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Setting text in Pashto in Indesign

New Here ,
Oct 27, 2020 Oct 27, 2020

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Does Indesign support Pashto? I've downloaded the MENA version and it's not in the language list. Does anyone have experience of setting text in this language that can offer me advice. When I copy it over from word it doesn't look right and as I can't read it and have little knowledge of the language I'm not sure what is going wrong.  I've chosen the world ready paragraph composer option already.

 

See images attached, this is the same text (b&w word, col indesign)

 

Many thanks for you help!

Kathryn

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correct answers 1 Correct answer

Community Expert , Feb 10, 2022 Feb 10, 2022

I am actually working on Pashto in InDesign right now! It's possible to add it to the language list, but I've never done so. It's also possible to install a spellchecker, but once again I've not done so - the texts I lay out in InDesign come from professional translators, in a fairly standard language-industry workflow, so I let the pros do the spellcheck themselves.

 

Kathryn posted more than a year ago, so I am not going to try to answer her questions (unless she comes back and tells us that s

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New Here ,
Feb 10, 2022 Feb 10, 2022

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Hi Kathryn,

Running into the same problem. Did you find a solution?

Thanks, Tom Mc

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Community Expert ,
Feb 10, 2022 Feb 10, 2022

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I am actually working on Pashto in InDesign right now! It's possible to add it to the language list, but I've never done so. It's also possible to install a spellchecker, but once again I've not done so - the texts I lay out in InDesign come from professional translators, in a fairly standard language-industry workflow, so I let the pros do the spellcheck themselves.

 

Kathryn posted more than a year ago, so I am not going to try to answer her questions (unless she comes back and tells us that she's still stuck on the Pashto 🙂 ) but I'm pretty sure that I can help you out. Right off the bat, trying to copy RTL text out of Word and paste into InDesign is a workflow that's just going to cause misery. Save the Word file and use File -> Place in InDesign instead. Once you have the document into Indy, the basics for layout in InDesign for any right-to-left language are:

 

1) Turning on the World-Ready Composer on all text (it's in the Justificaiton menu, among other places):

JoelCherney_1-1644564659896.png

 

2) Making sure that you have the Right to Left Paragraph Direction button turned on (it's on the Paragraph panel):

JoelCherney_0-1644564610313.png

 

3) Having a Pashto-literate reader review your work when you're done

 

3 is essential, I'd say. I've stared at a lot of Pashto over the years, and have had my translators correct my layout a sufficient number of times in my early years to feel pretty confident turning something in and expecting to get no comments back from the translators, ever. To be frank, that's a mid-career feeling, and if you are new to laying out complex-script languages you can't read, plan on a post-layout review stage every single time, without fail. 

 

There are other things that might be important, but since I don't know what you are facing, I can only guess. You should mark the digits as Farsi (those are the same as the digits used in Pashto), although many of my translation providers say that using Arabic numerals works just fine for a Pashto population in the US or Europe. Even when using Farsi numerals, my clients tend to ask me to leave phone numbers in Arabic numerals. You're aware that the numerals we use are called Arabic numerals, right? If you don't know that, then the numeral-selector tool to be found in the flyout from the character panel won't make very much sense:

 

JoelCherney_2-1644565093602.png

 

As you can see, you can affect directionality of characters here (quite useful if you have a English phrase in parentheses in the middle of your Pashto text) as well as some other RTL-specific stuff. 

 

I could go on at length, but instead I'll just remind you that typesetting complex script languages you can't read is Deeper Than it Looks, and I'd be happy to answer any questions if you can describe your problems. 

 

 

 

 

 

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New Here ,
Feb 11, 2022 Feb 11, 2022

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Thanks Joel,

This is great and thourough input, super helpful. Really appreciate this, we are off and running. 

We will be working with a translator to assure we are correct.

Again, great input and thanks so much!

Tom Mc 

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Community Expert ,
Feb 14, 2022 Feb 14, 2022

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Good work Joel, you've made it easy for all.

 

Needless to say that what Joel wrote applies to other languages beside Pashto such as Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Kurdish and Uyghur.

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