Multilingual Desktop Publishing (DTP) Made Simple: Professional Layouts for Every Language
Multilingual Desktop Publishing (DTP) is designing and formatting documents for print or digital distribution in multiple languages. Sounds simple? Not really!
When translated text is inserted into the original design and layout, some challenges arise, ranging from text expansion/contraction to different fonts and scripts and varying language directions (right to left, left to right, vertical, or bi-directional): This is where professional DTP services come into play, ensuring your multilingual brochure, marketing material, user manual, or website is visually appealing and culturally appropriate while maintaining design and brand consistency across multiple languages.
With many years of experience in providing top-quality DTP services to global market leaders across diverse industries, Transbridge brings industry best practices, expert native-speaking DTP specialists, cutting-edge DTP software, and a holistic quality assurance process to deliver accurately translated documents that are culturally relevant and visually attractive, ready for printing or online publishing.
How it Works?
1. Initiation and Analysis
Defining the project scope, types of documents, target languages, formats requested, and channels of distribution. Analyzing the original document layout, formatting, graphics and images, etc. to plan for mitigating potential challenges.
2. Text Extraction
Extracting all text from the original document, including embedded text within images, headers and footers, captions, etc
3. Translation and Proofreading
Native-speaking linguists with subject-matter expertise translate extracted text to target language(s). Translated text is thoroughly edited and proofread to ensure accuracy, consistency, and cultural appropriateness.
4. Selecting and Setting Up DTP Software
Choosing the DTP software that best matches the project requirements. Adapting the original template to make sure the linguistic and typographic nuances of each target language fit within the design constraints.
5. Text Insertion
Importing translated text into the DTP software and the adapted template.
6. Layout and Format Adjustments
Making all necessary adjustments to avoid text overflow, cluttered layouts, text/character misalignment, etc. to ensure delivering a professional layout customized to the target audience.
7. Graphics Localization
Adapting images, symbols, and icons to the target locale’s cultural preferences.
8. Quality Assurance
Checking for linguistic and formatting errors or any inconsistencies to guarantee an impeccable quality.
9. Final Check and Delivery
Sending the output to the client and incorporating client’s feedback/comments, making any final adjustments, and delivering high-quality multilingual documents in the requested format, ready for printing or digital publishing.
What we Do?
Text length usually expands (up to 35%) when translating from English to German, Spanish, and many other languages, resulting in text overflow and pushing images, text boxes, etc.
Text contracts when translating from English to Japanese, and many Asian languages (up to 55%) resulting in excessive empty space.
How we do it? Utilizing top-notch DTP software with auto-size features, grid systems, and responsive, flexible layouts to accommodate for text length changes without compromising the design
Applying industry best practices by planning ahead for expected text expansion/contraction Assigning native- speaking DTP experts to make sure they understand the nuances of the target language
What you Get? Utilizing top-notch DTP software with auto-size features, grid systems, and responsive, flexible layouts to accommodate for text length changes without compromising the design
Applying industry best practices by planning ahead for expected text expansion/contraction Assigning native- speaking DTP experts to make sure they understand the nuances of the target language
Some languages include special characters like Arabic and Chinese, and diacritics such as Turkish and French.
A missing diacritic mark can alter the meaning and confuse readers.
Using the right font is crucial to ensuring readability across various formats, devices, and platforms.
How we do it? Deploying DTP software that supports Unicode and includes a wide range of fonts that cater for various scripts.
Experienced DTP specialists mitigating through complex scripts and compatibility issues, using custom or brand-specific fonts when requested or embedding fonts when necessary
Applying a thorough QA process where in-country, native speaking linguists meticulously check for formatting appropriateness and consistency across all languages.
What you Get? An accurately translated document that displays correctly across diverse platforms and devices, in any format requested, in whatever language your target audience speaks.
Aligning different text directions Some languages are written Right-to-Left (RTL) such as Arabic and Hebrew; others are vertical like Japanese. Failing to properly adjust text direction in multilingual documents would lead to a difficult-to-read, disengaging document
How we do it? Leveraging Desktop Publishing programs that support LTR, RTL, bid-directional (BiDi), and vertical text directions, allowing for managing different text directions within the same document while ensuring the whole content is displayed correctly; for example, a bilingual brochure (English and Arabic)
Rigorous linguistic, formatting, and functionality (for digital content) testing
What you Get? Translated documents, technical or marketing, that include languages with different text directions in the same document, such as English (LTR) and Arabic (RTL), German (LTR) and Japanese (vertical), with all characters, paragraphs, and graphics displayed correctly, ensuring visual appeal and regulatory compliance.
Improper character and punctuation spacing or line breaks can change the meaning and lead to misunderstandings or disrupt the reading flow especially in cursive languages (character shape differs based on its position in the word) or languages with specific scripts such as Russian, Chinese, and Japanese
How we do it? Assigning expert native-speaking DTP specialists who fully understand the typographic and linguistic rules of the target language.
Applying manual or automated kerning (character spacing), setting proper line breaks, and controlling hyphenation to avoid awkward splits
Creating prototypes to test how the text looks in different formats and settings.
What you Get? Precise, flawless documents in 200+ languages (Asian, Middle Eastern, European, and African)
Why Transbridge Desktop Publishing?
FAQs
We use desktop publishing programs that offer advanced features for handling multiple languages and complex layouts, such as Adobe InDesign, QuarkXPress, Microsoft Publisher, and many more.
Any type of document that is intended for a global audience, whether to be printed or published online. Professional DTP is pivotal for technical documents, such as contracts, financial statements, and instruction manuals, to ensure regulatory compliance and expand your reach to multilingual customers. It is also crucial for marketing material (brochures, websites, catalogs, social media ads, etc.) to speak to your target audience in their language and culture through visually appealing and engaging layouts.