How to Translate Adobe Indesign Document

With Paper Polyglot’s InDesign translator, we can easily extract, translate and re-integrate text from an Adobe InDesign file.

Example

We have an InDesign file in English—seven pages with text frames, pictures, and even different character styles and paragraph styles within some text frames. Our goal is to translate it into French or any other language, while maintaining the same formatting.

Challenges

There are two main challenges:

• we need to extract each text frame;
• we need to replace them with the translated content.

Step by step

Export the file to IDML

The first step is to export the file in IDML format. With File » Export, then choose .IDML format.

Create a project

Now let’s create a new project, let’s call it ‘Temples.’ We need to specify the source language, which is English, and the target language, French.

Import the file

Next, let’s upload the newly exported IDML file. As you can see, the system has extracted all the text frames, and we can find them across the different spreads on the left.

Translate

Now we can translate them one by one using Google Translate. If we’re satisfied, we can select the translation and adjust it, if necessary. We also have the option to translate everything at once. Let’s click ‘Translate All.’

Download translated file

It’s now time to download the translated file. Let’s take a look at it.

The file has been translated into French, and all the formatting has been preserved. Only the text frames have changed—they are now in French.