How to Prepare an InDesign File for Translation
There is a moment every DTP specialist knows well. The translated IDML file arrives, it gets opened in InDesign, and within thirty seconds it is clear that the original document was built by someone who had never heard the word "translation" and possibly also had a complicated relationship with paragraph styles.
Overflowing text frames. Manual spacing everywhere. Text embedded inside images. Font sizes adjusted line by line. Tables built from individual rectangles drawn by hand.
This guide exists so that moment happens less often. Whether you are a designer creating documents that will eventually be translated, or a project manager at a translation agency responsible for delivering clean files to a DTP specialist, the steps below will save time, reduce cost, and prevent a significant amount of mutual suffering.
Why file preparation decides the DTP cost
When a document is built without translation in mind, every language version becomes a manual reconstruction job. The DTP specialist cannot simply drop in the translated text and call it done. Instead, they spend time cleaning up formatting, resolving overset text, rebuilding tables, and applying styles that should have been there from the beginning.
This takes longer, and longer means more expensive. And in a 20-language project, the cost of a poorly prepared source file is multiplied across every single language version. See how file format and preparation directly affects the DTP rate per page.
Most preparation work takes almost no extra time when done at the design stage. It becomes very expensive only when done retroactively across 20 translated files.
1. Use paragraph and character styles for everything
This is the single most impactful thing a designer can do for a multilingual project, and it is also the rule most frequently ignored. Every heading, body paragraph, caption, bullet point, table cell, and footnote should have a named paragraph style applied. Every instance of bold, italic or small caps should use a character style instead of a manual override (Shift+Ctrl+B / Shift+Cmd+B).
When IDML files go through CAT tools such as Trados or memoQ, every manual override becomes a tag in the sentence, and misplaced tags scramble the formatting on export. A document built with styles comes back from the CAT tool with formatting intact. A document built with manual overrides comes back looking like it was formatted by a particularly determined toddler.
Styles also let the DTP specialist make global adjustments: reducing all body text by half a point to fit a German translation takes seconds with styles and hours without them.
2. Leave more white space than you think you need
Translated text is almost never the same length as the source; languages simply differ in length. For a full breakdown by language, see the text expansion guide.
French and Spanish typically need more space than English
German, with words of considerable ambition in length
Japanese and Chinese often take less width, but need taller lines
A text frame filled edge to edge with English body copy will overflow in German. A headline that fits perfectly in English may need two lines in French.
Add 30 percent more dummy text to every text frame before finalising the layout. If it still looks acceptable, the document will survive translation. If it immediately breaks, the design needs more flexibility.
3. Do not embed text inside images
This causes genuine pain and it happens constantly. When text is part of an image file, it cannot be extracted by a CAT tool. The translator cannot access it. The DTP specialist cannot edit it directly. Every piece of embedded image text must be recreated separately, in every language, by opening the original image file, editing it, re-exporting it, and relinking it in InDesign.
In a 15-language project, that is 15 versions of every image. For an infographic with 8 text labels, that is 120 label edits.
Create the image without text in the design software, link it into InDesign, and place the text in a separate InDesign text frame positioned over the image. The text is then part of the IDML file, translated automatically by the CAT tool, and requires no special handling during DTP. If text must be part of the image for design reasons, always keep the original editable source file and include it in the project package.
4. Use InDesign tables instead of hand-drawn boxes
Tables built from individual text frames and hand-drawn lines look like tables but do not behave like them. When translated text expands, each cell has to be resized manually because nothing is connected to anything else.
In a real InDesign table, rows grow with the text when row height is set to At Least, and a column resized once changes in every row. That saves real time in documents with many tables, such as technical manuals, product catalogues and annual reports, which are often translated into many languages.
Building tables correctly from the start takes no longer than building them manually. It saves a considerable amount of time later.
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5. Thread text frames correctly
Threading connects text frames so that content flows from one to the next. This is how multi-column layouts and long documents should always be built. Unthreaded text frames each hold their own block of text, so when translated text expands, each frame overflows on its own and has to be adjusted separately, producing overset text on every page.
Threading also affects segmentation in the CAT tool. Threaded text is one story. A sentence split across two unthreaded frames becomes two separate segments.
6. Export as IDML, not INDD
An INDD file is version-specific: a file saved in InDesign 2024 may not open in an earlier version. An IDML file is backward compatible and opens in any version of InDesign from CS4 onwards. IDML is also the format that CAT tools such as Trados, memoQ and Wordfast read directly.
Sending an INDD file to a translation agency is like sending a locked box: whether it opens depends on the software version at the other end, and the delay starts while everyone works out what to do.
How to export IDML
- Go to
File - Select
Export - Choose
InDesign Markup (IDML)from the format dropdown - Save it next to the INDD file, or tick Include IDML when packaging
7. Turn off Track Changes before exporting
If Track Changes is active when the file is exported to IDML, the tracked changes are included in the exported file and can cause problems in CAT tools: duplicate content, scrambled segments or errors.
Before every IDML export
- Go to
Type → Track Changes - Choose
Accept All Changes → In This Document - Choose
Disable Tracking in All Stories - Then export to IDML
8. Think about fonts before choosing them
Many fonts support Latin characters only. A font that works perfectly for English, French, or German will display as empty boxes or substituted characters when the same IDML file is opened with Arabic, Chinese, or Thai text inserted by the translator. For a full breakdown of which fonts work reliably across scripts, see the multilingual fonts guide.
- For Arabic and Hebrew: the font must contain the script and its joining forms, used with the World-Ready Paragraph Composer
- For Chinese, Japanese, and Korean: a separate CJK-compatible font will almost certainly be needed
- For Cyrillic: check glyph coverage, because many Latin fonts do not include it
Confirm which target languages are in scope before choosing fonts, and check with the DTP specialist or translation agency before locking in a typeface. Changing a font after translation has begun creates extra work and occasionally also creates interesting conversations.
9. Do not convert text to outlines
Converting text to outlines turns letters into vector shapes. The result looks identical on screen but the text becomes completely uneditable. It cannot be extracted by a CAT tool, modified by a DTP specialist, or reflowed without redrawing it.
Keep the original live text version on a separate hidden layer in the file. This allows the DTP specialist to work with the editable version and simply re-outline it after any changes.
10. Package and deliver files properly
An InDesign file without its linked images and fonts is a recipe without ingredients. Always use InDesign's Package function to collect everything into a single folder.
How to package correctly
- Go to
File → Package - InDesign collects the document, the linked images and the fonts it is allowed to copy (not Adobe Fonts or non-Adobe CJK fonts)
- Tick
Include IDMLso the IDML travels with the INDD - Add a short note: text that should not be translated, font choices for non-Latin scripts, fonts the package could not include, and any layout constraints
A well-packaged file with a short handover note arrives as a project that can start immediately. A bare INDD file with missing links arrives as a project that starts with a conversation about missing links.
What happens when none of this is done
For the curious: here is what the DTP side looks like when a document arrives with none of the above in place.
The file opens and immediately shows pink boxes indicating missing fonts. Once those are resolved, preflight reveals 47 overset text frames. The tables are made of individual rectangles that bear no structural relationship to each other. Every text frame uses a different manually applied font size. Several images have text baked directly into them with no source files provided. Track Changes was left on, so the IDML export contains both the original and revised versions of approximately 200 text segments.
In DTP, that is an ordinary Tuesday.
The document can still be processed. It simply takes much longer and costs more, and in a 20-language project that cost repeats in every language.
Good file preparation keeps the project on time and on budget, which is presumably also the goal of the person who built the file.
Quick checklist before sending files for translation
- Paragraph and character styles applied throughout
- Adequate white space in all text frames
- No text embedded inside images
- Tables built using the InDesign tables feature
- Text frames threaded correctly
- IDML exported and included in the package
- Track Changes turned off before export
- Font compatibility checked for all target languages
- Text not converted to outlines
- Files packaged with all links and fonts included
All ten in place: the DTP side of the project runs smoothly. Most in place: it runs acceptably. None in place: it still gets done, but it will feel like more of an adventure than anyone planned.
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