Have you looked at Kompozer ? It's in the Ubuntu Software Center.

Strange I've been looking all over but I missed this one, thanks - it's
installed now so I'll bone up on it and give it a go. A quick test didn't
help much as the display option just brought up a duplicate of the source
code but in Chrome instead (even though FF is my default - go figure:-)

I shall explore F1 when I get some time.

I personally was never very satisfied with any of the html offerings I
could find through the software center or on a web search similar to
"linux html editor". Granted, I was in a bit of a rush when I was
doing my looking, but I gave each one a several hour evaluation.

For quick edits, I settled on using gedit (it will color-code tags)
and saving to the desktop. Launching from the desktop or terminal
will allow to preview the site in the browser of your choice.

For more involved edits, I currently use CoffeeCup in a Windows VM, as
I have used that software for years and am very comfortable with it.
The free version has basic html editing with various features and a
preview screen/tab. Paid has wysiwyg, but I have never used that.
Even Deamweaver's wysiwyg would send me to swearing with the way it
decides to handle various tags...

I don't know the best way but one way would be to select text in your web
browser with [Ctrl][C] copy it, then paste it [Ctrl][V] into a notepad like
application. But sounds like you would need two documents open at once. One for
translating each little phrase and another for the whole document as it is
built.

But you could open another document and select copy each phrase translation into
that document as you go along as well.

Hope this helps. I don't know the name of the Linux equivalent to note pad.
[Ctrl][C] and [Ctrl][V] usually work within any text program including on web
pages.