strategy request: one layout / two languages

Tim Teichert

Tagged: InDesign, Multi Language

This topic has 6 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 6 years, 8 months ago by Kelly Vaughn.

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- July 26, 2017 at 3:19 am #96368
  
  Tim Teichert
  Member
  
  I have made a company presentation document with about 15 pages for my client. Since the company is located in Germany and in the US, I had to create two language versions. BUT the company is growing very fast. So I get regular change requests from either the german and/or the american team, which I have to build into both documents – and which feels like having to do double the work OR to put it the other way around: I constantly think that there must be a easier way to handle it.
  
  All strategies that I came up so far, feel like they have a lot of potential to mess things up (such as having seperate layers for each language). I remember that Ana-Maria Conception talked a few years ago about a feature that aimed at this problem, but I can’t put my finger on it right now.
  
  Does anyone have a suggestion, how I can handle this more efficient?
  
  Many thanks for your appreciated feedback.
  
  Tim
- July 26, 2017 at 6:29 am #96371
  
  Kai Rübsamen
  Member
  
  Hi Tim,
  
  you should go with multiple layers instead of different documents. Second you should work with different sets of styles. One for us, one for de, because of hyphenation. If you plan your project, this isn’t a big deal.
- July 26, 2017 at 8:17 am #96372
  
  Charlotte Mrzygod
  Participant
  
  I can’t recall the post, but I’m thinking this might be a time conditional text would come in handy.
- July 28, 2017 at 6:26 am #96411
  
  Tim Teichert
  Member
  
  Thank you for your replies. I think I’ll with the layers, but I will have to study the conditional text thing.
  
  Thanks, Tim
  - July 28, 2017 at 12:51 pm #96416
    
    Charlotte Mrzygod
    Participant
    
    I haven’t tried it myself yet, but I’ve been meaning to find out more. I think it will be very beneficial for what I do, which is heavy equipment manuals.
- August 2, 2017 at 7:56 pm #96474
  
  Sam Sharpe
  Member
  
  Good luck with language layers on complex documents with multiple contributors on tight deadlines. Different documents every time.
  
  Produce the master and then localise it.
- August 3, 2017 at 10:16 am #96488
  
  Kelly Vaughn
  Participant
  
  I would definitely go with conditional text. Different languages require different amounts of space for the text. If you use conditional text, yo can put the graphics inline as anchored objects, and they will reflow with the text, no matter how ling it is. Set up two conditions: one for English and one for German.
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