw-text files with different kinds of enumerated lists so that I can compile numbered lists in a number of languages – sometimes with a script, sometimes with other techniques.

    I used to allow InDesign to auto-number for languages which it does support, but it was confusing in 20-language jobs to have multiple source files, some with numbering managed by ID, some with numbering managed by Trados, some with numbering managed manually by yours truly. It was much faster to just tell everyone in our translation department “Never use auto-numbering in ID without thus-and-so conditiions.”

  • April 20, 2012 at 8:45 am #62032
    fluid_poetry

    Member

    thank you.

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