Multilingual Desktop Publishing Services

Desktop publishing applications are those employed in the production of top-quality printed materials, and often deal with materials that combine written text, pictures, and illustrations. The first desktop publishing application was designed almost 30 years ago, but the industry and the software packages available have evolved significantly since. Nowadays, the use of desktop publishing services is no longer the domain of large organisations, and in fact, the increased availability of DTP solutions has brought translation agencies into the picture. The majority of documents sent out for desktop publishing are informative leaflets or marketing / promotional materials. As many companies plan their expansion into other markets and try to reach speakers of other languages, the need for translated materials that match the originals in terms of quality and clarity becomes more and more pressing.

The challenges associated to typesetting, desktop publishing and translation go far beyond the obvious linguistic aspects. There are issues of layout and design that a regular translator would not be able to deal with. This is particularly the case when translating to or from double-byte languages (like Korean, Japanese or Chinese) and bidirectional languages (like Arabic or Hebrew), which usually take up more space than Latin-based languages, and that tend to adopt a particular page layout that makes them easier to read.

The fact that some DTP software is “Western-centric” contributes to complicating things even more. Some script types and DTP packages offer limited or no support in languages other than the major Western languages, therefore forcing some DTP users to invest in alternative software solutions. Additionally, there are known compatibility problems with some DTP software packages, so interchangeability between PC and Mac-generated files is not always a given. To sum up, although some companies decide to go for “do-it-yourself” DTP solutions in order to avoid the expenses associated with commercial printing, the reality is that taking a casual approach to DTP can result very costly indeed.

Due to all of the above, at LinguaVox we decided to establish a dedicated Typesetting & Desktop Publishing division. Nowadays, DTP is included as one of the final stages of a localisation project. In other cases, DTP is requested as a standalone service. Whichever your particular case may be, we are qualified to help thanks to our extensive experience in multilingual DTP, accumulated for over a decade. LinguaVox provides expert localisation advice thanks to our team of in-country DTP experts and translators. Our DTP translation experts are proficient users of the relevant software packages, as well as skilful at identifying how cultural subtleties permeate language. We also provide typesetting services, which despite the proliferation of computer-aided technology, remain a specialised skill.

By entrusting your Desktop Publishing project to LinguaVox, you will save time, money, and resources, since we already have the state-of-the-art equipment and software required to produce professional-looking materials. Moreover, we do not limit our DTP services to text and images, but can also provide sound, video and graphic editing services in more than 150 languages.

We provide typsetting and desktop publishing services in 150 languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Arabic, Basque, Bengali, Bulgarian, Burmese, Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Afrikaans, Estonian, Finnish, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Urdu, Hungarian, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Javanese, Kannada, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Malayalam, Marathi, Norwegian, Oriya, Pashto, Persian, Polish, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Croatian, Slovak, Slovene, Swedish, Filipino, Tagalog, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Welsh, Xhosa, etc.