Adobe InDesign Documents (INDD)

You can use Smartling to translate the content of Adobe InDesign documents in one of the following ways:

• Via file upload, by selecting an INDD or IDML file format, or
• Via the Adobe InDesign Plugin.

This article only explores steps to translating InDesign Document files via file upload (drag & drop). If you are interested in integrating your InDesign directly with Smartling, consult your Smartling Representative about our Adobe InDesign Plugin.

By default, only the text of the file is captured for translation. If you wish to translate URLs as well, you can upload the file via API and set the directive smartling.translate_hyperlinks to true. Need help with this? Please contact your Customer Success Manager to help setup a directive template.

Translating InDesign files

Smartling supports the translation of files in both the native Adobe InDesign Document format (INDD) and in an Adobe InDesign Markup Language format (IDML). IDML is a more lightweight XML-based format, while INDD files are typically larger, with more resource data being cached. Depending on your design processes, you can opt for either file format when it comes to translating your InDesign document in Smartling.

Both INDD and IDML files are most often used as a native file format for PDF documents. Once the INDD or IDML file has been translated, post-translation production in the form of desktop publishing (DTP) takes place to produce the translated PDF. DTP can take time and resources in your translation process, so it is important to follow the steps outlined below for best results when translating Adobe InDesign files.

Steps to translating INDD Files

1. When creating the source file, follow a localization-friendly format. For example, hard returns in the middle of a sentence should be avoided, and replaced with soft returns. For more information, read Best Practices for Adobe InDesign Translation.
2. Ensure that track changes is switched off and that all changes have been either accepted or rejected.
3. To drag and drop Adobe InDesign files for translation, you or your designer must simply export the document in an INDD format (.indd).
4. Once you are ready to translate the file, create a Job in your Smartling Files Project.
   You can simply drag & drop the INDD file. No directives need to be applied to the file before it can be translated.
5. If any content is uploaded that should not be translated, you can exclude it from translation. 
6. To get an idea of what the layout and display of the translated file will be, you can download a pseudo translated file. You can then decide if any adjustments to the source file are necessary.
7. You can also provide instructions to give your translators further context. By attaching a JPEG or PDF export of the InDesign Document in the original language and/or by providing instructions about the document, you can create an excellent reference for translators to help them understand the context.
   Remember that not all translators can open the INDD file directly, so Smartling strongly recommends that you provide context via instructions.
8. Furthermore, applying character limits to strings can help ensure that translations are kept to a certain length where necessary. 
9. Once all necessary instructions, attachments, descriptions and character limits have been provided, please authorize the Job for translation.
10. Translators can now view the source document as visual context in the CAT Tool.
    
    • When possible, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is used to match the source string to the visual context shown in the CAT Tool. In this case, only the page containing the string to translate is displayed in the context window, and the relevant string is highlighted.
    • If OCR cannot be used to match the source text to the visual context, the entire document is displayed in the context window. If possible, the context view automatically scrolls to the page containing the string to translate.
    • Please note that there may be cases where this is not possible, and the entire document is displayed without scrolling to the page containing the source string. 
11. When the translations are complete, download the published translations to your local drive.
12. If the INDD file is used as a native file format for a PDF document, we recommend including a post-translation step for desktop publishing (DTP) in your localization process. This is an important step to produce a correctly formatted, localized PDF file. DTP takes place outside of the Smartling platform; typically it is carried out directly in InDesign.

Selecting the right font for translated INDD files

When viewing and deploying translated Adobe InDesign files, it is important to remember that most fonts do not contain the characters necessary to display content in every language.

When you upload a file to Smartling, by default, only the text of the file is captured and translated. Other data, such as fonts, are not changed. This means that, when you download your translated file, its font may not support all the new characters. This is especially common if you are translating into a language with a non-Latin character set, such as Chinese. These characters will be displayed as empty boxes, sometimes referred to as ‘tofu’.

If you open a translated file, and it’s full of tofu, it doesn’t mean that the file is corrupted. It may just be that your current font can’t display the translation. To view these files, you need to have a font with the required characters.

Choosing an appropriate final font for your translated files is an important design decision, but if you just want to check your translations, a good place to start is with Google’s Noto collection of fonts. Noto fonts are available to support most languages and scripts.

For more information, read Best Practices for Adobe InDesign Translation.