Professional Desktop Publishing Services

Text Extraction

Content for translation may not always be available in a ready-to-edit format. Often, sensitive or highly specialised content, for example, legal documentation, medical files or technical manuals, may only be available as hard copy or scanned pages. We’re able to deploy tools such as optical character recognition, combined with expert human editors to quickly convert source materials into editable files which can work further on by your translation teams

This also means we can supply our customers with editable versions of both the input and output files, which is helpful for any company seeking to digitise their archives. From scanned pages of typewritten text to handwriting and even hand-drawn diagrams and tables, our expert team will extract the necessary content and create an accurate yet editable match of the original item.

File formats where text extraction is often required include InDesign (.indd), QuarkXPress (.qxp), PDF documents (.pdf), Adobe Photoshop (.psd) and PowerPoint (.ppt). Expert engineers go through your ‘non-editable’ content and extract it to an editable format (e.g. in Microsoft Word, the LanguageWire Editor or other CAT tools). When the text has been translated, proofread or received another language service, it is then added back into your document in a way that it looks visually as close as possible to the source content.

File Preparation

Preparing documents into a format understandable by machine translation tools We recreate source files from PDFs or other formats to any format that our client need as well as template and document design. The preparation of files prior to translation is important to save the time in post-translation DTP. A correct analysis/preparation of the files, keeping in view the tools to be used for translation and the subsequent layout, can avoid many problems and consequently save time and unnecessary costs

We use various tools to extract text from various DTP applications into files that can be easily translated in Microsoft Word, Trados tools or any other CAT tools. This phase of preparation may also include different types of work over the source documentation, such as content fix and tune-up, to ease and speed up the post-translation process.

In order for a language expert to work with your content, it must first be editable. And although Computer Assisted Translation (CAT) has come a long way in the past 20 years, it still relies on is the keen eye of an expert to understand when a file can and cannot be processed. This human touch is still needed with even the most advanced software programs available today.

The editability of text is not a problem for most file formats, but there are often times when this isn’t the case. This includes:
1. Extracting text from images or desktop publishing software
2. Removing unnecessary line breaks and space characters that would otherwise make working with your content difficult
3. Tidying up PDF files after optical character recognition (OCR) processing
4. Filtering irrelevant content in Excel files
5. The creation of tag settings (.ini) files for .xml and other similar file types

Multilingual Desktop Publishing

Our template services cover layout design, layout adjustment, and file conversion. We help our clients develop document templates that are consistent in their layout and easily adaptable to new languages. With an individualized template, you will be able to preserve your document’s look and feel and maintain your brand identity no matter the target language.

If you already have a source language template or have very specific formatting needs, we will be able to adapt the layout or edit your existing template to better support your style and typesetting requirements when creating different language versions of your documents.

One of the main challenges when translating and localising design-based content such as brochures, adverts and other marketing collateral is that even minor changes in the text can throw the whole template out of sync. A few extra words in a title or a longer description in a complex diagram can change the visual effect or readability completely. Our desktop publishing experts are able to solve formatting issues, optimise layouts and rework templates to ensure that the translated content retains the same impact as the original.

Our team is proficient in all industry software packages, from presentation tools to CAD packages, to image manipulation programs and can output finished content in over 40 widely used formats, ready for publication digitally or in print. They work closely with our translators to ensure perfect synchronisation between the linguistic and visual aspects of each content item

Typesetting and Design

Typesetting is the process of setting text onto a page, arranging the book’s interior to create the best reading experience. This includes determining the size of the margins, styling the chapter starts, and picking the right font typeface and size for the content. At its core, typesetting is all about visual communication. We can design the pages from scratch, or flow the text into your existing template.

Typesetting is central to our desktop publishing services, and it’s ideal when translating content into new languages that demand the use of appropriate fonts and foreign alphabets. Texts expand during translation, and specific fonts do not always share universal characteristics that make them suitable for foreign languages. For that reason, typesetting services are used to ensure that the visual representation of your content and the use of fonts is correct across multiple languages. Simply put, your documents will be just as effective in German as they are in Chinese!

Quality Assurance

1. Desktop Publishing (DTP) Once the translator and editor have completed their tasks the translation has goes through linguistic quality assurance (LQA), then your project most likely will be sent to the desktop publishing team. The desktop publishing team is responsible for reproducing the layout of the source file using the translated content. Multilingual DTP experts eliminate any difficulties that come from text expansion or retraction or character differences from the original language to your target language translation.

2. Proofer/Publishing QA Publishing quality assurance (PubQA) occurs after desktop publishing when they proof the file. In the process of proofing the overall look, feel and layout of the project, they also will catch if something is missing and notify the DTP Team. If the PubQA team finds errors they notify the DTP Team who then will correct any mistakes or confusions that have been made.

3. Final Eye After the finalized version is released, the coordinator performs Final Eye where they compare the final version with the Source and match all the initial requirements

4. Client Review At the end of each Multilingual DTP project there is time set aside for client review. This gives you the opportunity to review the project and have your own in-country team make take one last look at the files. This is another opportunity to provide feedback and to make final improvements

Print Ready Files

When the translation and DTP is completed we provide the files in Print Ready format. The resolution and quality of images is maintained as per the industry standards or as per specified by the client. High resolution images are created for printing purposes