Can I type Japanese characters in InDesign

[mechellea53291514]

I am working on a document which requires translating from English to Japanese. Can I do this in InDesign to include the Japanese characters. If so , how?

[Test Screen Name]

What version of InDesign, and what language?

What language of Mac or Windows?

Are you looking for machine translation, do you speak fluent Japanese, or is someone else going to make the translation (how?)

[mechellea53291514]

Hi, thanks for replying. Its Windows,  English, and Indesign 2019, I dont speak fluent Japanese, and someone did the translations in Microsoft word for me. So I want to copy the document in to InDesign to create the entire document.

[Subi Omu · Accepted solution]

If you make it with horizontal text and you don't mind strict japanese typesetting rule like Kinsoku or Ruby, it's not hard. Get japanese font from Adobe Fonts and copy and paste text from MS Word.

[Laubender]

https://forums.adobe.com/people/Subi+Omu  wrote

If you make it with horizontal text and you don't mind strict japanese typesetting rule like Kinsoku or Ruby, it's not hard. Get japanese font from Adobe Fonts and copy and paste text from MS Word.

Hi,

would it be an advantage using one of the two Japanese Paragraph Composers with horizontal Japanese text?

The two composers are availbale e.g. with an English InDesign but can only accessed by scripting or, so I assume, by copying formatted text from a document created in the Japanese version.

I'm just curious…

Regards,
Uwe

[Subi Omu]

Laubender  による書き込み

so I assume, by copying formatted text from a document created in the Japanese version.

Yes, it is the best way for non-japanese speaker. The way I suggested is the easiest, but the product will looks clumsy for native japanese speaker.

[mechellea53291514]

Thanks fir replying!

[mechellea53291514]

Thanks I did this and it works now!

[Jongware]

Did you try this first before posting? It should work exactly the same as for English text. Or a host of other scripts -- I have successfully typeset about anything from Glagolitic and Egyptian hieroglyphs to Nepali Devanagari. I don't really have to type it in myself though (or translate!).

If you did, did you not get to see your Japanese characters but only squares? That is a common misconception -- did you apply a font that contains Japanese characters?

mechellea53291514  wrote

... So I want to copy the document in to InDesign to create the entire document.

Do you have any reason to prefer copying over importing it in the more usual way?

[rayek.elfin]

Download CJK InDesign templates here, which make life a bit easier when using Chinese or Japanese in non-Asian versions of InDesign:

TransPacificDigital: Downloads

From their website:

These template documents allow you to apply Chinese and Japanese composition rules to text using standard, non-Asian versions of InDesign. The templates introduce the "Adobe Japanese Composer" which allows Chinese and Japanese text to have proper line breaks, spacing and other composition features not otherwise available in standard versions of InDesign. You can also use the templates to compose Asian text vertically. Files are in both InDesign CS6 and IDML format (for earlier versions of InDesign). See the Read Me file for more information.