DTP Languages We Support: Multilingual Desktop Publishing in Every Major Script

Choosing a DTP partner starts with one question: can they actually typeset my language? The DTP languages we support cover right-to-left scripts, CJK languages, Indic scripts, Southeast Asian scripts, and the full range of European Latin, Cyrillic and Greek languages. Our team formats translated content in native script, so your brochures, manuals, books and presentations look as polished in Arabic, Japanese or Tamil as they do in the original.

Why DTP Language Support Is More Than Swapping Fonts

Translated text rarely behaves like the source text. A German paragraph runs longer than its English version. Arabic reads right to left and mirrors the entire layout. Chinese and Japanese follow different line-breaking rules. Hindi builds conjunct characters that break if the wrong font or text engine is used.

Good multilingual DTP means handling all of this correctly: script-aware text engines, the right fonts, proper hyphenation and line-breaking, text expansion and contraction, and a final check by people who can read the language. That is what “language support” should mean, and it is how we approach every file.

DTP Languages by Script Family

Below are the main language groups we typeset. If your language is not listed, see the section further down, because we regularly take on additional languages.

Right-to-Left (RTL) Languages

Arabic, Urdu, Persian (Farsi), Dari, Hebrew, Pashto, Sindhi, Kurdish (Sorani), Uyghur.

RTL typesetting involves mirrored layouts, bidirectional text (numbers, brand names and Latin text inside RTL sentences), correct letter shaping and joining, diacritics, and RTL-aware tables, headers and page numbering. Learn more on our RTL DTP Services page.

CJK Languages: Chinese, Japanese and Korean

Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Japanese, Korean.

CJK DTP calls for correct font selection per language and region, line-breaking and punctuation rules, mixed-script spacing, vertical text where required, and careful handling of Latin text and numerals. See our dedicated pages for CJK DTP Services, Chinese DTP Services, Japanese DTP Services and Korean DTP Services.

Indic Languages

Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, Bengali, Assamese, Gujarati, Punjabi (Gurmukhi), Odia, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Sinhala.

Indic scripts rely on conjuncts, vowel signs that reorder around consonants, and complex shaping. We use the correct text engine and Unicode-compliant fonts so characters render properly in print and on screen. Details are on our Indic DTP Services page.

Southeast Asian Languages

Thai, Vietnamese, Khmer, Lao, Burmese (Myanmar), Indonesian, Malay, Filipino (Tagalog).

Thai, Khmer, Lao and Burmese are written without spaces between words, so line breaking needs script-aware handling. Vietnamese needs stacked diacritics to stay legible at every size.

European Languages (Latin Script)

French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian, Croatian, Turkish and more.

The challenge here is text expansion, accented characters, language-specific hyphenation, and correct quotation marks and punctuation conventions for each market.

Cyrillic and Greek Languages

Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Macedonian, Kazakh, Greek.

We set these with proper typography, matching font families and correct hyphenation so the result reads naturally, not like a font substitution.

Other Scripts and Languages

Hebrew, Armenian, Georgian, Amharic, Swahili and other African, Caucasian and Central Asian languages are available on request.

What We Check on Every Language

Regardless of script, our DTP process covers the same core quality points:

• Fonts and glyph coverage: correct, licensed fonts that contain every character your text needs, with a brand-matched alternative when the original typeface does not support the language.
• Text engine and shaping: the right composer, such as the World-Ready or South Asian engines in InDesign, so characters join and reorder correctly.
• Text expansion and contraction: layouts adjusted so longer or shorter translations still fit.
• Hyphenation and line breaking: language-specific rules applied, not a single default.
• Punctuation, numerals and quotation marks: local conventions rather than imported English ones.
• Direction and mirroring: RTL layouts, tables, bullets, page numbers and icons set correctly.
• Linguistic review of the final layout: a reader of the language checks the finished pages, because many errors only show up in context.

File Formats and Software We Work In

We typeset your languages in the tools your team already uses, including Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and PDF. You receive print-ready files, editable source files, or both. If you need help with a specific workflow, see our pages on InDesign DTP Services, Word & PowerPoint DTP Services and PDF to InDesign Conversion Services.

Typical Projects by Language

Our language coverage supports work such as:

• Product manuals, user guides and technical documentation
• Brochures, catalogs and marketing collateral
• Books, e-books and educational content (see Book DTP & Typesetting Services)
• Annual reports, presentations and corporate documents
• Packaging, labels and signage artwork
• Scanned or image-based files that need multilingual OCR before layout

Have a mix of languages in one project? We routinely handle multi-language files, including bilingual layouts such as English with Arabic, or English with Japanese.

Don’t See Your Language Listed?

The list above shows our most requested DTP languages, not a limit. If you need a language or script that is not mentioned, send us a sample and your target language. We will confirm whether we can typeset it and what the workflow would look like before you commit to anything.

Ask About Your Language

With or Without Source Files

Whether you send native InDesign or Word files, or only a PDF or printed sample, we can work with what you have. Read how this affects timelines and cost on our page about multilingual typesetting with or without source files.

Why Teams Choose Global Digital DTP for Language Support

• Native-script specialists: designers who work in non-Latin scripts every day, not generalists who experiment on your file.
• One partner for many languages: consistent layouts across every language version, which saves coordination time for localization and marketing teams.
• Built for agencies and in-house teams: easy to plug into an existing translation workflow as an outsourced DTP partner (see DTP Outsourcing Services).
• Quality checks you can see: font checks, layout checks and a final review before delivery.

Want to know more about who we are? Visit our About Us page, or explore all of our Multilingual DTP capabilities.

Frequently Asked Questions About DTP Languages