[:en]
Overview:
Being one of the favorite go-to places for many Americans, Canada has many great national parks to offer. To promote its national parks to more Chinese tourists, I decided to localize a tour brochure from English into simplified Chinese featuring InDesign.
This is a 16-page PDF file which contains pictures and texts. Photoshop was also used in this projects to recreate the in-picture text. The following workflow was adopted to complete this project:
Source file: Discover-Parks-Canada
Presentation slides: Parks Canada-Na
Tools: PDF2ID, InDesign,Photoshop
Ⅰ. Get source material & File analysis
The source file was downloaded from online in PDF format. Then I went over the PDF file for a quick analysis to spot texts and pictures which need localization.
Ⅱ.File conversion and preparation
The PDF file was then converted into an Indd file. PDF2ID was used to complete this task. After the conversion, most texts become editable. Editable texts were then extracted from the InDesign file to create a picture list for translation. For pictures with texts, masks were created to hide existing text.
Ⅲ.TEP
The picture list was translated in CAT tools. A lot of efforts was also made in the process to ensure the translation mirrors the target not only in terms of meaning but also in terms of style, especially when dealing with numbers. For example, “more than 23 million visitors a year”, the number “20“ has a larger font and is positioned in the center and “a year” is positioned at the end of the sentence. Yet, when translating into Chinese, we need to make some adjustment to move “a year” to the beginning of the sentence and convert “23 million” in ”2300 万“ in Chinese formatting. Otherwise, it would appear weird to Chinese readers.
Ⅳ. Translation incorporation and formatting
When incorporating the translation into the indd file, I paid special attention to the font to recreate the original style as much as I can. Some clean-up such as adjusting font size and text boxes were also needed to ensure a consistent formatting.
Ⅴ. PDF generation.
After incorporation and formatting, a PDF version was generated in InDesign. It’s necessary to know the usage of the targeted file, since “Transparent Blend Mode” needs to be adjusted. If it’s for web, “Transparent Blend Mode” should be set to RGB, if it’s for print, then set it to CMYK.
Challenges & Best practices learned
It’s always important to look into the file property and check what type of file is being used so as to avoid unnecessary trouble. When researching resource file in this case, checking the file property to make sure it’s generated in InDesign is very necessary. Otherwise it’s not possible to complete the conversion. Additionally, double checking the elements in the document can be time-saving. Some of the pictures in this file turned out to be shapes rather than actual pictures and can be hided, and a new text layer can be created on top of them for translation. Also, you need to pay special attention to the font if you are working on the project on different computers. Some fonts may not be available on another computer. In this case, “find font” might be a powerful feature to keep fonts consistent.
[:]
You must be logged in to post a comment.