Showing posts with label DTP. Show all posts

Monday, February 22, 2010

Translation of Page Layouts: Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke

OK, you have your final translated text. Because you used a professional translation agency, proper steps were followed for translation, editing, proofreading and quality-control. Now it’s time to place all this foreign-language content into a print layout. This can be a very error-prone phase of the process—all your final layouts should be reviewed by professional linguists!

This article highlights a few of the most common mistakes we see at ASIST Translations, when page-layout experts are unfamiliar with handling translated text.

Title Case
Title case (initial capitals on individual words) is customary in English for section headings, titles of articles, programs, etc. However, this doesn’t necessarily apply to other languages—Spanish, Portuguese and Italian, for example, where sentence case is the norm. Even if the English original is in title case, don’t “fix” individual word caps in the translated version without consulting a professional linguist.

Punctuation
English conventions for punctuation don’t apply to other languages. Here are some common misunderstandings.

Bullet lists. Punctuation in bullet lists can be fairly fluid in English. However, in many languages the conventions are different and a more structured approach is obligatory. For example, in Romance languages, one bullet list may have semi-colons after each item and a period on the last item—because each of these is treated as an alternate ending to a partial sentence that precedes the bullet list. Conversely, a different bullet list in the same document may have no final punctuation each list item, because they are fragments that aren’t grammatically linked to the surrounding text. In either case, they may differ from the format of the original English bullet list. Use the text provided by the translators, and if in doubt about differences from the English original, consult a professional linguist!
Spacing. In French, colons (and usually semi-colons) are separated from the preceding words by a space (ideally, a non-breaking space, in word processing or layout programs). We frequently see French text get “fixed” during layout because this extra space looks like an error to English speakers.
Numbers. The English use of commas and points to separate thousands and decimals in numbers is exactly the opposite of many languages. Most (but not all) European languages other than English use a point to separate thousands, millions, etc., and a comma as the decimal separator. (Note that Spanish text for Mexico, the USA, Puerto Rico and Panama is an exception to this rule.) That being said, the International System of Units (SI) standard also encourages using spaces (technically, thin spaces, 1/5 of an em wide) as the thousands separator, in order to avoid confusion.
Quotation Marks. Style guides for the American English recommend placing quotation marks outside commas and periods. But that often doesn’t apply to other languages—don’t try to “fix” anything before consulting a linguist! Of course, languages like German or French also use completely different symbols for quotation marks—the well-known “chevron” style guillemet symbols in French, for example. (By the way, it is also best if the spaces inside French guillemets are non-breaking spaces.) Even so, for contemporary text in many of these languages it is also common to use the more international quotation marks, although dialog in works of fiction is a frequent exception.

Symbols
Some common typographical symbols in English are not acceptable in many other languages. When these form part of an artwork file, some redesign may be required. For example, the number sign (#) is not often used in other languages, and frequently gets substituted by an abbreviation for the word “number.” The ampersand is very uncommon in other languages, and gets replaced with their word for “and.” The “at sign” (@) does not automatically suggest an abbreviation for the word “at” in most languages, and its use is mostly limited to e-mail addresses.

Hyphenation and Line Breaks
If the page-layout program doesn’t have a hyphenation table for your target language, the post-layout proofreading process will be more cumbersome. If this feature is available, always make sure that the program you’re using properly indicates the language being formatted. As a general rule, it’s useful to know that Romance languages favor hyphenating prior to the initial consonant of the next syllable, for example. However, in languages like Chinese, where the words themselves are not separated by spaces, only a Chinese linguist can ensure that the line breaks in your final layout don’t create anything “funny” sounding.

One last note of caution: never retype translated text, no matter how brief! Cut and paste directly from the source translation document; you will avoid a lot of problems.
Another article in this blog provides more general tips for foreign-language layouts. Planning ahead for translated content always makes the process smoother.

ASIST Translation Services, Inc. is a full-service interpreting and translation agency located in Columbus, Ohio. We provide technical translation, interpreting, proofreading, studio voice recording and media production, localization of interactive and Web content, and specialized language services to clients around the world.

www.ASISTtranslations.com

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Symbols in Foreign-Language Translations

You need to be very careful how symbols are treated in the source text you provide for translation to other languages. Here are a few common issues:

#

Not everyone associates this symbol with “number.” In many languages, some sort of text abbreviation for the word “number” is used (for example, Nº or núm. in Spanish).

"

This abbreviation for inches should usually be avoided in translations. While it may be recognized in regions familiar with English usage (Canada, Spanish speakers in the USA or Mexico), it is better to use the standard abbreviation in the target language. Of course, unless the item being described necessarily comes in inch sizes—like a nut, wrench or pipe fitting, for example—it should usually be converted to metric system anyway!

&

To most speakers of foreign languages, the ampersand does NOT represent the word “and.”

@

The “at” sign is ubiquitous in e-mail addresses, of course. But many languages use a distinct term for this symbol, that doesn’t suggest the word “at” to speakers of that language at all. Consequently, creative constructions like “Work@Home” don’t translate.

/

American English frequently uses the slash symbol to represent the idea of “or” or “and.” To minimize ambiguity in your source English text for translation, it is recommendable to actually use the words “or” or “and.”

$

When the dollar sign is used in Spanish, to avoid confusion this should be the version with a single vertical bar — not two vertical bars, which is used for the peso in Mexico, Dominican Republic, Colombia and Cuba.

ASIST Translations can help you prepare your source text for translation to a foreign language, to ensure that your original content is as universal and unambiguous as possible. Feel free to contact us about effective communication in today’s multilingual, multicultural environment.

ASIST Translation Services, Inc. is a full-service translation agency located in Columbus, Ohio. We provide translation, interpreting, proofreading, voice recording and media production, localization of interactive and Web content, and specialized language services to clients around the world.

www.ASISTtranslations.com

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Translating Page Layouts: Top Ten Tips

The team at ASIST Translations has a wealth of experience, adapting our client’s design and page layout projects to many different foreign languages. Here are a few tips we have learned along the way, that will help streamline the process of translating your page layouts to other languages.

Word counts in translated text frequently increase by as much as 25%. Be sure to leave enough “white space” in your layout to accommodate this.
Indicate exactly which version number of the page-layout (DTP) program you’re using, and whether the document was created on Macintosh or Windows.
If linked graphic files contain text requiring translation, be sure to include them along with the layout, in editable form! Also indicate which program (and version) was used to create these secondary files. As with the main layout itself, bear in mind that if your English callout text barely fits inside a figure, the translated version probably won’t unless resized.
Be sure to always include all required fonts when submitting a project for translation to a foreign language. Also be aware that some fonts don’t support all the diacritical marks required for certain languages; Central European languages in particular can have this issue with many of the more “decorative” fonts. Obviously, many Asian languages will require specific fonts, and ASIST will alert you of this accordingly.
Use actual paragraph formatting to create hanging indents and bullet lists, rather than placing returns and multiple tabs on each line to simulate the same effect! Because line breaks and hyphenation in the translation won’t correspond to the English anyway, eliminating such unnecessary characters saves time and money in the creation of your foreign-language layouts.
Any review of a translation by in-house personnel (in your foreign office, for example) should be made on the MS Word file using the "track changes" feature—before any translated text is formatted within your layout.
The ASIST team needs to know the preferred and permissible options for making your translated text fit. For example, are there any corporate or regulatory requirements, minimum point size and line spacing, or any graphics that absolutely cannot be reduced in size?
Be sure to review your content prior to translation. Our translators can help you identify any contact information that may require changes for the international version; for example, mailing addresses or toll-free numbers that wouldn't be valid for customers outside the USA and Canada.
Some design and desktop publishing programs don’t properly support Asian fonts or right-to-left languages such as Arabic and Hebrew. In some cases, once the final translation has been approved we can convert the text to outlines so that you can still open the layout file. Obviously, if your company is going to create many translated documents, support for non-Latin fonts may be an important factor for choosing the program that should be used for creating the layouts in the first place.
Tables can be especially tricky, because of the greater length of many translated terms. Leaving plenty of extra column width—or even breaking the information into two separate tables if necessary— can avoid reducing the translated text to very small point sizes.