Translation of text content from an InDesign document file takes place outside the application environment. Skilled human translators use special tools to enhance translation quality and minimize cost for repeated text segments. Once translated text can then be placed back into InDesign for final formatting and a last review.

Translation and localization services for InDesign documents adhere to our company’s practice of including post-translation proofreading by a second translator. Translators are native speaking in the target language as well. High quality translations result from this process.

Some graphical elements of InDesign documents can contain embedded text. These might include graphics such as line drawings or images with attached captions or labels that are sometimes not directly editable. When the text is appropriate for translation and part of an image then translation of the image text is handled separately (still following the process described above). After translation of text, images/graphics are manually edited to produce a target language version of the files. The newly created target language images/graphics files are then ready for placement into the InDesign document.

The final step is bringing all translated elements (text and graphics, etc.) back into InDesign to produce a print-ready finished document. InDesign formatting is performed by specialist desktop publishing technicians. Linguists are typically not professional documents designers and vice versa. While InDesign is among the most popular design applications, formatting services are available in numerous other standard software applications.