Winning Tactics for InDesign Translation

An important guiding principle to promote successful project outcomes when translating text-based materials formatted in Adobe InDesign is to apply specialists in each phase of activity. In activity categories there are mainly two required, those being language skills and formatting skills.

Separating InDesign translation projects into two main parts allows specialists to be assigned in each phase. Professional linguists (native speaking in the target language) apply their skills on the language part of the project, translating all language based elements of the InDesign document into the selected target language. InDesign technicians then take the output of the linguists’ work and place the text correctly within the InDesign document. As a final QA step linguists are asked to review the InDesign technician’s placement of text in the final formatted document.

Under this approach of dividing the work into categories, project participants perform the services they’re best suited for. Translators can also utilize software tools that improve continuity and quality of translation outputs to ensure consistency of translation throughout the document.