Fonts Fun

Desktop Publishers will sympathize with me on this topic. Fonts are a big problem when translated materials are desktop published. It is important to find out what platform the original document was created on: MAC or Windows, and then if there are compatible fonts for that language. Most Western European languages have fonts that are built into most of the software programs, and are compatible with both platforms. True Type Fonts (TTF) are a universal font type that you can install on both MAC and Windows. There are certain groups of fonts that are specific for Adobe's software, checkout the list at: Adobe Fonts

Asian languages have various fonts that are specific to each language based on the character type. For example: PMing Liu (包含鋰離子電池) for Traditional Chinese, and Sim Sun (包含锂离子电池) for Simplified Chinese. They may look similar to the common eye, but an expert desktop publisher will know that there is a difference, and you don't want your readers reading the wrong thing. Therefore, you can have your content translated correctly, but if you use the wrong fonts then it's a complete waste of time and money. On a side note, as I was writing this post, a client sent me an email asking what fonts I used for Arabic, Chinese, Polish, and Russian. What a coincidence since I was blogging about the importance of knowing and having the correct fonts for translated content.