Services
Formatting and layout.
We set the translated text back into your layout so the file prints, posts, and gets filled in the way the English does.
Expansion
Translated text does not fit.
Spanish runs 20 to 25 percent longer than English; forms, signs, and wallet cards have no room for it.
Field labels wrap to a second line and push the boxes out of alignment. A table column overflows into its neighbor. A signature block falls onto a second page, so the form now prints on 3 sheets instead of 2. A sign that was legible from the queue gets set 2 points smaller to make room.
We reflow the translated text inside your existing grid, adjusting leading, column widths, and field sizes before touching type size, and we keep the face legible across a counter. Where the text genuinely will not fit, we say so and propose shorter wording that holds the meaning.
If the form is still being drafted, the cheapest fix is upstream: draw the fields to hold the longest language you publish in, and every later translation drops into a layout that already has room for it.
Scripts
Where the typesetting rules change.
Several of the languages we work in do not set like Latin text, and each one fails in its own way when a file is built as though it does.
- Chinese and Korean
- CJK text wraps between characters, and the line-break rules bar certain characters from the start or end of a line: a line cannot open with a closing bracket or a full stop, or end on an opening bracket. We set those rules in the file itself, so the layout survives the next edit.
- Arabic
- Right-to-left layout mirrors the whole page. Reading order, column order, table columns, list indents, form field order, and directional arrows all flip, while figures and embedded Latin terms stay put. We rebuild the frame in the right direction; a mirrored page dropped into a left-to-right frame is unusable even when every word is correct.
- Vietnamese
- Vietnamese stacks a tone mark over a vowel that often already carries a diacritic. Tight leading clips the marks, and fonts with incomplete Latin Extended coverage drop or substitute them, usually invisible on screen and obvious once printed. We check the font covers the full character set, embed it in the PDF, and keep the file in UTF-8 from intake through delivery.
Forms and delivery
Forms, tables, and what ships.
Forms are the hard case, because they get filled in by hand. We hold checkbox and label alignment, tab stops and dotted leaders, box heights, and the page-for-page correspondence between the English and the translated version, so a clerk can read one against the other and a resident signs the line they were meant to sign.
Tables keep their structure: figures stay in their columns and stay decimal-aligned, units stay as published, and date formats follow the reading audience's convention.
- Print-ready
- A PDF with fonts embedded, at the trim, bleed, and marks your printer asked for.
- Editable
- The working file back in its own format (an InDesign package, or the Word document with its styles intact), so your designer can revise it without rebuilding it.
- Web-ready
- HTML or XLIFF with language and direction attributes set, so the page announces the right language to a screen reader and wraps correctly on a phone.
Related
- Document translationNotices, forms, applications, outreach materials, and public-facing web copy, translated, reviewed, and returned in the layout you sent.
- Certified translationA signed, dated certificate of accuracy accompanying each delivery, in the form agencies and courts expect for the record.
- Review of existing translationsIndependent review of translations you already hold (including machine output), with a written finding and, where warranted, certification.
Send the layout, not just the text.
Attach the working file (InDesign, Word, or the HTML) and we will quote the translation and the layout work together.