Right-to-left interlinear translation, multiple words for one translation

Question

I'm using ExPex for an interlinear translation in Hebrew. I'm having issues when translating one Hebrew word with multiple English words: the English words are right-to-left, while they should be left-to-right. See the example:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{polyglossia}
\setdefaultlanguage{english}
\setotherlanguage{hebrew}
\newfontfamily\englishfont[Mapping=tex-text]{Latin Modern Roman}
\newfontfamily\hebrewfont[Scale=MatchLowercase]{Ezra SIL}
\usepackage{expex}

\begin{document}

\begin{hebrew}
\ex[everyglc=\englishfont] \begingl
\gla 7225 1254 430 853 8064 853 776//
\glb בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃ //
\glc {In the beginning} created God - {the heavens} and {the earth.}//
\endgl\xe
\end{hebrew}

\end{document}

This should read:

the earth. and the heavens - God created In the beginning

How do I make that happen in a neat way?

Answer 1

An explicit (=cumbersome) and cleaner solution

A quick solution would be to use the bidi package’s \LR{} command:

\glc \LR{In the beginning} created God - \LR{the heavens} and \LR{the earth.}//

See §1.8 (Typesetting Short LTR and RTL Texts) in the documentation for further information.

A somewhat easier to use solution

Add \beginL to the everyglc hook. This can be done locally (changing \ex[everyglc=\englishfont] to \ex[everyglc=\englishfont\beginL] in the question) or globally, by using the \lingset command like this:

\lingset{everyglc=\englishfont\beginL}

The downside of this solution is that it uses an internal macro of bidi; I’m not sure how risky it is to use this, but it seems like a good hack to me and I don’t think it is going to break easily soon (not unless radical changes will be made in bidi or expex).