Hebrew vs. German/English translation side-by-side

Question

I am having the following problem: I have Hebrew texts and want to put translations (and other information) right next to it in a nice way. (Previously I used the old Nisus Writer for Mac which for this purpose worked perfectly.) I have been playing around with tables but neither the way to do it nor the results are overly satisfying. Especially annoying is the fact that the texts are always interrupted by each other.

This is what I want (see the picture): It should be (at least) two columns. The left one Hebrew (which begins on the right side), the right one German or English (which begins on the left side). Whenever there is space left on a line, it should be possible to easily put additional information (e.g. comments, sources) there.

Here is the text for those who want to play with it:

Gesegnet bist du, DER NAME, unser G’tt, König der Welt,
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם,
der dem Hahne (andere: Verstand) Einsicht gegeben,
אֲשֶׁר נָתַן לַשֶֹּכְוִי בִינָה,
{Iob 38,36b yBer 9,2,13c} zu unterscheiden zwischen Tag und Nacht.
לְהַבְחִין בֵּין יוֹם וּבֵין לָיְלָה:
Gesegnet bist du, DER NAME, unser G’tt, König der Welt,
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם,
der mich nicht als Heiden (andere: Fremden) gemacht.
שֶׁלֹא עָשַׂנִי גּוֹי: נ”א: נכרי
Gesegnet bist du, DER NAME, unser G’tt, König der Welt,
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם,
der mich nicht als Sklaven gemacht.
שֶׁלֹא עָשַׂנִי עָבֶד:

Is there any package to achieve this nicely and easily?

Answer 1

You can use parcolumns or any similar package for this. A minimal working example:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{parcolumns}
\usepackage{polyglossia}
\setmainlanguage{hebrew}
\setmainfont{Adobe Hebrew}
\thispagestyle{empty}
\begin{document}
\begin{parcolumns}{2}
\colchunk{בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם,}
\setLTR
\colchunk{Gesegnet bist du, DER NAME, unser G’tt, König der Welt,}
\colplacechunks
\setRTL
\colchunk{אֲשֶׁר נָתַן לַשֶֹּכְוִי בִינָה,}
\setLTR
\colchunk{der dem Hahne (andere: Verstand) Einsicht gegeben,}
\colplacechunks
\setRTL
\colchunk{לְהַבְחִין בֵּין יוֹם וּבֵין לָיְלָה:}
\setLTR
\colchunk{zu unterscheiden zwischen Tag und Nacht.}
\end{parcolumns}
\end{document}

and here is the result:

Answer 2

I have tried similar things with the ledpar and ledmac packages. However they do not work very nice with cjhebrew, so this depends on how you input your hebrew.

The best option seems to be ledarab, however I do not have much experience with it. (I am not fluent in hebrew, and prefer to input it using transliterations, to avoid clashes in editing the .tex files.)

I can give more specific answers if you tell how you want to input your hebrew.

The ledmac package and friends are quite heavy packages, so be warned. But they are designed specifically for this purpose, and I have typeset some nice papers with them.