Translating design and print
When it comes to translating design and print into another language, can you be sure that the artwork and key linguistic features are still accurate or relevant to your audience.
At Syntacta, we can help. Meticulous about every detail, we typeset artwork for publications in foreign languages, using desktop publishing software to edit images and convert files for use in different applications. We also offer expert guidance on foreign scripts, fonts and layouts. We’ll even prepare your document so it’s ready for print or optimised for the web.
Send us your artwork and get a quotation.
Accurate typesetting for translations
Once we have translated the text for your publication, if you send us the artwork, we can also typeset it so that you receive print-ready versions in foreign languages, mirroring the design and layout of your original English document. Whether it’s a brochure, a newsletter or even a business card, we’ll create foreign language versions in your house style, ready for your target audience.
Complex languages and typesetting
Typesetting is about more than just copying and pasting text into a new layout. We have to consider a number of things before we start – what is the correct hyphenation used for a particular language? Will the translation fit easily into the space provided? Do any of the images need to be edited? Which font should we use? We also need to check that all the necessary accents and special characters are displayed as they should be.
Middle Eastern and Asian languages can be much more complex to typeset than European languages. They generally use different alphabets and some, such as Arabic, Hebrew and Urdu, also read from right-to-left, which means that your artwork would need to be flipped.
We will also aim to match the fonts as closely as possible to your original artwork, so that your house style is preserved.
Following typesetting, we undertake two proofing stages with our clients, so that they can make any last-minute changes to the layout. We’ll then return the artwork files by either email or on CD or output high resolution PDFs, if requested.
How do you commission typesetting for your translated text?
Here are a few tips to bear in mind when commissioning typesetting services:
- Who is the target audience? It is important that the text, graphics and photographs will be suitable for your target audience. You should think about any local cultural issues before you start.
- Translated copy can often run 15% to 20% longer the English text, so it is important to allow plenty of white space in the English version, as this is likely to be filled by the translated text.
- Make sure you send us all the necessary files. We really need to have the full artwork layout, the images and fonts. This is easily done using the Package and Output features in Adobe InDesign and Quark Xpress respectively.
- Use style sheets when designing your publication - this will make your layout more consistent.
- Use fonts that support special characters - for example, Eastern European characters.
- Keep columns as wide as possible - in some languages, for example, German, some words can be twice as long as in English. If the columns are too narrow it is possible that only a single word will fit on a line.
At Syntacta we have a wide experience of working with multiple formats across both PC and Mac platforms, outputting high quality DTP work to impress your foreign market.
If you’d like to discuss any future projects simply call us or request details via the contact form.
We can interpret into and out of the following languages
- French
- German
- Italian
- Spanish
- Dutch
- Portuguese
- Norwegian
- Swedish
- Danish
- Finnish
- Russian
- Ukrainian
- Greek
- Turkish
- Arabic
- Urdu
- Gujarati
- Hindi
- Punjabi
- Malay
- Korean
- Mandarin Chinese
- Cantonese
- Japanese
- Polish
- Czech
- Hungarian
- Latvian
- Lithuanian
- Estonian
- and many more...