# All indesign stories to word for translation



## Slicktrix (Jul 26, 2006)

Hey,

A lot of the designs I make in indesign CS2 have to be translated.
I'm looking for an easy way to export all text to word.
There someone replaces the text with the translation, and I can import the translated file without having to redo the complete layout.

So I think I want to export all indesign text to word, preserving the styles. The translator can leave the styles and I can import using my own styles. There still is a lot of copy-pasting to be done then but it would be a lot better.

Is there someone out there who knows how to do this, or even has a better way... Best would be if the translation was placed in the correct textframe, with the correct layout... (or am I dreaming?) I suppose  it's possible with xml, but I know nothing about xml....

thnxs


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## billbaloney (Jul 26, 2006)

It's certainly possible in InDesign CS2 to save your content out to an XML "snippet" that can then be translated and re-read by the InDesign document, but you'll need to do a fair amount of ramping up (also here) before you'll be able to understand the process and come up with your own.


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## RacerX (Jul 26, 2006)

First question that comes to mind is... how did you get the text to begin with? I know very few people who use InDesign as a word processor.

The second thing that pops into my head is... what makes you think that the translated text is going to be the same length as the original content? You're going to face a lot of work no matter what because any work you did on kerning or hyphenation will be totally lost in the translation. And what may have been a page of text in English could be up to two pages in some other language. And in that case you would be forced to re-layout the page or pages to make everything fit right.

 

... and that is assuming that you actually understand the language enough to make the proper adjustments.


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## billbaloney (Jul 26, 2006)

Actually, InDesign is well-suited for this task, as long as you create smart layouts.  It's just like in Quark: you create a layout with column flows, drop in the text, and make adjustments when necessary.  Not rocket science.  This is the same thing that's done, with less human intervention, every day in multilingual web sites.  And often XML is the exact storage technology used to map entities to translations.


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## Slicktrix (Jul 26, 2006)

The files I create are more than often pieces of different former publications...
And often pieces of text are mailed to me, copied from catalogues, scibbles on a piece of paper, technical info from our database, You name it we get it, and most of the time it's a combination of these methods!

The company I work for has offices in 156 countries. We make publications for all of them. Russian, chinese, hebrew, french, german, english, dutch, arabic, polish, we come across all of it round here. I will spare you the trouble we have just getting all these lanuages on our screen. All these translations are done inhouse (by native speakers) also. So word is the only reasonable sollution for the translators

Believe me, I know that working with text you can't read isn't that simple But that's the kind of job I'm in. That's also why it would be easy if translated texts are placed in the right textframe, with the right layout. The file is far from ready then but it would save me a lot of hastle copy/pasting... Especially when I have to make the same file in 25 different languages.

I hope you can understand my problem a litle better now, thnx anyway!


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## Natobasso (Jul 26, 2006)

I suggest giving your translators .txt files (non formatted) so when you get the translation back you can just reflow it into your doc (hopefully you have linked text boxes, yes?) and the raw .txt will flow in using your font style. Make sure they give you .txt files back with no formatting.


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## Esquilinho (Jul 26, 2006)

Natobasso said:


> I suggest giving your translators .txt files (non formatted) so when you get the translation back you can just reflow it into your doc (hopefully you have linked text boxes, yes?) and the raw .txt will flow in using your font style. Make sure they give you .txt files back with no formatting.



Why not use .rtf instead, then? That way, styles can be preserved.


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## MacGizmo (Jul 26, 2006)

The simple solution is to just export as text (Command + E) and keep your preferences in ID set to "Create Links when placing text and spreadsheet files"


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## Natobasso (Jul 26, 2006)

Using raw text enables it to be affected by whatever styles are in your indesign doc. MacGizmo is on the right track, though, with a good solution; though I've never tried it that way.


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## MacGizmo (Jul 26, 2006)

I guess I left out the part where when you get the file back, you just re-link the text files just as you would a graphic.


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## Slicktrix (Jul 27, 2006)

Thanks guys,

But I can't see txt nor rtf in the format box when exporting.

I did stumble upon this: http://www.rorohiko.com/textexporter.html
It's a free plugin to export all text as a single  rtf, txt or indesign tagged text file.
I guess with the tagged text it has to be possible to get everything placed back automatically. But I still need to figure out just how that works...

Thanx for your help!!!


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## Natobasso (Jul 27, 2006)

Copy your text into TextEdit and change to .txt format (command + T key) to change to raw text.


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## Esquilinho (Jul 27, 2006)

Slicktrix said:


> Thanks guys,
> 
> But I can't see txt nor rtf in the format box when exporting.



It's only available when you have text selected


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## fryke (Jul 27, 2006)

It's probably not only _one_ text wrapped throughout the document. I at least often have documents which might have one big text, but also some separate text boxes. Those would need translation as well, so it's not one big text which can easily be re-linked. Also if you _do_ have things like single words in italics, this won't survive through a plain text format, anyway. You'd need at _least_ RTF for that. But even then, you'd probably have to reapply styles from your ID document and might lose some formatting.


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## Natobasso (Jul 27, 2006)

pasting .txt means that pasted text takes the format of whatever it's pasted into...


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## michela (Nov 28, 2007)

I have a multiple page brochure that needs to be translated into Russian without loosing too much of the design and formatting. Any idea of what programs are out there that can translate the text directly in InDesign with minimal formatting change?


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## michela (Nov 28, 2007)

SlickTrix, please let me know what you find out as I have a similar issue. I need to find a way to automatically translate the text in my InDesign pages without having to take it into word..


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## michela (Nov 28, 2007)

SlickTrix, please let me know if you ever found something out - I have a similar issue. I need to find a way to automatically translate the text in my InDesign pages without having to take it into word..


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