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af40955857
Participant
July 10, 2025
Question

InDesign in chinese?

  • July 10, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 583 views

Hello

I have an InDesign document in English and I need to translate it into Chinese from a Word file that will be provided to me. What is the font to use and what are the specificities to be aware of? It seems that Chinese is written vertically?

If you have any information, I'm interested.

P.S. I'm on Mac and have the latest version of InDesign 2025.

2 replies

D
Doc Maik
Legend
July 10, 2025

What is the font to use? Any chinese font, like SimHei.

What are the specificities to be aware of? Not sure what you mean, but it's just a document in chinese characters. Works fine.

It seems that Chinese is written vertically? Uhm, no. At least not by default. You can surely write vertical, but that's more effortive. 

    Joel Cherney
    Community Expert
    Joel CherneyCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    July 10, 2025

    What is the font to use? Any chinese font, like SimHei.

     

    Sorry, but this is not correct. 

     

    Simplified Chinese (used in mainland China & Singapore) can be displayed correctly in SimHei, yeah. But I wouldn't just say "SimHei" in the same way I wouldn't say "Oh, you need to lay out French? Use Arial." It's a bland Microsoft-default font, and I wouldn't want to see it in print. It's also a Gothic font, and I don't think I'd pick it for body text of any significant length, in the same way I wouldn't lay out a long doc in 10pt Arial.

     

    However, if your readership is in Taiwan, you'd use a font that supports Traditional Chinese. SimHei might have most of the glyphs you need, depending on the topic of your document. But you might also wind up with font drops, so I think it's important to use a preflight profile that will inform me of any dropped glyph when selecting Chinese fonts. 

     

     

    Willi Adelberger
    Community Expert
    Willi AdelbergerCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    July 10, 2025
    1. You need to install an Asian, best Chineese version of InDesign. You need not to uninstall your English (or any other Western Version).
    2. Go to your CC Desktop Application >Settings >Apps > Scroll Down > Installing > Default Install Language > …
    3. Install Chineese, additional plugins and fonts are installed
    4. Now you can reset to your default language and your program has extended functionality and fonts in any other language.
      D
      Doc Maik
      Legend
      July 10, 2025

      I'm sure he didn't mean the user interface...

      Willi Adelberger
      Community Expert
      Willi AdelbergerCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      July 10, 2025

      Installing an Asian Version is not about USER interface, it adds needed functionaliy for those langauges and installs fonts. you need these plugins if you work with Chineese documents.

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