Translating your brochures – step by step guide
Here is how to translate brochure to different languages efficiently! When working with marketing materials such as brochures, catalogues, websites it is essential to be consistent. How can you assure your translation quality? We are uncovering our industry secrets just for our readers.
Let’s say that your design and marketing departments have just spent the last few weeks lovingly putting together a killer brochure for a key trade show that’s coming up. But there’s just one small issue – the trade show is in China, and so far no plans have been made to produce the brochures in Chinese!
Given the immense size of China, and without a Chinese version of your brochure, you could be missing out on tens and possibly hundreds of thousands of potential new customers. The problem is that I can already hear the reactions from your teams; “it’ll be too complicated”, “there’s not enough time between now and the show”, “the translator won’t know how to use our design software” or “I doubt we’ll find anyone who understands our industry and our products”. All these so-called ‘problems’ can be solved much more easily than you may think, and this is where our knowledge and expertise can help.
So, to provide you with a translated version of your brochure, with a page layout identical to that of your English version, all we would need from you are the source files you used to create the brochure. For example, if your design team created the brochure using Adobe InDesign, you would just need to send us the InDesign source file, pictures and fonts, and we’ll take care of all the steps right through to the creation of a high quality PDF that’s ready for the printing press.
So how do we Translate brochure from English to Chinese?
Ok, so you have just given us your InDesign files for translation, which include the page below. We will use this page as an example to guide you through our process.
Step 1: Conversion of your InDesign document to our translation tool
In order to translate brochure, catalogue or other file, first of all, we will convert your InDesign files to Trados, our translation tool. This tool allows us to translate the text in suitably sized segments, to ensure better accuracy and consistency, whilst keeping all the formatting of the original document in place. It also allows us to store the translated text in a translation memory, so that it can be used again for future projects. After converting the file to Trados, your text will appear as shown below:
Step 2: Translation and internal review of your brochure
Our translator will then translate your brochure text, inserting the translation of brochure into the corresponding empty segments to the right of the source text. The purple tags you can see relate to the formatting of the InDesign file. These tags are kept as they are, to ensure the formatting of the original file is preserved. Once the translation and internal review is complete, the file will now appear as shown below:
At this point, you may wish to review the content of the brochure translation before we proceed to the design integration phase. We can therefore send you a bilingual file in Word format, allowing you to compare the translation with the original source text. This means that if you would like us to make changes to the translation, you can mark your changes directly in the Word file and send it back to us. We will then take these changes into account when we integrate the translation into the InDesign file.
Step 3: Integration of your brochure translation into InDesign and finalization
After receiving your validation of the brochure translation, we will then update it in our Trados translation tool, and then export the file to InDesign format. Our designer will integrate the images and fonts from the original file, to guarantee an identical and professional page layout. The page we used as an example will now look like this:
Once our translation team has completed a final post-editing review, the document will then be saved as a high-definition PDF, and sent to you for final confirmation. Once you’re happy with the result, the document can now be sent off for printing. If you are not familiar with the printing process. we can also take care of this stage too, and deliver the brochures straight to your door!
So there you have it. You don’t need to go though the hustle to translate brochure to Chinese, Korea, Japanese or any other language really! Piece of mind in just a few small steps – so why not try it out with us for real?!
HI-COM is International Translation and Localization agency, located in Shanghai. Our Western management style and Asian location allow us to provide excellent service with competitive prices! Shoot us a line and receive a free quote!
