Adobe InDesign is desktop publishing software used to create works such as posters, flyers, brochures, magazines, newspapers, presentations, books and ebooks. In Translation Land, its files are encountered in several formats.
Imagine that you receive the following file to quote and translate:
Well, if you’re a user of Trados Studio 2022, you might simply use this function on the Home tab of your desktop application:
but then the software would respond this way to your request:
Whoa! Is this any way for the tool that claims to be the best and most popular of its kind to behave? And what is an *.indd
file anyway?
Unfortunately, most translation environments cannot handle the current native InDesign format (INDD). Instead, the IDML is used in most translation scenarios. “IDML” stands for InDesign Markup Language and is the interchange format for InDesign (*.indd
) documents. Even more unfortunately, a lot of translation customers are unaware of this and simply send an INDD file.
If one has the Adobe InDesign software, it’s not a big deal to open that INDD file and save it as an IDML. Often, a translator or project manager will have to contact the person requesting the translation or quote for service and request that the file be re-exported as an *.idml
file. However, this is not always practical due to time zone differences or the need for a timely response when the requester has already left for the day. And even if an IDML file is received, translators usually benefit from a look at the original layout in a preview or a PDF, that is often forgotten, and most translation work environments cannot produce such a view. What can be done to solve these problems of importing the translatable content and viewing the original file layout?
The Language Terminal website operated by memoQ Ltd. is a free service available to everyone (including those who do not use memoQ). This site includes an InDesign server which is capable of reading any InDesign formats (including INDD files) and creating translatable XLIFF files and PDF documents from the original files. This silent video shows how to access the conversion service (once you’ve made a free account) and convert that INDD file into a translatable XLIFF (MQXLZ) format with a preview:
The process works the same way for other InDesign formats (IDML and INX). The MQXLZ file created also contains an HTML preview which can be seen in memoQ:
Of course, memoQ users don’t need to log in to Language Terminal to do all this. Desktop editions of memoQ software are fully integrated with Language Terminal, so the conversion, file loading and conversion back to InDesign formats are all handled automatically. In other words, if you use memoQ, if your Language Terminal credentials are configured in your local installation, you can import INDD files directly.
The ability of Language Terminal’s InDesign server to create PDF files is extremely helpful in a number of ways:
You don’t have to bug the client to make a PDF for you if you don’t have InDesign.
The PDF of the original file shows you the content in context.
Intermediate (partly translated) or final (translated) files can be used to generate PDF files for better proofreading of your work, allowing you to catch problems such as spacing errors, which might be difficult to notice in a tag-laden translation environment. These PDFs can be created as often as you need them.
If you are a memoQ user, the PDF Preview Tool (a free download from memoQ.com) can help you track the context of what you translate in the original text of the original layout, highlighted in red. Otherwise, just look at the PDF in your favorite reader.
Language Terminal MQXLZ files created from InDesign files are also one way of getting previews for InDesign files in online projects with memoQ TMS. Otherwise, the InDesign files must be imported to a local memoQ project, and the local project is either published to the memoQ TMS server or an MQXLZ file is exported from the local project and imported to a project on the server. To get a preview of InDesign files imported to a local memoQ project, the corresponding checkbox at the bottom of the first tab on the import filter must be marked (the example here is for an InDesign INX file, an older format):
When you’re finished translating, if you aren’t working in memoQ, simply log in to Language Terminal once again and use the translated MQXLZ file to generate a file for InDesign in the target language as part of a ZIP package.
For memoQ users, if the imported file used Language Terminal in some way, the export will be generated on a special tab in your desktop memoQ edition:
“BUT WAIT!!!” YOU SAY.
“My CAT tool won’t read MQXLZ files!!!” Well, last week I wrote about ZIP files with changed extensions that are used in many different ways. Well, *.mqxlz
files are really just *.zip
files with the zip extension changed to mqxlz. If you don’t know how to open an *.mqxlz
file with your ZIP tools, or you usually manage *.zip
files with the Windows File Explorer, just use the Rename function to change the extension back to *.zip
. The inside of an *.mqxlz
file looks like this:
And if your CAT tool can’t handle the *.mqxliff
extension, you can Rename it to *.xliff
or *.xlf
as you please. In case you’re wondering, the other file inside the package, skeleton.xml
, contains the information that Language Terminal (or memoQ) uses to create the target file with all the relevant content.
In a discussion of InDesign-related translation issues, someone mentioned the problem of text expansion in certain languages as a reason to work instead with exports to other formats. Aside from the problems of possible special character loss (mentioned in the companion article to this one), these adjustments of text box size or change of fonts to deal with different text length are fairly quick for the client with InDesign to make, and using the PDF-generation features of the Language Terminal InDesign server, one can see (if the right fonts are installed!) where these problems occur during the translation review and make note of any issues for the graphic designer.