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Known Participant
June 18, 2025
Answered

indesign document translation

  • June 18, 2025
  • 4 replies
  • 1457 views

I'm looking for a pro solution to translate 160-page A5 indesign documents.
I saw that there are plug-ins like Translator PRO that uploads my file to an external server and should return it translated.
I don't like this aspect very much (sending the layout to an external server). Do you know of other professional solutions to translate indesign documents?

 

thx

Correct answer Joel Cherney

I'm looking for a pro solution to translate 160-page A5 indesign documents.
I saw that there are plug-ins like Translator PRO that uploads my file to an external server and should return it translated.
I don't like this aspect very much (sending the layout to an external server). Do you know of other professional solutions to translate indesign documents?

 

You're looking for an automated machine translation service that is resident on your desktop?  

 

100% of the "professional" solutions for automation of machine translation of InDesign documents require uploading your IDML to a remote server. I put "professional" in quotes because I'm of the opinion that any professional translation of an InDesign document that involved machine translation would involve post-MT editing by a human being.  But either case - a purely machine translated document, or a document that has been worked on by humans as well as software agents - requires your document leaving your computer, I'd think. 

 

Unless you're asking "How do I automate machine translation on my desktop, which is entirely disconnected from the Internet for regulatory reasons?" I think that Azure lets you self-host an instance of Microsoft's translation AI on your own hardware. DeepL's machine translation product is head and shoulders better than anything else I've seen in recent years; it's what powers the ID-Extras tool that Peter suggested, but if there's a way to host it on-site, it's going to be something in their "Enterprise" tier.  Systran has a self-hosted server product that I used successfully in a major project a few years back. There are some other products in the seector that don't require access to external servers, and if you're willing to run an internal server to handle your MT needs, I can make some more suggestions. 

4 replies

Kreatifart
Known Participant
September 12, 2025

You can try this, LangoAI Translator for InDesign, an AI-powered translation workflow plug-in available on Adobe Exchange. I’d love to share what it does at a high level and get feedback from people who translate/catalog/layout in multiple languages... One-Click Multilingual Document Translation

 

You can find the plugin here: https://exchange.adobe.com/apps/cc/255b78e1/langoai-translator-for-indesign

Joel Cherney
Community Expert
Community Expert
September 12, 2025

That doesn't really fit the topic of the question here, because the OP was specifically seeking translation solutions that didn't require transmission of their files offsite. That translation plugin sends your text off-premises to....

 

 

ChatGPT Integration: Uses OpenAI's advanced AI models for high-quality translations

 

There are some excellent machine translation tools available. This is not one of them. OpenAI's large language models are, in my experience, an abysmally awful choice for general-purpose document translation.

 

It'd be better to pick something that is relevant in some way to your content. Even if you can't do that, you can use an AI translation service that uses a large language model that has been groomed for the purposes of translation, and is maintained by an entity that has a great deal of experience maintaining databases for use in translation workflows. I've been consistently sending people over to DeepL, where they build their LLM out of the translation memory databases they'd been carefully maintaining for many years. 

Kreatifart
Known Participant
September 13, 2025

I don't see anything in the form's title or the question the person asked that says what you're saying.  Deppl, in my opinion, is a copy of Google. LangoAI Translator for InDesign is a plugin that preserves styles in different languages, even those located in different places, ensuring that styles aren't corrupted when translating a 150-page document. I won't argue with you about how well ChatGPT translates, but I didn't like its approach at all.

Alexandre Becquet
Community Expert
Community Expert
July 21, 2025

Hello, you have also Redokun but i have never tested.
https://redokun.com/blog/how-to-translate-indesign-file

Joel Cherney
Community Expert
Joel CherneyCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
June 18, 2025

I'm looking for a pro solution to translate 160-page A5 indesign documents.
I saw that there are plug-ins like Translator PRO that uploads my file to an external server and should return it translated.
I don't like this aspect very much (sending the layout to an external server). Do you know of other professional solutions to translate indesign documents?

 

You're looking for an automated machine translation service that is resident on your desktop?  

 

100% of the "professional" solutions for automation of machine translation of InDesign documents require uploading your IDML to a remote server. I put "professional" in quotes because I'm of the opinion that any professional translation of an InDesign document that involved machine translation would involve post-MT editing by a human being.  But either case - a purely machine translated document, or a document that has been worked on by humans as well as software agents - requires your document leaving your computer, I'd think. 

 

Unless you're asking "How do I automate machine translation on my desktop, which is entirely disconnected from the Internet for regulatory reasons?" I think that Azure lets you self-host an instance of Microsoft's translation AI on your own hardware. DeepL's machine translation product is head and shoulders better than anything else I've seen in recent years; it's what powers the ID-Extras tool that Peter suggested, but if there's a way to host it on-site, it's going to be something in their "Enterprise" tier.  Systran has a self-hosted server product that I used successfully in a major project a few years back. There are some other products in the seector that don't require access to external servers, and if you're willing to run an internal server to handle your MT needs, I can make some more suggestions. 

Known Participant
June 19, 2025

thx @Joel Cherney 

really usueful reply.

Participant
August 6, 2025

Estou grato e ao mesmo satisfeito pela seriedede com que ohttps://community.adobe.com/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/8205516 https://community.adobe.com/t5/user/viewprofilepageJoel Cherney encaoru minha pergunta que tavez por tido dido feita na sequência de várias outras em  acabou por cair num molde esterotipado- Grato pela atenção

Peter Kahrel
Community Expert
Community Expert
June 18, 2025

id-extras do a translator for InDesign: https://www.id-extras.com/products/translate/