I am using Gramps 5.2.2 in Linux MX.
I have made two copies of the same family tree in different languages. Is there any way I could combine them and be able to see all the family tree in both languages simultaneously?
Errol
How do you mean in different languages? Do you have notes in different languages, or localized place names? Running Gramps in another language does not change the language of the tree itself.
If you have selected additional languages during the Gramps installation, besides changing the labels (and possibly text direction), Gramps does add localized calendars, holidays, localized date parsing, and optionally a localized dictionary for spellcheck in Notes.
I do not know if these added localization features work simultaneously or only with 1 language at a time.
Thatās true, but it does not change any data, at least not until you do things that add attributes. That means, that when you merge persons, the merged person will have an attribute that holds the ID of the person that was deleted, and the name of that attribute is localized. The consequence of that is, that if you do that while running Gramps in different languages, your attributes will be a mess.
The tree itself does not have a language, in the sense that no language is stored in the database.
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the two languages have different lettering. The one language is English and the other is Hebrew. I made a family tree in each language. I am now looking for a way of combining these trees so that when opened on will see all the info in both languages.
OK, I get it. Itās not easy, because Gramps can not store language for person names, or notes, or events, and select the proper one for reports. It also normally shows only the primary name in the person view, although you may configure the name display to show some alternatives.
This means that, when you create a new tree, and import backups of the English and Hebrew tree into that, and merge all duplicate persons, one by one, because there is no automatic merge, you have to choose which of the names is the primary one. You may also find that if you use the English calendar for events in one tree, and the Hebrew calendar in the other, that after merging every person has two births, each with its own calendar, and place name.
I know one program that can deal with this a little beter, and thatās the Family Tree Builder program that you can download from My Heritage. Itās a Windows program that you can use without a subscription. with some restrictions, which can be configured to use two languages. And if you use that, you get two edit screens for each person. There is no easy way to merge persons in that, so itās still a bit clumsy.
Think about thisā¦
Create a new empty tree/database and import the most current backups of the Hebrew and English backups. Do Not merge the databases.
There is the Associations tab in each personās record. Edit the English person (EP) and associate the Hebrew person (HP) version with this record. You can drag-n-drop the HP onto the open tab. Currently the association type is āGodparentā but if this works for you, I can teach you how to change this.
You do this with all the people. Associate the HP with their EP counterpart. (I hope you have a small database.) There is the Sync Association addon tool. Again if this works for you, it is simple to set up your custom type if this works. It will add the association to all the HP records.
Now, you work on one person. You go to their Association tab and Edit that association. In the upper-right corner there is an edit icon to edit that person. But instead of editing, you can right-click in their tag area and make them the Active Person. Now when you close all the open windows, you will land on the associated person.
I know. A lot of work and it will take time to set yourself with a complex workflow memory.
This gives you āeasier?ā access to your two databases.
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I use English and Norwegian all the time, need to close Gramps and start it with another Icon with the correct language start string.
I use the same Date format regardless of language, always ISO - YYYY-MM-DD.
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Thatās good information. Thanks. It was expected that only one Language would show in the GUI labels, menus and tooltips for a session. (Except where a translation was missing, of course.)
But I am also curious if all the installed languages for Holidays, month names/abbreviations, and spellcheck dictionaries might be available at the same time?
English support in those features might be non-negotiable because it is the fallback language. (Although I am unsure of that.)
But if you have 3 languages (and dictionaries) installed and are typing in the date parser, does it recognize āAugustā in all 3 languages? August was an example month chosen at random. Evidently a bad choice since that month is spelled the same in several languages.
This is the reason I always use ISO dates.
Because I got some trouble with American vs. European datesā¦
I got the same errors in Legacy, so it is nothing unique with Gramps.
And I never write a months name, I use only ISO dates, regardless of what software I use, if I canāt use the YYYY-MM-DD format for dates in a software, I donāt use the softwareā¦
Same goes for time, I only use HH:MM:SS and the combo
YYYY-MM-DD:HH:MM:SS
or the option YYYYMMDD, but try not to use it since itās not as readable as YYYY-MM-DD in my eyes.
The rest of the questions I canāt help with, because I donāt āuseā any of those feature.
For me, Gramps is an archiving system for genealogy data, not a writing or research toolā¦
Edit: Correction, I do write monthās name in text as in e.g. āit was in August month the big adventure startedā¦ā
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It will probably work for August, because that can be recognized by the 1st 3 characters in many languages, but it wonāt work for May, which is Mei in Dutch, and Mai in German.
I tested this in Linux, where all languages are available, and it looks like the parser only understands the active language, and English sometimes. That means that when I start Gramps in Dutch, it understands Mei, not Mai, and the other way around when I start it in German.
Over here, I do see a warning when I start it in German, because Gramps partly relies on standard texts, which are not available when you donāt have the proper GTK language pack. The date parser does not depend on that though.
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I āsolvedā the problem for me. I left Gramps in English and then I went to each person and typed their name in Hebrew alongside the English letter names. I will now have to type the info again (citations sources) translated into Hebrew. This is a manual way of doing things. Not as easy as Iād hoped for but works for me. I attached a screenshot of the results which I hope can be seen by this forum. Thanks for all the input. I learnt a lot.
Errol
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