7 Jun /18

Our New Interactive Digital Brochure Is Coming!

Our New Interactive Digital Brochure Is Coming! - EVS Translations
Our New Interactive Digital Brochure Is Coming! – EVS Translations

Ready for its UK release on Friday 15 June, EVS Translations has updated its company brochure, which is available in UK English, US English, Bulgarian and German. In line with the new brand colours and design themes, this time it also comes in an interactive digital format to create a pleasing visual experience. It’s a great overview of EVS Translations’ core values and the translation services it delivers across all print and digital platforms. Our very own marketing and desktop publishing teams worked tirelessly to produce fresh content in a beautiful interactive design so, as we get ready for the launch, it’s exciting to see everyone’s efforts there on the page!

Many of our international clients come to us for brochures, posters and flyers in anywhere up to 40 languages per order, so our team is well versed on creating materials that are localised and which come with a sharp presentation. Here are our top tips for you…

5 tips for creating global marketing assets

Going digital – great for the environment, great for SEO

Why did EVS Translations decide to create an interactive digital brochure? Our Head of Marketing, who managed the entire production process explains: “Sustainability was an important topic in the forefront of our minds. And you can help the environment while gaining other benefits: the brochure can easily be updated at any point without wasted printing costs. SEO is another factor. When you upload the digital PDF to your website, the content is readable from search engines – this is good for the visibility of your site“.

Writing with the final layout in mind

If you translate English text into German, the text length will expand. For English into Chinese, it will contract because just one or two Chinese characters form one word. A designer can work on the problem of not enough space, or too much white space on the page, but you may need a degree of flexibility on the placement of images and headings. Our UK marketing manager explains: “we got the finished German version and then started on the UK version. Even when I felt I’d written a lot, we were still short on text compared to the German version! So it was partly a task to write great content but also making sure it all fit into a nice, uniform layout”.

Localise for authentic content

We have a UK brochure and a US brochure. The decision was to make 2 separate versions that suited the different markets. It wasn’t simply a case of writing the UK English and then changing those “z” spellings (‘organized’, ‘prioritize’) to ‘s’ spellings! Think about your audience, and what will be authentic for them. European French and Canadian French is another example of working with similar languages but going the extra length to create credibility for the individual markets.

Your design files

When partnering with a language services provider for translation, give them the native files your original brochure was made in. If it was made in InDesign, send your provider the InDesign package. Asking someone to create a high-quality brochure from a PDF is just going to result in low quality. Make sure you know where this package is or that you can get this from your design agency easily. What’s more, many brochures will include graphic images like pie charts. These images may be designed then placed in the brochure content, but if your provider doesn’t get the original image from you, information contained in the graphic can’t be edited. There are ways around this, but for a high-quality finish, send your provider the original images.

Translation style guides and proper briefings

Have you got a company style guide? Your business may have rules like certain brand terms that must stay in English or product names that should be transliterated for languages such as Japanese or Arabic. Sit down with your team and decide the ‘rules’ or style for your content. If you forge ahead with translation and then realise there were specific English terms to preserve or a specific ‘tone of voice’ that should have been explained to the translation team, you may end up with additional costs to correct everything.