Catalogue and Brochure Translation

Catalogue translation covers product catalogues, company brochures, trade fair material and price lists. What sets it apart from other translation work is that the text has to go back into a designed page and then to the printer. If you are exporting from Turkey, or preparing Turkish material for a trade fair in Istanbul, send Ziya Translation your file, target languages and print date. Scope and schedule are settled at the quote stage.

What this work covers

• Product catalogues and data sheets
• Company brochures and corporate presentations
• Trade fair catalogues, stand panels, roll-ups and flyers
• Price lists, packaging and label copy

Installation and operating instructions are a different matter. They affect safety and belong under technical translation. If the same content is going on your site, planning it together with website translation keeps the terminology in line.

Product codes, units and data

Mistakes in a catalogue cost most when they involve numbers. A wrong dimension spotted after printing can waste the whole run.

• Product codes: These stay exactly as they are. Tell the translator what any color or material abbreviations inside a code stand for.
• Units: If your market uses inches and pounds, decide whether to convert. The rounding rule should come from you, because you know the tolerances.
• Decimals and thousands: Turkish writes 1,5 where English writes 1.5, and 1.500 in Turkish is 1,500 in English. Mix these up and even a price changes.
• Certification marks: Names such as CE or ISO stay unchanged. List only what the product actually holds.
• Consistent terms: A part should have one name on every page. Send any earlier translated catalogues and a term list can be drawn from them.

Brand tone and slogans

Brochure copy is there to sell, and it loses its effect if it reads like a manual. Slogans and headlines are rarely translated one to one. They are rewritten so that they work the same way in the target language. This is often called transcreation, and it may produce a few options for the brand owner to choose from.

Tell us who the reader is, too. A catalogue for dealers and purchasing managers does not sound like a brochure for consumers. Decide early whether brand and product names will be translated, and check before printing that a name carries no unfortunate meaning in the target language.

Design files and typesetting

New problems appear when the translation goes back into the layout. Plan for these points before work starts.

• Source files: InDesign or Illustrator files make life easier because the text is editable. With only a PDF, extracting and placing text takes more effort. The file type and any typesetting need vary by job and are confirmed at the quote stage.
• Text expansion: Translated copy may run longer than the source, which causes trouble in narrow boxes, tables and short labels beside icons.
• Fonts: Your font has to support the target language. For Turkish, check the letters ş, ğ, ı and İ, because a missing character may be swapped for another font without warning. Cyrillic and Arabic often need a separate typeface.
• Right-to-left layout: In an Arabic catalogue the reading direction changes, so the cover, page order and image placement need rethinking.
• Text in images: Words embedded in photos and graphics do not come out with the text file. List them separately or share the layered image.

How the work runs

1. Files and brief: You share the file, target language and market, and print or fair date.
2. Text extraction: The text to translate is separated out and repeated sections are identified.
3. Terms and tone: Product names, words to leave as they are and style are agreed.
4. Translation: The text is translated and reviewed.
5. Typesetting: The translation goes into the design file.
6. Layout read-through: The translation is read again on the page. Line breaks, shifted text and captions in the wrong box get caught here.
7. Print approval: The final decision is yours.

Working back from the fair date

For a trade fair catalogue, the deadline is not the opening day. If the catalogue must be on your stand, first add up shipping, customs where relevant, printing, design and approval rounds. Translation sits at the start of that chain. Printing in the city where the fair takes place can shorten the shipping step, but agree the file handover with the printer in advance.

If your product range is not final, send the fixed pages first and add changing items later. Fast delivery may be possible depending on volume, language and typesetting needs, but starting translation right before printing raises the risk. If new products must stay under wraps until the fair, corporate clients can ask for an NDA.

Pre-print checklist

• Do product codes, prices and dimensions match the source?
• Do phone numbers, email addresses, web links and QR codes lead to the right language?
• Is any untranslated text, old date or last year's fair information still in the file?
• Are the contents page and page numbers correct?
• Does end-of-line hyphenation follow the rules of the target language?
• Is the final output in the format your printer asked for?

When you need sworn translation instead

Catalogues and brochures are marketing material and do not normally need a notary. If a tender or application requires a document as an official translation, that document calls for sworn translation. Ask the receiving institution exactly what it expects.

What affects price and turnaround

For catalogues the calculation starts with the amount of text and the number of languages. How much is repeated, how technical it is, the source file type, whether you need typesetting, the number of approval rounds and your deadline all change the outcome. Two catalogues with the same page count can differ a lot if one is mostly photos and the other is packed with tables, so a figure given without seeing the file would not help you. Send your catalogue through the quote form or by email with the target language and print date.