Does your in-house team struggle to flow translated copy into existing layouts? Does your design agency rely on you for decisions on placing translated text? Are you left to cut translated copy to fit? Our expert team can do it all for you in a fraction of the time.
Desktop Publishing (DTP)
Desktop publishing (DTP) involves replacing text in one language with the translation in another language in such a manner that the page layout is preserved. We provide a very flexible DTP service based on your exact needs and using your existing artwork template so that the foreign language version mirrors the format of the original.
The main advantage of outsourcing your desktop publishing work with your translation is that your operators/designers do not have to deal with languages and foreign scripts they do not know, thus avoiding the risk of piecing together text incorrectly.
DTP services are vital because of the way languages change once translated. Our expert desktop publishers will take into consideration:
- Word swells – translations out of English often expand in volume by between 10% and 25%
- Page layouts – languages such as Arabic and Hebrew are written right-to-left and thus require completely modified page layouts
- Numerical formats – can change from one language to the next. For example, with currencies ,598.00 in English would be .598, 00 in Spanish and 598, 00 in French. In China a yyyy-mm-dd date format is used, in France dd-mm-yyyy, in America mm/dd/yyyy, and in Germany dd/mm/yyyy
- Punctuation formats – quotation marks are different depending on the country targeted. For example, in French, « » angular quotation marks would replace “ “ and in German „ ” double quotation marks would be used
- Fonts and character sets across languages and platforms
Working with a wide range of software packages on both PC and Mac platforms, we use our technical expertise to create multilingual versions of any documentation. We have the capability to work within all major DTP software including Adobe PageMaker, FrameMaker, InDesign, Photoshop, Quark Xpress etc. Our team of skilled desktop publishers work together with native-speaking linguists to provide a proofreading service to ensure the meaning of your text is not compromised when adjustments are made to accommodate formatting variations. Collaboration between the desktop publisher and linguist in particular ensures that:
- Different language orthographies are respected in the use of capitalisation.
- Words are correctly hyphenated between lines.
- The design is adapted to suit the needs of the target language/audience.
Our client is a multi-national car manufacturer and they were impressed with the speed and accuracy. I was particularly pleased that you were able to utilise the same format PDFs and we were able to forward them with no further intervention from our side.
Chief Executive – Automotive After-Care Corporation