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Language Translation

Has anyone ever taken a brochure from the English language to an alternate language? If so, what is the best way to do it?

Belinda Wilson
Fitting Group

Use a professional translator with experience translating the same type of material as that of your client, i.e. if it is hi-tech, use some one with hi-tech experience. Make sure they are either native to the tongue, or travel to the areas of the world where that language (and dialect) is spoken, so that they are current with the evolution. You don't want to end up with a brochure in Portuguese for Brazil, translated in Portuguese for Portugal. Also, if they are familiar with the latest vernacular of a language, they can help you avoid potentially offensive translation problems.

Case in point: I once worked on a project for a client that had not done a world wide trademark search on the name of their product. When it came time to translate their brochure into a certain language, the name / tag became one of THE MOST OFFENSIVE words in that language, and actually ended up preventing the release of that product for several months. A huge PR disaster was avoided.

Overall, if your client has a branch office that speaks the language, try to only have one person look at it to have too many people wanting to override the translator, or have a professional translator in the target country proof it too. Have the proofreader proof the copy in the layout as well to avoid potentially bad or inappropriate word breaks too.

Good luck!

Melissa Dantz
Production Manager
p11creative

We use Berkley Scientific Translation 510/548-4665

Roxanne Cowan

Several years ago we did a two-sided direct mail booklet for the Desert Inn here in Las Vegas. It was going to high-rollers in China. One side was English, the other side in Mandarin. We used a firm out of LA that specializes in language conversion and provided us with the character sets. They guaranteed their work and insured that we won't make cultural mistakes.

We've found that even converting ads/billboards/etc to Spanish can be tricky. Wording depends on the region your "translator" is from. It might not be correct for your core target audience. Outsourcing will cost more, but I'm sure your client wants it correct.

I don't recall their name offhand, but you can e-mail me if you are interested.

Good Luck,

Roger Blazic, Vice President
Blazic Design and Advertising Services
www.blazicdesign.com

Depends on the language and your skills, but...

1) Assuming it does not involve high-order characters: Hire a good translation service and then have them key their translation to your original so that you know what goes where, providing it to you as an RTF file. Drop their translation into your English layout following the keys, then have the translator double-check if you're unsure. Once OK'd, show to the client for OK. Then proceed as you normally would. This works when the foreign language uses standard characters and our "Latin" alphabet: French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, etc.

2) Assuming it does involve high-order characters (i.e., oriental and Cyrillic) Hire a translator that can also typeset in the language. Supply your English mechanical to them and have them replace your English with their translation and provide a PDF for approval. OR have them supply the translated text as large EPS files, spread-by-spread. Then drop in the EPSs and produce your own PDF. Once OK'd, give the file to your prepress house for output as they normally would.

Both of the above require enough room to fit the translated text, which can be longer or shorter than the English. Once you do this in several languages, you'll better know what length changes to expect.

(Arabic reads right-to-left and will require a new design, but that's an exception.)

Russ Norwood
2g Marketing

Yes. We have translated product manuals from English to French and German.

There are translation companies that specialize in this. I believe one vendor we used was called "Linguistic Systems" I can find their contact info. if you need it.

Anna, GBL

Often!

We lay out the brochure in english, get all client approvals, etc. to have a final product. then we forward the quark (layout) file to the translators (ours is in Chicago) and they make the copy fit in the space allowed, sometimes needing to change the type size or leading (most other languages take up more space than the equivalent english).

We then receive a proof of the file and have a different translator check it out (since we don't speak the foreign language). this is important.

Then the client sees it, approves it and it goes to press.

There are some clients that provide the translated copy, but we still usually have another translator check it out to make sure we have all the accents and special characters correct.

Hope this helps.

mindy mcCain

We have several brochures that translate into Spanish, Hmong and Somali. We've hired professional translators to work with us on the translations and then have them come to our studio to work on brochures with us at a computer station to capture all the nuances of that particular language.

We've hired translators found through State agencies, yellow pages, friends, community newspapers, etc. Usually it is run by two translators for each language and every translator will want to change what the other translator has done. It is very labor intensive, time consuming and not cheap. You need reliable translators as a language/dialect can be very regional and you need the most commonly used language/dialect to reach the masses.

There are some problems unique to translation of brochures from English to any other language. Word counts. Most other languages need 30%+ more space for text as it is impossible to translate word for word, expression for expression.

Good luck!

Deb Harrington
in10city

Yes. I used International Planning, Inc. in Orlando, FL. My contact was Nathan Newport @ 407-351-4357. The last translation I did was two years ago. I hope this is still a valid resource for you. Good luck.

Jean Millner
Veritas Advertising

We regularly translate our ads into other languages. There are two good sources for translations:

M2--Yovanne Hemecant 301-977-4281
Transperfect Translation 404-525-7788

Alice Mathews

We have used the following before for various translations:

CLS Corporate Language Services
15 Maiden Lane
New York, New York 10038
800 322 0284

Just a couple of things

1) Allow double the amt of time they tell you

2) Have someone your client trusts (apart from you) check their work. Translation is tricky and there are judgment calls that need to be made.

Cheryl Rankin
Anderson Partners, Inc.

There are translation companies who will do this for you.

Shannon Ellis
Business Manager
Tackett Barbaria Design Group

We frequently translate documents into other languages. We use two translation services on a regular basis:

M2 301-977-4281

Transperfect Translations 404-525-7788

Alice Mathews