DESKTOP PUBLISHING: OPTIMIZING TRANSLATION QUALITY

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CONCEPT

Desktop Publishing is a graphic production area that uses digital and computer resources. Creation software (Corel Draw, Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, Microsoft Word and Quark) are used to edit and produce visual materials such as flyers, folders, magazines, newspapers, etc., representing a process commonly known as typesetting.

This activity can be complex, because it entails mastery and skill with such tools in order to compose the layout.

TRANSLATION

After translation, Desktop Publishing aims to prevent the text translation from interfering with the document’s visual formatting. For this reason, it is relevant for all kinds of translation, whether technical, legal or for marketing.

An interesting example of this kind of translation is when a ZAUM client needed translation of course material for its in-house training system. This material consisted of one document in Word and another in PowerPoint, which were connected by embedded links that managed their intersection and mutual access between programs.

The first step was to translate all excerpts and insert them into another identified version of the document, abiding by the client’s standards. Aside from aesthetic formatting, which is always paramount, our professionals configured the access links between documents by encoding a hidden mask in each of the slides contained in the Word document. Clicking the links would thus provide the user with direct access to the also translated PowerPoint file.

This shows that desktop publishing goes beyond matters of design and marketing; in fact it represents part of the process for delivering quality translation services, duly configured to the client’s needs, to give the end user a better experience.

The mentioned example was just one demonstration of how important careful editing is in translation products. For ZAUM, this constitutes one of the assumptions for evaluating the quality of our services.