Paste Arabic Text from Word into InDesign Layout

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
April 10, 2019
5 replies
25249 views

Hi! I am working on putting Arabic text into an InDesign document that is currently in English. I've switched my Language preferences to English/Arabic and reinstalled the InDesign app. I'm trying to copy, cut and paste the Arabic translation from Word into the InDesign document, but when I paste the selected text it shows up as blank. Any help troubleshooting is much appreciated as I have limited experience with InDesign. Thanks!

Correct answer Willi Adelberger

There is no need to uninstall and reinstall. Arabic, Hebrew, Asian or Indic versions can be installed above extisng languages.
Having RTL tools does not change text properties.
To work with RTL (RIGHT TO LEFT) documents you have to set it up on several levels:
1. Document Level: Binding left or right
2. Object Level: Set up Object Styles: Text frame, start the text frame in the left or right column. It should be set up correctly even if you work with a single column, so that you are able to change it later without any problem.
3. Story Level
4. Paragraph: Set up Paragraph Styles, several additional settings, language, direction, etc.
5. Character: Set up Character Style for each language. If you have the main text LTR and some words in RTL (or vice versa) take care that no line break occurs in the string with different characters as contradictionals directions, both with line breaks cause problems.

Zaid Al Hilali

Community Expert

Like manal shanableh wrote, I do believe that your InDesign is not the ME version. You may download another older InDesign copy that supports Arabic without removing existing version.

S

shanaw44264773

Participant

Thank you! Can you tell me which older InDesign versions would have the ME option?

Abambo

Community Expert

All Indesign can be configured (or downloaded) as ME version if I remember well.

ABAMBO | Hard- and Software Engineer | Photographer

Willi Adelberger

Correct answer

Community Expert

There is no need to uninstall and reinstall. Arabic, Hebrew, Asian or Indic versions can be installed above extisng languages.
Having RTL tools does not change text properties.
To work with RTL (RIGHT TO LEFT) documents you have to set it up on several levels:
1. Document Level: Binding left or right
2. Object Level: Set up Object Styles: Text frame, start the text frame in the left or right column. It should be set up correctly even if you work with a single column, so that you are able to change it later without any problem.
3. Story Level
4. Paragraph: Set up Paragraph Styles, several additional settings, language, direction, etc.
5. Character: Set up Character Style for each language. If you have the main text LTR and some words in RTL (or vice versa) take care that no line break occurs in the string with different characters as contradictionals directions, both with line breaks cause problems.

C

Cyndee M

Inspiring

Willi, thank you. This is very helpful. I work in RTL (Hebrew/English) documents frequently and often miss one of these settings. Having a list like this in front of me will help to avoid that.