Editing PDF text to create translated documents

[annat62602059]

A client with several global locations would like my company to prepare documents in English and send them high resolution PDFs, which would allow them to edit the English text within Acrobat into many languages. Some of the languages use the same fonts as English, but there are also languages with different alphabets -- Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Russian, Chinese, Thai, Japanese and Korean. To make sure they have compatible fonts at the outset, for the English I will use Arial and Arial Narrow from Microsoft Office, because their offices all have that software. For the PDFs made with different fonts, especially the non-Latin fonts, I don't know what the result will be. For example, will PDF text editing in a Chinese office automatically use the right font, and when they save the edited version, will the font be embedded? Eventually, the files will be sent to printing companies for reproduction. Has anyone else tried to do this, and if so, were you successful?

[Test Screen Name · Accepted solution]

Over the years we have heard from many people who wanted to translate PDFs. But from none who succeeded. It is absolutely unsuitable. The editing is very painful and limited and cannot accommodate the need to expand or condense by up to 100% according to the language. Fonts are the smallest issue. Just not viable as a scheme. To share translation tasks you need to share the EDITABLE ORIGINAL document and software. PDF only SEEMS an attractive prospect. From what you indicate it is Word documents, so that's easy for everyone.

[annat62602059]

Hi Correct Answer and thank you for your response.

The originals are in Illustrator. They are large posters that are too big and complex for Word. Our alternative is to have a translation company take the AI files and set them up properly, but the client wants to explore the possibility of PDFs for in-house translation.

[Test Screen Name]

Well if you send editable Illustrator PDFs they can try Acrobat, and when they realise it isn't viable, they can subscribe to AI. No extra work for you.

[annat62602059]

I am planning to send a small test PDF, made from AI, so they can try it out in the ~14 other languages. The people who will be translating and converting are not trained in graphics software and the company is not likely to get Creative Cloud, but I will mention it as an option. Thank you.

[Test Screen Name]

One thing you need to know and need to ensure that your client knows. It is ALL OR NOTHING: all in Illustrator or all in Acrobat. This is not obvious. But, if someone spends hours or weeks editing in Acrobat then opens the PDF in Illustrator, having given up, ALL THEIR EDITS ARE LOST and it reverts to your Illustrator original.

[annat62602059]

That is a serious liability. I think their intention would be to save their Acrobat edits and then send the file for printing in their local area. But based on what you're saying, there would be a lot of frustration getting to that point. Months ago, the project started with PowerPoint files and editable text boxes that were revised and beta tested. They are not beautiful, but they are practical in some ways. PowerPoint slides can be made up to 56 in x 56 in., which is a little smaller than the posters need to be. The translated files would need to be saved to PDF and scaled up for the final printing. I was trying to avoid the PowerPoint route, but it might be needed.

[try67]

You shouldn't give AI files to your translators, either. You need to extract the text from the text frames in your ai file to a format they can work with, like an XML, an Excel spreadsheet or even just a plain-text file. Then when you get back the results you insert the texts back into AI, using a professional DTP operator.

If  you have a lot of texts then it's possible to automate the tasks of exporting and then importing the text into the AI file, but it's quite tricky. I've developed a tool that does that (under some circumstances), so feel free to contact me privately (try6767 at gmail.com) if you're interested.

And just to reiterate what was said here earlier, do not try to do this in the PDF file directly. You'll be asking for problems...

[Test Screen Name]

I think that would be wise. Collaborating with different apps is almost never viable.