Indesign For Translators Ebook

Indesign For Translators

A Step by Step Guide to Preparing InDesign Files for Translation

If you are a translator, agency or desktop publisher who has had to translate InDesign files in the past you have probably experienced one, if not all, of the problems I will help you prevent.

I want to HELP you correct issues in InDesign and simplify the translation process

Through these quick and easy steps you are guaranteed to save time, money and headaches.

It is crazy that InDesign is one of the most ordered translation formats yet there are still so many who suffer problems during the translation cycle. You no longer have to be one of them.

Now do not get me wrong, I am not an InDesign expert or even a Desktop Publisher, and you do not need to be either, but in my eight years of running a translation agency I have had to deal with a lot of InDesign files and before I knew what I know now...

I HAVE:

• had sleepless nights because an InDesign file has gone wrong
• missed deadlines with customers screaming
• undercharged through lack of experience in what to expect
• paid external resources to help me fix problems
• had translators complain that they can't work with the text
• had customers complain that things were wrong or not translated
• wasted hours searching the Internet for answers
• spent hours reading help files
• had to translate files with incomplete sentences/text in the wrong order

GETTING THE PICTURE?

Once you have read this guide you will understand all the things that affect your translation process and how to easily spot and fix them. You will be able to add to your CV or tell your customers that you are experienced handling InDesign files and know the technical aspects that make the translation a success.

What this guide will not do is make you a Desktop Publisher. There are plenty of other guides and books available for this and I only want you to spend as little time as possible on things that are important to you - TEXT TO BE TRANSLATED.

During my first years in the industry I used to blame the tools I worked with and told myself that it was something I just had to live with.

"I learned the hard way that things like hidden characters, text threads, pink backgrounds, overset text, tables, formatting, line breaks, tabs, spaces, unused text, file size, embedded images, master pages, layers, story order and other things will affect the translation process if they have not been handled correctly."

I kick myself now when I know how easy it is to prevent issues during translation but there was not a guide like this available when I started.

Once you have read this guide you will know how to:

• open files across different versions
• setup a default work environment to follow the checks
• identify all the areas that could affect the translation process and fix them
• reduce the file size and get rid of unnecessary information
• export the text to a format that can be handled by most professional translators

For each stage you will learn how to identify an issue and fix it and I will explain why it will cause problems. Where necessary I will even show you what the text will look like when presented to a translator. And do not worry if you have never worked with InDesign before as I provide easy to follow instructions and screenshots for every stage.

I will also tell you about:

• commercial tools on the market that aid in the export/import process
• CAT tools used by most translators that can handle InDesign files
• where to find information about common errors
• where to get help when all else goes wrong

SO WHO AM I?

My name is Chris Phillips and I run Tranflex, a translation agency in Sweden with over 1,000 customers - a good majority of them advertising agencies - lot of InDesign files ;-) - and have a working network of just over 300 translators.

I have been in the industry for eight years and am mostly self taught. Our customers and translators would describe me as a problem solver and I am a strong believer in always improving the way we do things. I have provided consulting services to multilingual vendors in ways to improve the technical aspects of the translation process. I have developed a number of time saving tools used in-house and by many MLVs.

I am one of the only people in Sweden to have passed the SDL Certification exams. I am also a translator from Swedish to English so I know the pain of translating incorrectly prepared InDesign files. Most importantly I enjoy helping people and most of the translators who work with me know they can contact me with technical questions and I will always try to help them.

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