Skip to main content
Sofia Purdom
Sofia Purdom
Participant
May 15, 2023
Answered

Machine translation InDesign 18.2.1

  • May 15, 2023
  • 3 replies
  • 855 views

I'm a complete newbie in InDesign. I have a 144 page document with text and images which I need to translate from Spanish to Dutch about music instruments. I'm used to machine translating, then correcting it. In this case, I would prefer to machine translate it within the InDesign document as it would be very inefficient to extract all text boxes one for one, translate it in deepL, then place in the correct boxes again.

 

I tried figuring this out via ChatGPT with no luck. It seems there might have been a machine translation feature which changed/ was removed with this newest version of InDesign?

 

I work on IOS and am happy to purchase a plugin of some sort as long as it's not too expensive (up until 20euros it's fine) if it works. Any help is welcome.

 

Thanks,

Sofia

Correct answer Test Screen Name

There's a lot of document management involved in translation - in particular it won't be the same length so you may have more or less pages, messing up the flow. Very unlikely anything will translate in place.  InDesign is not available for iOS, only Mac and Windows.

3 replies

Kreatifart
Kreatifart
Known Participant
September 13, 2025

Hi Sofia,

I’ve run into exactly the same issue with long InDesign documents that needed to be translated into multiple languages. Manually exporting every text box or working with tagged text quickly becomes a nightmare, as you’ve noticed.

 

There isn’t a built-in machine translation feature in the latest InDesign versions anymore. What worked for me was using a dedicated plugin that can translate directly inside InDesign while keeping the layout intact.

 

We actually developed one called LangoAI Translator for InDesign. It connects with ChatGPT and does the translation inside your InDesign file. Paragraph and character styles remain untouched, so you don’t have to fix formatting afterwards.

It might be exactly what you’re looking for:

 

LangoAI Translator for InDesign
👉 https://exchange.adobe.com/apps/cc/255b78e1/langoai-translator-for-indesign

You can try it out on your 144-page document and see if it saves you the repetitive copy-paste work. I’d love to hear if it works well for Spanish → Dutch in your workflow.

Best,

TᴀW
TᴀW
Legend
May 15, 2023

Hi Sofia,

My Translate add-on for InDesign sounds like it fits the ticket! It works with DeepL, and you can supply a custom glossary for increased translation accuracy. (User Guide here: Translate Help - Id-Extras.com)

Translate - Id-Extras.com

Ariel

    T
    Test Screen NameCorrect answer
    Legend
    May 15, 2023

    There's a lot of document management involved in translation - in particular it won't be the same length so you may have more or less pages, messing up the flow. Very unlikely anything will translate in place.  InDesign is not available for iOS, only Mac and Windows.

    Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
    Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices