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Cpriddy11767590
Inspiring
January 4, 2011
Answered

Extract text from illustrator for translation then replace with translated text

  • January 4, 2011
  • 1 reply
  • 30748 views

I am trying to find a way to expedite translations of our drawings.  Each drawing has a series of callouts showing what that piece of the drawing is via text.  I would need to do 100's of drawings for each book.

Questions:

1. Can I write something to batch a folder and extract the name of the file, and the text from each textbox so that when I get the translation back, I can automate the reinsertion of the translated text to its correct field (i.e. TextField1 = "Translate this" then repopulate that same exact field with "Translation")?  In order to do this I would think each text field would have to be tagged with some unique identifier so that it would know which translation goes where in the drawing.  Keep in mind, I'm ok with manually tagging each textbox if necessary.

2. Assuming the above is possible, what would be the best program to write the extracted text to so that reading and writing the translated text back into the drawing is as easy as possible (i.e. Word, Excel, PDF)?

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer CarlosCanto

scripting is not necessary, but it could be used, let's say your art has a 100 pices of text all in English, you select one at a time and make it dynamic (make variable1, variable2...variable100). Once you have all your variables, you capture a Data Set, export that data set (an xml file, like BilingualText.xml), then modifie the xml to include your translated text and import back to Illustrator. Now you will be abel to switch between English and the translation.

or if you don't need to switch between languages, just export the file as something like English.xml, then have it translated and saved as Spanish.xml for example and load the file each time its needed.

1 reply

CarlosCanto
Community Expert
CarlosCantoCommunity Expert
Community Expert
January 4, 2011

That can be accomplished with Data Sets.

look here http://forums.adobe.com/message/3067221#3067221

C
Cpriddy11767590Author
Inspiring
January 4, 2011

Thanks a lot, can this be used as a method to populate the text without

scripting? For instance, will this variable set be able to be sent to the

translators and they translate it, then reload the data for that drawing?

Mind you there would be 100's of drawings at a time.

CarlosCanto
Community Expert
CarlosCantoCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
January 4, 2011

scripting is not necessary, but it could be used, let's say your art has a 100 pices of text all in English, you select one at a time and make it dynamic (make variable1, variable2...variable100). Once you have all your variables, you capture a Data Set, export that data set (an xml file, like BilingualText.xml), then modifie the xml to include your translated text and import back to Illustrator. Now you will be abel to switch between English and the translation.

or if you don't need to switch between languages, just export the file as something like English.xml, then have it translated and saved as Spanish.xml for example and load the file each time its needed.

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