During the traditional translation process, the translators may face a lot of difficulties when translating books with complex page layout, because the content of the books is not continuous text stream as ordinary books, but the one with many literal blocks. According to people’s traditional experience and survey, the translators used to adopt the following strategy when dealing such books:

copy the original book number the literal block on each page translate in Word and add page no. and serial no. to each text delivery copy and paste the text to the typesetting files according to the page no. and serial no. sampling and proofreading send to press

During such process flow, step , and would take a lot of time. Especially step , it takes a time equaling to or even more than the actual time that translation needs.

With the coming of digital era, some translators started to use PDF files to translate such projects. The steps are as follows:

convert the PDF into Word file translate in Word and replace the original text copy and paste the text to the typesetting files according to the Word file sampling and proofreading send to press

During such process flow, step and can greatly improve work efficiency as they are computerized. However, the DTP process would take a lot of time, so the improvement of overall efficiency is limited. Even though computer-aided tools (CAT) are used to optimize step , the other steps still takes a lot of time and energy.

When I received such project, I searched on the internet and found that: Some translators use the CAT tool Déjà Vu X (the following abbreviated as DVX) to optimize the translation process.

First of all, the translator should contact the client to confirm the book is produced by InDesign typesetting software of Adobe company, so as to export the published file to the file format that the CAT translation tool can accept by using InDesign directly, then create a project file for translation.

export the text format that DVC can accept from InDesign file translate and proofread in the DVX file export the translation results from DVX import the translation results into InDesign file to finish most of the DTP tasks automatically sampling and proofreading send to press

During the process, after import in step , the literal blocks of the target text will parallel themselves to the original format automatically and fill into the original layout. The illustrations need not to be implanted again at all; only appropriate adjustment of the fonts and font is needed to finish the DTP of the target text directly. Therefore, the time that is needed by traditional DTP can be minimized so that there will be enough time left for the translator to translate thus ensure quality.

Adoption of the above translation process needs the following three tools:

InDesign: a DTP software of Adobe Company. The file format cannot be read by any kind of computer-aided software directly, so we need to convert the text in the file into a kind of intermediary format (for export) when translating, and then import to replace the source text after translation.

Déjà Vu X: a CAT software produced by Atril Company. The deployment of this CAT software is quite easy with clear TM and TDB, and it also supports advanced project management function.

Adobe Acrobat Reader: used to read and print the PDF file generated by InDesign DPT for the translator’s reference

We can see from the above introduction and analysis of translation procedure that the procedure design is very important in translating publications with complex layout. For those projects, the simple translation job is only part of the whole procedure. In the information age, only if the translators comprehend comprehensive knowledge and skills can they optimize each link of the entire work.

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