In Paratext, it is possible to create a project which is a Back Translation of the vernacular project. It would be nice if HearThis could be enhanced such that if the user selects a BT project for recording, the text could be drawn from the vernacular rather than the BT. This would allow oral drafting of a BT by doing on-the-fly recording of the vernacular. A couple ideas for how HearThis would know whether to display the vernacular or the BT text when connected to a BT project:
- If there is no existing text in the BT or the BT is marked as out-of-date with respect to the vernacular, automatically display the corresponding vernacular (if any) instead. This is probably the simplest thing that could possibly work, as it would require no additional UI or intervention by the user. But it would mean that once the BT had been transcribed and marked as up-to-date, it would not be possible to see the vernacular in HT.
- Have a simple toggle switch on the recording screen that would allow the user to flip back and forth between viewing the existing BT (if any) and the vernacular.
As a bonus, it would be nice if HT issued the “synchronized scrolling” messages so that Paratext could track with HT for the purpose of doing transcription of the recorded audio BT. As a double bonus, a Paratext plugin could be devised that would actually make it easy to play the audio BT (as previously recorded in HT) directly from within Paratext when doing transcription, so the user wouldn’t have to have HT open and keep going back and forth.