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Abby35489456clg6
Participating Frequently
November 13, 2025
Question

Assign language tag to PDF in InDesign?

  • November 13, 2025
  • 1 reply
  • 67 views

Hi, I have a multilingual document created in InDesign that I need to export as an accessible PDF. I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to successfully export language tags from InDesign? The content in Spanish is assigned unique paragraph styles, and I have defined those styles as Spanish under "Language" in character formats. However when I export the PDF from InDesign, Acrobat reads all of those as "English". 

 

Am I missing anything or do I have to manually update the language categorization in Acrobat? Trying to avoid that since it's a lengthy document but guessing that's my only option. If so, I guess it's not necessary to create separate paragraph styles for content in Spanish? 

 

Any other tips for exporting accessible multilingual PDF from ID would be great. 

 

Tagging our accessibility champion @Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com in case you might have an answer 🙂 Thanks so much 

1 reply

Willi Adelberger
Community Expert
Willi AdelbergerCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 13, 2025

dkefine the language in paragraph and character styles and creative a specific style and tag for each language. 

    A
    Abby35489456clg6Author
    Participating Frequently
    November 13, 2025

    I did this, but when I open the tag properties in Acrobat, all of them are coming up English (including the separate styles that I specifically set to Spanish in InDesign). Am I missing something? Thanks for the reply 

    A
    Abby35489456clg6Author
    Participating Frequently
    November 13, 2025

    When exporting the PDF from InDesign, I set the language to "English" since that is the primary language and you can only choose one. 

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