Why InDesign files need a plan
InDesign holds the text inside a layout: frames, styles, images, parent pages. Copying the text into Word, translating it and pasting it back is slow and error-prone, and French usually runs longer than English, so it will not fit where the English did. Translating the InDesign file itself avoids the first problem, and the second still needs the layout work in steps 2 and 4. Otherwise, it is often a designer who fixes French they cannot read, the night before printing.
Step 1. Send the right file format
Translation tools read InDesign through its interchange formats. Send the IDML file (File > Save As or Export > InDesign Markup), or a full package (see step 5). A PDF alone can be translated, but the layout then has to be rebuilt by hand.
Step 2. Prepare the document for translation
- Use paragraph and character styles rather than manual formatting; the translation inherits them.
- Keep each block of text in one threaded story instead of many small frames, so sentences are not split.
- Avoid line breaks and spaces used to position text; they turn into broken sentences.
- Leave room for expansion: frames that fit the English exactly will overflow in French.
Step 3. Decide what to do with the images
Text inside images, such as labels on a diagram or words in a screenshot, is not in the InDesign text. Decide which images need translating and send their editable sources (AI, PSD, or the native application file).
Step 4. Decide who does the final layout
Someone has to fix the frames that overflow, the hyphenation and the line breaks in French. It can be your designer, with the translated file, or the translation provider, who then returns a print-ready file. Agree on it before the project starts, so nobody assumes the other one is doing it.
Step 5. Send a complete package
Use File > Package in InDesign. It gathers the document, the fonts and the linked images in one folder, so the translated file opens with nothing missing. Missing fonts are a frequent reason a translated file looks different from the original.
Step 6. Check the final layout, and keep the changes
Review the translated layout in context: text that overflows, lines that break badly, a caption separated from its image. Any change made at this stage should also go back into the translation memory and the term base, so the next version of the document starts from the corrected text.
When the document changes after translation
Send the new file with a note of what changed. The translation memory keeps the text that hasn’t moved, so the work goes to the changes and to the frames they disturb.
Common questions
Can I open a Word file in InDesign? You can place Word text into a layout, but that doesn’t bring a translated layout back. For translation, work from the InDesign file.
Can an AI draft do this? A draft can translate the text. A person still has to check the terms and the layout.
Same terms, every layout
A brochure and the report behind it should use the same terms.
Are your translations consistent? Get a free terminology check.