Growing up in San Francisco, seeing public transportation signs in multiple languages is commonplace. Take the example below.
I never paid much mind to these type of signs. San Francisco was home. Getting from point A to point B required little to no thinking. Whether it be the 67, 49, or 24, it made no difference to me. Bus numbers were merely numerical representations of their destinations – Bernal Heights, the Mission, and Divis.
However, something changed. I moved to Taiwan and learned Chinese.
For three years I toiled attempting to make my way out of the labyrinth that is Chinese. My reward? Being able to read Chinese on public transportation signs! What could be more exhilarating than reading your bus has moved locations because of a parade?
Whether it be on the bus or waiting at the bus stop, there were numerous chances to practice my Chinese. Yet, something was missing…
There were no maps in Chinese! And from this my DTP project was birthed.
Photoshop or InDesign?
My first task was to find the content I would localize. Originally, I was between localizing the Muni Metro Map and the Bay Area Rapid Transit Map (BART).
I decided to go with the BART map because it has stops at both the San Francisco and Oakland International Airports and thus would be exposed to more Chinese speakers. Now how would I localize it into Chinese? I knew that I could either use Adobe Photoshop or Adobe InDesign. Seeing that my project would predominantly involve text formatting between languages, I knew InDesign would be the wisest choice. This is because InDesign is supported by most CAT tools. Going with Photoshop would require the creation of a picture list and thus lengthen the time needed for localization.
Once I made my decision to use InDesign, I found a PDF version of the BART map and then it was converted to an INDD file by my professor.
Simplified Chinese or Traditional Chinese?
The Chinese characters seen in San Francisco’s Chinatown, and all American Chinatowns for that matter, are Traditional Chinese characters. There are two reasons for this:
- Simplified Chinese characters were standardized in the Mainland in the 1950s. Chinese immigrants started coming to the US in the early 1800s and at that time Chinese predominantly used Traditional characters.
- Up until the past few decades, most Chinese immigrants to the US came from Hong Kong or Taiwan. Both of these regions use Traditional Chinese characters.
From this perspective, it would make sense for me to localize using Traditional Characters. However, there’s no denying the influx of tourists coming from Mainland China – a country that solely uses Simplified Chinese. In reality, I would seek clarification from BART as to which type of Chinese characters should be used. Since this a fictional project, and I lived in Taiwan, I decided to go with Traditional characters.
Time to localize!
Clean up
Before beginning the translation, a clean up of the INDD file was in order. Fortunately, the conversion from PDF to INDD went smoothly. However, there were some issues that I needed to touch up before uploading the file to a CAT tool. Specifically, many of the text frames included multiple lines of text. As this is a map with train stations, this could cause confusion for the translator. If the translator were to upload the INDD file as is, they would see multiple train station names within one segment in their CAT tool.
Aside from the issue with multiple stations within one text frame, I needed to address issues regarding the overall formatting of the text frames.
As you can see the individual letters for the trains were all clumped together in one text frame. There also were the name of two train stops in the text frame as well. Formatting the letters to match the picture on the right would be a nightmare. In order to overcome this formatting issue, I created individual text frames for each letter and each train stop.
typeface
When originally opening up the INDD file, a notification appeared informing me that the file contained fonts that were currently unavailable. It did not mention what the original typeface was, so I did some research online and found an article titled: “Why the Same Three Typefaces Are Used In Almost Every Airport.” Among the typefaces mentioned was one called “Frutiger.” It looked very similar to the one found in the BART map. I then searched “Frutiger” and “BART map” together and it led me to a blog of a transit planner for Muni. There, I found a BART map recreated by him, along with the following sentence: “Along with other elements of the BART brand, this map features its official typeface: Frutiger.” Bingo! Frutiger!
The issue then was seeing if this typeface worked with Chinese characters. In short, it didn’t. As an alternative, I replaced all the Times New Roman (default typeface) with Frutiger to see its different font weights. There were just two – Regular and Bold. Looking in the Chinese typefaces, I did my best to find something that matched closely with Frutiger and offered different weights. I settled with PingFang HK.
TRANSlation
Once creating text boxes for all the individual stops and other information on the map, I was ready to translate using a CAT tool. I used Memsource to carry out the translation. Not being a native speaker of Chinese, I used MT with post-editing and then had a native speaker check my work. I was originally worried about the translations of the cities, but I found a BART information guide in Chinese that included the names of all cities in Chinese (click here to see the guide). The great thing about Chinese is that there is minimal text expansion. While some of the names of the cities did expand, it never compromised the overall format of the map.
typeface ambiguity
Given that the localized BART map would include both English and Chinese – I wouldn’t be translating proper nouns into Chinese – I wasn’t sure if I needed the English to use PingFang HK as well. Most likely, I would have to ask the client if they’d want conformity throughout the map, or would a combination of Frutiger for English and PingFang HK for Chinese be ok. I went with the latter option.
Going with two fonts led to some slight formatting issues. Specifically, the numbers for the train stops did not line up well. I rectified this by adjusting the kerning.
Final Thoughts
Overall, localizing the BART map into Chinese was a smooth process. This was due in large part to the pre-translation work that I did from the onset of the project. Once the formatting and text frames were all where they needed to be, it was just a matter of completing the translation and pasting the Chinese into the target language INDD file. In the future, BART could use this file as a template for other languages.
Lessons learned
- Pre-translation cleanup is crucial!
- Clarify font issues with the client ASAP
- Spend some time researching the market you’re localizing for
- Using InDesign to localize is fun!
Deliverables
Click here to see the PDF of the English BART map
Click here to see the PDF of the localized Traditional Chinese BART map
