What is Desktop Publishing?

Desktop Publishing is the act of laying out (or formatting) content to ensure its visually acceptable, while ensuring there are no anomalies in the way the content is rendered on page/screen. It has been said to be the use of computers and software to create visual displays of ideas and information.

Efficiency of process

Ad Astra can help with the efficiency of the overall Desktop Publishing process. When you’ve had material translated, often what happens, is that the contracted translation company delivers your content, well… translated.

Job done. We then pat ourselves on the back, and have lavish parties including champagne, caviar and tigers. Yea, no. Ok, so that doesn’t really happen.

What often happens though, is that we, the translation company end up receiving a DTP’ed document of the content we’ve just translated… just to check if it’s ok to be published. Following this, what usually happens is that we enter round after round of emails, notes, comments going back and forth between us and the client. The direct costs in this part of the forced process are often unexpected. What’s worse is the unseen costs. Your time, our time, the time your document has not been printed, posted or published.

The results as a result are piecemealed corrections, modifications, confirmations, re-readings, to eventually get the A-OK, the document is “ready” to be published. Something that was possible from the get-go. Not the most efficient process.

Considerations and Next Steps

These aforementioned back and forth usually happen when a client doesn’t have a resource internally who understands the language they’re in the process of laying out. Although the document/manual/etc. can look wonderful, the resource, must sometimes adjust their style guide to accommodate the language, the spacing, etc.

More so, they’re likely unable to accommodate the linguistic side of the layout without a functional knowledge in the given language.

Example: Hyphenation, line breaks, non-breaking spaces, etc., which may lead to errors in the final document. Some maybe not that important, others, however, can be quite severe.

It’s obviously pretty important to have the work done by someone who has working knowledge of the target language, or you may end up in the cycle of email, comment, correction, repeat. Ad Astra can help with this.