Every script has its own rules. We know them all.
Multilingual DTP is not swapping text and exporting a PDF. Every writing system carries its own layout logic — text direction, line-breaking rules, glyph behavior, typographic conventions — and each one reshapes the document in ways a source-language designer never anticipated.
Over 20 years of daily production across 6 major script systems and 200+ language combinations has taught us what each script demands, and where the pitfalls hide.
The challenges every multilingual project faces
Beyond individual scripts, four cross-cutting challenges shape every multilingual DTP project.
Writing systems we work with every day
Six major script families, 200+ language combinations — each with its own layout logic, glyph behavior, and typographic rules.
Latin Scripts
Latin-script languages are the most common in localization — and often the most underestimated from a DTP perspective. The assumption is that if a layout works in English, it will work in French or German. It won't.
Text expansion is the most immediate challenge. German routinely expands 20–35% compared to English, with compound words that can stretch a single term across an entire text frame. French and Spanish expand 15–25%, pushing carefully designed layouts into overflow.
Then there are the typographic details that separate professional multilingual DTP from a rushed job: proper handling of accented characters in Romanian (ș, ț), Vietnamese diacritics stacking above and below the baseline (ệ, ồ, ử), Turkish dotted and dotless i (İ/i vs. I/ı) affecting case conversion, and the Scandinavian characters (å, ä, ö, ø, æ) that require fonts with proper Nordic glyph support.
Working with a script or language that needs special attention?
Tell us about your project — we will confirm exactly how we handle it, which tools we use, and what to expect.