DTP services: Did you know…?
…that while there are a number of distinct spoken Chinese languages or dialects, they are written and can be mutually understood using one of two writing systems – Simplified or Traditional. (The determination of which writing system to use is based on the geographic locale of the target audience.)
…that both forms of written Chinese use 2 different types of commas – the regular comma, used to separate clauses or to indicate a pause within a sentence, and the enumeration comma, used to separate list items.
…that Chinese, Japanese and Thai are all written “scriptio continua,” essentially meaning with no spacing between the words.
…that ALL nouns begin with a capital letter in German, not just proper nouns as in English.
…that although Arabic and Farsi are Right-to-Left languages, numerals are written Left-to-Right.
…that while English uses “Arabic” numerals (1,2,3…), Arabic actually uses a different numeral set, commonly referred to as Eastern Arabic, Arabic-Indic, or “Hindi” (as per the Options settings in Microsoft Office).
…that although the US and UK use a period (or “full stop”) as a decimal separator, most European countries use a comma. And while the US uses a comma as the thousands separator within large numbers, some countries use a period, while still others use a space.
…that in European French, a space is required before all punctuation marks comprised of two or more parts or symbols, such as a colon, semi-colon, question mark or exclamation point. (Like this !)
…that the US is one of the only counties where dates are expressed in the order of Month Day Year (or mm/dd/yyyy). Most European countries use Day Month Year instead, while Year Month Day is commonly used in Asia.
But more importantly – does the typesetter who handles your foreign language needs also know these things?
Trust your DTP requirements to someone who knows!
To submit a request for a firm, no-obligation price quote, please click here. You can then attach a copy of the file you would like to have translated. Please remember to specify the language or languages needed. If the file size is too large to send via email, please call or email us your requirements and we will provide information on how to upload your document using WeTransfer.
References will gladly be supplied upon request, so that you may personally verify our clients’ satisfaction with our performance and confidence in our services.
If you are under a tight deadline, please inquire about rush service options for your project. We welcome all inquiries, and look forward to working with you.