Translating Adobe InDesign Files

Many product manuals and instructional material are produced in the popular desktop publishing software InDesign by Adobe. The translation of InDesign projects can be challenging since many translators only work with plain text formats and do not know how to work directly with InDesign files. Language lengths also cause challenges; French is about 20% longer than English which results in truncated text, whereas Chinese is shorter, adding unpleasing white space to the design. You may also need specific versions for right-to-left languages such as Arabic and Hebrew (the ME version of InDesign).

As a professional translation agency, we provide one-stop convenience by handling the translation of your InDesign files (.inx and .indd formats) into 70 languages and adjusting the artwork and layout in each language. Working with us means you will have one point of contact to produce multilingual versions of your manuals and brochures – saving you time and money.

The final deliverables will be translated files in the original formats, or other compatible formats as requested by clients. Our workflow for translating Adobe InDesign files is as follows:

Convert InDesign CS5 (or higher version) file format .indd to CS4 compatible file format .inx, which can be opened by Trados 2007 and other translation tools.
Translate the INX files in a selected translation tool.
Typeset the INX files in InDesign to ensure proper formatting.
Send PDF file to the client for approval prior to the delivery of InDesign file.
Implement client feedback if necessary.
Send InDesign file to client as final deliverable.