Translating English InDesign Book Layout into Spanish.

[everettr490719]

I have been asked to convert a 3-volume InDesign book (approximately 600 total pages) from English into Spanish (and possibly other languages). Any suggestions on making the conversion? My conversational Español wasn't that great when I took college classes 56+ years ago – even rustier now.

[Joel Cherney · Accepted solution]

How much do you want to spend?  I assume that you want a real translation, not to just drop your INDDs into some kind of software and get a machine-produced document out the other side. I might be wrong on that account; if so, let me know, and I promise to only spend a few minutes telling you what a terrible idea that is, before I give you some pointers on how to get it done. 

But, assuming that you don't want a purely AI-driven workflow: pretty much any languages service provider worth its salt can work directly on IDML files that you can export from InDesign. Most of them will offer to do post-translation cleanup in InDesign - which will be necessary, as  you can expect the Spanish text to have a character count that is at least 10%-20% higher than the English - for an additional hourly fee.  If you feel confident in your Spanish literacy, then you might want to skip on the DTP services and do it yourself. If you go that route, you're probably going to want to ask your provider for a post-formatting review of the final book.

Most of these potential providers will use a combination of human translators and machine translation. 

Most of these language service providers will have some area of focus, be that on tech translation or marketing or life sciences, et cetera. So picking a provider that matches the subject area of your book will probably be important. 

[Barb Binder]

Hi @everettr490719:

If you aren't fluent, you will need to hire someone to handle the translation for you. You will also want to locate a Spanish editor to review the new content after you lay out the new book in InDesign, since you won't have the skillset for that, either.

When you recieve the translated documents, and are ready to place them in InDesign, be sure the change the language to Spanish for each paragraph style. InDesign uses the designated language for spell check and to determine the correct hyphenation points. 

~Barb

[TᴀW]

https://www.id-extras.com/products/translate/ and it's done in 1 click! You don't even need to export to IDML. All the formatting is retained.

And if the book is of a technical nature, you can add a custom glossary as well...

(Of course, I completely support everything @Joel Cherney said, but if you're looking for a one-click solution...)

[Joel Cherney]

I'm laughing out loud over here... Way to steal my anti-MT rant right out of my fingertips, Ariel! Now Everett gets the one-click auto-magical translation, and doesn't even have to sit through my moralizing 20th century lecture.

No, but seriously, Everett, this translation tool of Ariel's is exactly what I was going to suggest, once you had been subjected to a bit of monologue regarding why I think it it's a bad idea. This solution is technically sound, built on a comparatively decent MT engine, and comes from a reputable developer. If you decide to use machine translation (and don't plan to simply hand your packages off to a translation firm), this suggestion from @TᴀW is the way to go

I will caution you that, if you go this route, that you should think about hiring an in-language editor, just as Barb suggests for a human translator m Be aware of the fact that post-MT editing is a skill very different from editing the work of a human translator, and many people won't offer both services. (Frequently, if they do offer both services, they will charge more for post-MT editing.)