This spring at MIIS I enrolled in the course “Multilingual Desktop Publishing and Audio-Visual Localization” with Professor Max Troyer. In this course I learned how to localize a range of assets using popular industry tools, primarily the Adobe Creative Cloud applications Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and After Effects. The culmination of the course was an individual project, in which I applied concepts acquired over the course of the semester. This project was presented to my peers at a Project Showcase on the last day of the course.
Project Overview: Jane Eyre: The Graphic Novel
For my final project I chose to localize a section of Jane Eyre: The Graphic Novel from English into French. I worked with 10 pages, including the cover and title page and 8 pages from the body of the text. My source files were in PDF format. However, after converting to an INDD package I completed the majority of the project in InDesign, only using Photoshop to work with un-editable text on the cover.
Cover and Title Page
The cover page had minimal text and did not require much work to localize into French, as the title of the graphic novel remained the same. However, the title page was a little more tricky. I had to decrease the text size to account for text expansion and clean up the idents and alignement of several sections, including the list of contributors. I also reformatted the list of key sales points into a bulleted list, a feature that is supported in InDesign.
The alignment, indents, size and format of text on the title page had to be adjusted.
Localization of Primary Text
For the pages from the body of the text I followed the process we learned in class of creating a mask layer (in an elliptical or rectangle shape depending on the speech or thought balloon), then filling it with the same background color using the eyedropper tool. Lastly, I added in the localized text.
The English source text for the project
My localized French text, incorporating adjustments to font size, leading and transcreation to account for text expansion.
Font Selection and Challenges
In selecting a font I researched popular fonts for graphic novels, installed several of them, and then experimented to see what would be the best fit for the project. I ended up choosing a font called Komika Hand. I thought it was a good match for the original and I also appreciated the fact that it is in all caps and has both regular and bold italic variations. Being able to work with these two text styles was essential because the original text is in a regular all caps font with a large number of key words in bold italic throughout for emphasis. Here, as well, I decreased text size (by approximately 0.75 pts) to account for text expansion and ensure there was enough white space between the text and the edges of the speech balloons. In several places I also employed transcreation, using some creative license to adjust the translation to better fit the space and design requirements of the project. Because the font is in all caps and I was working into French, which has accents on the top of a number of characters, I adjusted the leading of the text to be sure there was sufficient space between accented characters and the line of text above them.
“Fancy Text” Recreation
One of the biggest challenges in this project was recreating the “fancy text”. These instances of text were placed outside of speech balloons and were used to express onomatopoeia (which is different in French!) I originally thought I would be able to create the localized text in Photoshop on the image file for the illustration that is placed in the background on each page. However, after more closely examining the text I saw that each letter, and the outline of each letter, was its own individual graphic layer in the InDesign file and the text was not part of the illustration.
“Fancy text”: the letters have an uneven baseline and are rotated at slightly different angles
Further, in many places the baseline of the text is uneven. For example, the letters in the word “thump” are all set at slightly different angles. Because of this, I chose not to use the text on a path tool and instead recreated each letter individually then positioned and rotated them in a way that I thought captured the feel of the original. I also matched the fill and stroke colors using the eyedropper tool.
This project stands out for me as one of my favorite things I’ve done so far in my coursework at MIIS. Not only was I able to strengthen my DTP skills and demonstrate mastery of concepts from this course, I had the opportunity to connect what I’ve learned here to my background in literature. It was exciting for me to work with one of my favorite books and use the localization skills I am developing at MIIS to make the content accessible in another language.
You can view my presentation here and the PDF of my final project here.