Desktop Publishing Industry

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Value of Our DTP Services

Value of Our DTP Services

At iLen, we have a stable and professional in-house DTP service team. No matter how complex your project – with complicated instructions, chaotic document structure, long project lifecycle or even translation problems – we can provide the following value-added service:

  • We will not blindly follow confusing steps and modification instructions but will uphold a high sense of responsibility, use professional skills and experience to help customers clarify their ideas and analyze problems, then put forward reasonable suggestions.
  • For large DTP projects, we will perform tracking management and build specialized documents to record clients' instructions and responses to ensure quality and consistency for future projects.
  • We will help clients solve technical problems and be willing to share solutions with clients' other suppliers.
  • We will fully consider and help to minimize each client's overall project costs, not just our subcontracting part.
  • With a wealth of localization experience, we can help clients find potential translation problems.

All these value-added services require strong teamwork, excellent project management, keen insight, deep understanding of text, and extensive localization experience. Although this greatly increases our own project costs, these value-added services are also the biggest reason why iLen's DTP team stands out from many DTP service providers and freelancers.

Project Background

This project was an English PDF of a financial data report manual with a total of 600 pages. We were asked to recreate the first 400 pages in InDesign and then link, page by page, the last 200 appendix pages to the INDD file we had created, and finally typeset the documents in 4 languages. Because of the large file size and tight delivery deadline, the client had to assign the multilingual typesetting tasks to different suppliers.

  • Challenges
  • Solutions
  • Result

  • There was a lot of data and many tables and pages for the recreation task. Because of the large file size and tight deadlines, we had to split the task up and assign the different parts to multiple DTPers. A standardized template was needed to ensure the file settings would be the same as each other. Without this, there would have been problems merging the files and would have doubled the hours needed. Therefore, we needed to consider the recreation in the first step and the typesetting in the second step when creating the template.
  • The last 200 pages of the appendix were provided after the creation of the main document template. The client asked us to merge them directly with the main document, but the formatting and color scheme of the appendix were different from the main document.
  • The text margins of each page were inconsistent, and the text on the left was too close to the edge, which would affect the binding.
  • Before the start of the project, we assigned a senior engineer who was familiar with the project to optimize the old template, then held a kick-off meeting to share the optimized template, summarize the problems during previous projects, sort out the best production process, and ensure that the production plan of all participants was consistent.
  • An online work group was established to share solutions and discuss processing methods.
  • We arranged a senior engineer to spend nearly 5 hours on testing and found a way to unify the size, formatting and color scheme of the appendix with the main document. Then we documented the solution and sent it to the client in a timely manner so that they could share it with their other typesetting suppliers. This saved a lot of time for the client and their suppliers.
  • We informed the client of the potential problems and solutions we had found, such as the left text needing to be adjusted to avoid binding problems, the client's translator had mistakenly deleted symbols, etc. We also reminded the client's other typesetting suppliers of these potential quality problems.
  • After the project, we collected all the problems encountered by every producer in the production process and held a project summary meeting to discuss, study and record the relevant solutions to ensure we would be well prepared for future projects.

We proactively helped the client solve various problems, met their needs as fully as possible, and summarized and shared our expertise. We delivered every project with a tight schedule on time, which meant iLen gained the trust of the client and became the client's preferred DTP service provider.
Project Background

This was an update project that involved 23 languages. The client initially sent an English redlined file with just a few updates. When the project started, the client sent the translated versions in various languages. Most of the versions only had a few updates like the English source file, but in some languages, a lot of revisions were marked. After comparing the old and new English source files, we found that there were a lot of updates that had not been marked. However, due to the tight deadline, the client still asked us to continue the work with the existing marked files. During the updating process, we found even more problems, such as the translation not matching the updated text, new text inserted incorrectly, and so on. It seemed that many of the external linguists and QA personnel had misunderstood the project instructions, which led to various translation issues. The client asked us to list all the problems during updating process and report instead of asking the linguists to retranslate according to the instructions.

  • Challenges
  • Solutions
  • Result

  • The client changed project managers, and the new one didn't understand the overall situation. We had to repeatedly explain and get confirmation about various issues.
  • The client's QA team didn't check the latest marked file carefully, resulting in a lot of omissions and errors.
  • Some of the client's translators didn't follow the project instructions or provide the required translation. Some linguists failed to read the updated source text and provided wrong translations. And some linguists raised queries rather than providing translations or didn't respond to questions raised by QA personnel. In short, there were a variety of translation problems.
  • We documented the details of each problem one by one with relevant screenshots to explain the situation to the client, and provided reasonable suggestions based on the client's instructions, reference files and existing files.
  • We recorded each of the client's instructions and replies in a specialized document for tracking management.
  • For the questions raised by the client's QA personnel, we removed the repeated and mismarked comments in all languages, then merged the rest into the latest source PDF, and confirmed the final QA comments with the client. Finally we modified all languages uniformly to prevent mistakes and omissions.
  • For the translation problems, we checked each language change carefully against the latest EN source, including the accuracy of the translation and its position. Then we marked the wrong comments one by one in the modified target languages and attached the client's instructions to make it easier for the linguists to understand. We then sent it back to the client's linguists to re-check and provide the correct translations.
  • We held group meetings periodically to analyze the problems we had found and to determine the final solution. Then we divided up the work and cooperated closely. At the same time, we established an online discussion group to share and communicate in real time.

iLen's rigorous quality assurance model requires us to focus on communication and teamwork from the beginning of the project, which ensures the project is implemented effectively. Faced with a variety of complex problems, we discover and analyze, implement solutions, and help the client avoid potential translation problems. This ensures successful completion of the project and earns high praise from our clients.
Standardized Pre-translation Preparation Example

Standardizing the format of source documents can save on project costs and facilitate subsequent translation and typesetting steps. It is an indispensable part of pre-translation preparation. Pre-translation preparation is usually divided into two categories. The first is PDF recreation, in which clients provide PDF documents and we need to recreate them as Word or InDesign files for translation and then typesetting. The other is pre-translation preparation of editable Word/InDesign source files provided by clients, for which we mainly need to check for redundant soft and hard returns in the files, clean up redundant formats to avoid excessive tags affecting translation accuracy, and correct various format problems affecting the efficiency of subsequent typesetting.

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