typography

Foreign Languages: A copyfitting Conundrum

We are often asked to produce business publications in multiple languages, a trend that reflects the “globalization” of the planet, and the business world in particular. There are many very good translation companies out there, so getting the proper keystrokes — in Hindi, Polish, Korean, or any other language — is not the problem we encounter. Rather, we often face a copyfitting design dilemma caused by the disparate lengths of a given word or phrase in some of the languages. A simple, nine-word sentence in English can become twice, or even three times as long in another language. A three-word headline can turn into a small paragraph. Conversely, in Chinese, for instance, that nine-word sentence can translate into a single symbol, leaving an awful lot of white space on the page.

When we design a publication, we do the English version first, and use it to send out for translations, AFTER IT IS APPROVED. The translations come back, and that’s when the fun starts. The layout that was meant to accommodate words in English must hold either far fewer words and characters, or worse, far more, depending on the language, and oh yes, the layout must stay essentially the same because there are brand standards to follow and we need to be visually consistent through all languages. We can only reduce or enlarge the point size, and make the art bigger or smaller, to a certain extent before it starts to look bad, so each of these projects is a real brain-teaser to solve. German is a really long-worded language, Vietnamese is short. Occasionally, we do an Arabic language that reads backwards (right to left) from our familiar English — those books actually have the spine on the right. Quite a lesson in world culture, to say the least.

The good news is that we’ve been working in multiple languages for so long now that we’re really good at it. So send us your Spanish and Czech, and Mandarin Chinese and French and we’ll create world harmony with your magazines, brochures, websites and eblasts so that your sales pitch and reach can go far beyond the Jersey shore.

design news

Look who's back

After a long hiatus from North American shores, FIAT has reintroduced Italian design to car show rooms, and the open road, near you. What’s the big deal? Well if you’re FIAT owners and auto enthusiasts like we are, seeing Italian design back on the streets is something to get excited about. To get you in the mood, check out this retro advertising for FIAT automobiles. And yes, that’s our own Reid Smith sitting in his 1979 Fiat spider.