Creating 10 different translations – how to ?

Jan Kosior

This topic has 4 replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 9 years, 1 month ago by Aaron Troia.

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- February 26, 2015 at 6:08 am #73526
  
  Jan Kosior
  Member
  
  Hello
  
  I have 600+ brochures and I have to prepare 10 different translations of each one of them. I received translated texts in Excel sheets. How can I speed up things here ?
  
  Thank You
  
  Jan
- February 26, 2015 at 7:41 am #73529
  
  Chris Thompson
  Member
  
  Do you mean for a total of 6000+ brochures?
  
  And are there any existing links between the source language InDesign brochures and the Excel sheets?
  
  What were you planning to do from the Excel sheets – surely not copy-paste into the InDesign stories?
  That sounds like the ultimate nightmare workflow to be honest.
  
  Chris.
- February 26, 2015 at 8:29 am #73535
  
  Jan Kosior
  Member
  
  Yes, that’s about 6000 brochures. Each country sends its own translation – most of which is some tech jibberish. Translations are very well prepared but inDesign files are not. How do I go about linking this file to excel individual cells ? For example – I have a list and each of its bullets is translated in separate Excel cell. And Yes, so far I was copying and pasting :P
- February 26, 2015 at 8:44 am #73536
  
  Chris Thompson
  Member
  
  Eek.
  
  One thing that might help a little:
  copy-paste the Excel sheets into Word, where it’s easier to manipulate the tables by merging cells together so that you can copy a story in one action instead of several (e.g. for your list of bullet points, or a whole story).
  
  Do the Excel files contain both source and target text? If so, you might possibly be able to use a translator’s CAT tool to match the text segments of the IDML output from the source InDesign files to a translation memory prepared from the Excel sheets. I’ve never tried it, but it’s a possibility. It would eliminate the copy-pasting, and just leave you with layout adjustments to do from the re-imported translated IDML files.
  
  Sorry, I’ve no other useful suggestions at this stage of the process.
  I wouldn’t have done it that way back at the start, but of course you don’t have that luxury.
  
  Good luck,
  Chris.
- February 26, 2015 at 12:44 pm #73555
  
  Aaron Troia
  Participant
  
  You might be able to use Data Merge, which is built into InDesign, I dont know how everything is laid out but it could be handy, especially with multiple excel files and only one InDesign file.
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