October 2008 - Global View Newsletter
LOCALIZATION: TIPS TO KNOW BEFORE GETTING STARTED
Ask any graphic designer and they'll be quick to rave about their favorite programs and platforms; probably in more detail and with more passion than a political debate (maybe not hard to do?). Just as the MAC vs. PC battle has been ongoing since the birth of the computer, so has that of the design software - Corel, PageMaker, Quark, Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, etc.
In the localization world, multilingual Desktop Publishers share the same passion, but for very different reasons! When working in nearly every worldly language in programs not designed to accommodate large, tall, strange, obscure fonts, for languages like Chinese, Cambodian, Arabic and Greek, software selection can be a localization specialists' greatest attribute or worst nightmare.
I may be stepping out on a limb, but I'm going to say that most designers prefer to work on a MAC. Now, don't get me wrong, not all do, but that seems to be a fairly good generalization. For design, that's great, however, if you ask most translators or linguists, they use PC's with PC specific fonts. Although the evolution of Windows has had some ups and downs, in the language world, it has facilitated communication throughout the world like never before. The development of text input methods for most of the worldly languages has made doing global business more in reach than ever. Because of this ease of use, most linguists use PC's.
Once again, enter the world of the localization specialist. When a designer selects a program and platform based on their passion, without considering the final multilingual project, many issues can arise. If the designer uses a MAC and the linguists use a PC with specialized fonts, a troubleshooting nightmare can occur. Take for example Chinese. The Chinese market is expanding like crazy. Many organizations are opening plants in China, distributing products and services in China and are thus developing collateral material for China.
Our expertise as a multilingual organization is to take the marketing material of the organization and localize it to their target market through both language and cultural adaptation. The language aspect is tricky, but if our client has decided to use Quark in MAC, for example, and wants the Chinese text back in an editable format it's not going to happen unless the client wants to purchase the Asian version of Quark which many do not. We have developed the expertise and protocol to produce a final version the looks the same as the original in most programs, but many are limiting in several languages when it comes to font inclusion and their ability to be edited on the client's end.
Quark (and several other programs) hasn't historically accepted double-byte fonts or Unicode fonts very well. The design capabilities of Quark have pushed the graphic design industry to where it is today, but as far as "playing nice" with multilingual fonts it's not very nice.
In the past 2 years, we've noticed as the global market is expanding, so are the capabilities of graphic design software. Most notably, in the past 6 months, we've seen that on our recommendation, many of our clients are moving toward Adobe's InDesign because this software has made the localization of many of the worldly languages much easier - including Chinese. It reduces the Desktop Publishing time, helps to eliminate many of the conversions and allows us a bigger selection of linguists that are capable of producing text for these programs.
So why the long discussion of the PC vs. MAC, Unicode vs. True Type, Quark vs. InDesign? It's simple. When starting out on the path to international business, do yourself, your designer and your language services partner a favor and discuss what your goals are, what countries you plan to target now and in the future and what your visual materials may consist of. If you take the time up front to include your language partner, chances are, in the end, your output will be quicker, smoother and meet your expectations in the end.
If you'd like more information on localization or the selection and use of software, please contact a representative of U.S. Translation Company at 800-595-4648.
U.S. Translation Company: Superior quality Interpretation and Translation Services in over 100 Languages!
