Errors introduced by Adobe applications built-in features
Hi Colleagues!
I just wanted to raise the flag on issues introduced by Adobe graphic design applications in localization of content. My goal is for us to compile them and make a list that we may use either as a checklist, when performing QA tasks, or as part of the guidelines for designers to follow when performing their DTP tasks.
I understand these issues may be different depending on the target language. My expertise is mostly based on Romance languages, and I'll kick off by describing a very annoying thing that happened to me when performing a proofreading job on a PDF coming from an InDesign file in Spanish.
CHANGE IN CAPITALIZATION: It seems there is some automated setting in InDesign by which all text following bullets gets capitalized. As few of you may know, RAE rules expressly condemn the use of such capitalization. Bullets should normally start in lower case and be split apart by a semicolon. At first, I blamed the editor who had previously reviewed the bilingual output from the translator. But, to my surprise, his delivery was fine!
Needless to say that, needing to fix that silly mistake is not only frustrating, but also prone to lead you to the overlooking of true errors you should be taking action on.
Re: Errors introduced by Adobe applications built-in features
Hi H, this is not a common mistake to find. The only way this happens is that the paragraph or bullet has an applied style that generates that. It's weird ... but with styles one can do almost anything. The problem is to find that.
Re: Errors introduced by Adobe applications built-in features
What do you mean by "styles," RodrigoDG? Is there a rule, a common denominator or anything to help us discern when this is about to happen?
Re: Errors introduced by Adobe applications built-in features
Even though Indesign is very powerful and intuitive, when using styles it could be a bit messy. But you can still define a lot of variables of how the text will look by setting styles. The problem is that som styles that work fine in English sometimes do not apply in other languages
Re: Errors introduced by Adobe applications built-in features
Quote:
Originally Posted by
santiagop
Even though Indesign is very powerful and intuitive, when using styles it could be a bit messy. But you can still define a lot of variables of how the text will look by setting styles. The problem is that som styles that work fine in English sometimes do not apply in other languages
But this is something you only see once you open the whole thing in InDesign, right? I mean, I can't tell, I can't predict what's going to happen with a file I uploaded to memSource, can I?
Re: Errors introduced by Adobe applications built-in features
Quote:
Originally Posted by
francot
What do you mean by "styles," RodrigoDG? Is there a rule, a common denominator or anything to help us discern when this is about to happen?
Hi Franco,
You can define different variables in a paragraph. That's a style. :)
Re: Errors introduced by Adobe applications built-in features
I had a similar issue, gentle!
I had a pdf from InDesign in French and for some reason, it hyphenated words in the middle of the paragraph! I've seen it before when the word comes last in a line, you can set it to hyphenate that word instead of jumping into the other line (not my personal favorite) but I've never seen it this way.
Good thing we perform QAs!
Re: Errors introduced by Adobe applications built-in features
Quote:
Originally Posted by
agustinab
I had a similar issue, gentle!
I had a pdf from InDesign in French and for some reason, it hyphenated words in the middle of the paragraph! I've seen it before when the word comes last in a line, you can set it to hyphenate that word instead of jumping into the other line (not my personal favorite) but I've never seen it this way.
Good thing we perform QAs!
That's weird. Maybe the line was manually hyphenated and for some reason when PDF was created the text moved across the paragraph, leaving forced hyphenation in the middle of the line. But I don't believe that could really happened.
Re: Errors introduced by Adobe applications built-in features
Quote:
Originally Posted by
santiagop
That's weird. Maybe the line was manually hyphenated and for some reason when PDF was created the text moved across the paragraph, leaving forced hyphenation in the middle of the line. But I don't believe that could really happened.
The line wasn't manually hyphenated :(
Re: Errors introduced by Adobe applications built-in features
We couldn\'t find a logic explanation to it! Maybe someone else can shed some light! :/
Re: Errors introduced by Adobe applications built-in features
Quote:
Originally Posted by
agustinab
We couldn't find a logic explanation to it! Maybe someone else can shed some light! :/
A couple of years ago I was managing a somewhat large project from English into Russian. The Russian proofreader kept on proposing fixes to the automated hyphenation introduced by the Adobe dictionary in Russian. We got to a point of manually adding line breaks as the application automatically insisted in splitting words the wrong way. Unfortunately, I'm not proficient in that language, and I got to a point where I started to seriously doubt our proofreader skills. Now, and having seen that in languages I manage, I bet I should get back to him and offer an apology. :rolleyes:
In summary, I can confirm that allowing automated hyphenation doesn't seem to be the best practice to follow.
