Typophile

InDesign & Languages

mike gastin

My studio is designing a number of documents for a client. The client is exhibitng at a major trade show in Europe and would like each document in a number of European languages. They will be providing us with the translations from thier European offices and we will be applying the translated copy to our layouts.

We are working with InDesign. Most of the translations will come back from Europe as MS Word docs.

Languages involved will include German, French, Spanish, Italian and Irish (Gaelic?)

My question(s) is what is the best option with regard to creating an accurate document. Specifically, do we need a copy of each language version of InDesign to successfuly import the word doc and retain the integrity of the copy? Or is there a translation plug in?

Obvious issues would be special characters, ligatures ...etc.

Thank you in advance for your help.

kakaze

ALl of those languages are covered under unicode, though Gaelige coverage is spotty. Also, I'm pretty sure all of them, except Gaelige have dictionaries included in ID for hyphenation and such.

Fonts shouldn't be a problem as long as they have the required accent characters. Ligatures should sub fine if they're included in the font as well.

The only languages I believe the normal version of InDesign has problems with are the Middle Eastern ones that go right to left, otherwise everything should work quite well.

Cheers to Adobe for realising that people shouldn't have to pay through the nose for "passport" versions of ID.

mike gastin

Chris -

Thanks a million. You confirmed what I *thought* but was not certain of. I am the Non-Creative in our studio and thought I should ask before I assume.

Are you aware of any issues regarding this and Quark? Same set-up or do they impose the language versions?

John Hudson

Quark is limited to 8-bit encoding and font support: no Unicode support. You shouldn't have any trouble with the languages you mention, since they are all supported by the ANSI codepages (so long as you are using the modern Irish orthography instead of the traditional one).

Chris Rugen

John, when you say Quark, do you mean Quark 4, 5, or 6?

John Hudson

All of the above. Apparently Quark are working on adding Unicode support in version 7. They are also making noises about OpenType Layout support.

mike gastin

John,

Thanks for the info on Quark!

mike gastin

Oh! One question about Quark, then.

Am I correct to assume that hyphenation is covered as long as I am using the matching dictiony to the language I am importing? Or is that an issue for Quark?

kakaze

You need the dictionary for Hyphenation.

Unfortunately Quark doesn't come with any unless you buy the Passport version, which is like twice as much as the normal one.

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