writing with multiple (>20) languages and native characters

[AntaresPortfolioBookArts]

Hi there, I am working in Indesign 2024 on a project requiring many languages and their native characters (Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, etc, etc,...>20) – When I entered the texts, they were not recognized.

Does anyone have any experience in writing multiple languages – all together on the same page?

[kglad]

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[Joel Cherney · Accepted solution]

Does anyone have any experience in writing multiple languages – all together on the same page?

Yep! Decades of experience, doing exactly that. 

(Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, etc, etc,...>20) – When I entered the texts, they were not recognized.

That could mean a few different things. I'm going to guess that your non-Latin-script languages are all pink boxes, yes? The minimal answer here is "you need to use fonts that support these writing systems." If you use fonts.adobe.com, when you "Browse all fonts" there is a handy "Languages and Writing Systems" dropdown on the left that will allow you to look for e.g. only Cyrillic fonts. 

The non-minimal answer could be a very long post, but here's a place to start: 

A) For Russian, you'd need a font that supports Russian.

B) For Hebrew and Arabic, you'd need a fair bit more:

    1) Fonts that support these scripts

    2) World-Ready Composer turned on in the paragraph style

        2b) you are using paragraph styles, yes? 

   3) Probably you'd need a version of InDesign with support for right-to-left behaviors. Install that by going into your preferences in the Creative Cloud app and picking "English (إنجليزي)" in the Language dropdown in the Apps section of the Preferences

C) For Chinese, you firstly need a font that supports Chinese 

    1) But you might need to install a version of InDesign with support for CJK languages. I don't; I just use a script that turns on the J Composer. That, plus paragraph styles with language support, is enough for me, personally. I do wind up scanning the text I've set looking for bad linebreaks, as your English (and Arabic and Hebrew) interfaces for InDesign don't have settings for kinsoku/geumchik. But if you want an English interface with CJK layout tools, that can be set up, but then you'd need to use scripts, or multiple installs of InDesign, to do the right-to-left languages. 

So, as you can see, there are a lot of moving parts, here. Are you already familiar with using paragraph styles in InDesign? Do you already know how to change Composer settings? If so, you're well on your way to completing your multilingual layout. If not, feel free to ask whatever questions you need to ask to get you going.