3 magical letters – DTP, what do they mean?

Does your business create manuals? Perhaps you put together marketing brochures or e-books? Now, how often do you need to have those materials translated or localized and how often has your translation agency suggested Desktop Publishing (DTP) for your material?

This may ring a bell, but you also may be scratching your head, wondering why you would need DTP from a translation agency and not from your in-house design team.

The Importance of Multilingual Desktop Publishing

Firstly, let’s discuss multilingual desktop publishing. Usually, it’s the last part of your translation project, and it includes using your source document to recreate the layout in the target language. During this phase, the agency will also perform any necessary cultural or technical adaptations into the target language. The end result of the DTP process is that you get a document that looks as if it was created in the target language to begin with.

If you’re in marketing, sales, education, and any other industry that prints off reams of materials every year for different markets, you may need DTP for your projects. Still unsure? Here’s why:

Why Your Projects May Require DTP

• Some Fonts Aren’t Acceptable in Certain Cultures

How many foreign fonts are installed on your design team’s computers? Do you know that people in China prefer a particular font over others? If you’re going global with your material, you are going to need several strategies for displaying different texts, so having a handle on various culture’s reading preferences and how to use different font weightings for added effect is important if you want your material to be read and respected.

• Some Graphics May Put Your Target Audience Off

So, your company has just printed the latest promotional material, complete with a photograph of your sales team giving the thumbs up. That’s not going to go down well in African culture, where a thumbs up is the equivalent to “flipping someone the bird.”

Creating a romantic Valentine’s Day promotion with red roses? Don’t even think of releasing your material in Latvia, where a red rose means funerals.

• Let’s Talk About Typesetting

In English, you may like to set your text out in a center-aligned manner, with large margins, and different levels. But in Chinese, for example, a neatly aligned text will ensure your materials are read. In Japanese texts, some characters may not start or end on a line. What’s more, your entire layout may have to be realigned to read right to left in particular languages. And, if you’re translating from English to a more complex language, keep in mind that you may end up with a great deal more text that needs to fit onto a page.

Consider Professional DTP Services

Now that you realize the importance of DTP in your industry, our experts have the resources and tools to get your content looking great and ensuring it is read, respected, and noticed in different languages and cultures.

Let us integrate DTP with your next project.