FAQ: What Is Automatic File Formatting in Redokun?

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When customers explore our translation management platform, they often run into terms they’re not familiar with. Automatic file formatting is one of the features that regularly prompts questions.

And I totally get why—it sounds technical, but once you understand what it does, you’ll see how much time and effort it saves.

Let me explain.

Why Is Formatting a Big Deal in Translation?

When you translate a document—whether it’s a PowerPoint, InDesign file, Word doc, or something else—you’re not just replacing words. You also need to make sure the layout still looks the same in the translated version.

Here’s what many marketers typically do today:

Extract the text from the file to Word or Excel
Send the original document and extracted content to translators
Collect the translated texts
Copy and paste the translations back into a cloned version of the original file

This process is time-consuming and error-prone. It’s easy to paste the wrong content or accidentally break the design or layout.

What Does Automatic File Formatting Do?

With Redokun’s automatic formatting feature, you can:

Upload your original document (e.g., InDesign, PowerPoint, Word)
Translate the content directly in the platform
Download a fully formatted file in the same format, layout intact

It looks just like the original—same formatting, spacing, slide layouts, images and text boxes—just in a new language and in the same file format! That means no more copy-pasting or fixing broken text boxes. All you need to do is to make small tweaks to adjust the format.

Key Benefits of Automatic File Formatting

If you translate content regularly, you already know that translated text rarely matches the original length. For example, a sentence in English might expand significantly in German or shrink in Chinese. This often breaks the layout—text may overflow, shift, or overlap with other design elements.

Without automatic formatting, someone has to manually go in and fix everything. That’s not only tedious—it also introduces more opportunities for mistakes.

With Redokun, you can export the translated file in the same file type and format. For example, if you want to translate an InDesign file, you can upload your InDesign file directly to Redokun, translate the texts into the target languages, and download an InDesign file with translated texts. This means that, as soon as the translation is done, you just download the file—and it’s ready to use, or you may only need very minimal tweaks to start using the document. (Note though that it is important to ensure that you prepare your original file in a way that it is easy to accommodate translated texts.)

The key benefits:

No broken layouts from text expansion or contraction
No copy-paste errors or misplaced content
No design rework—you get files in the right file type and format, and with very minimal adjustment, they are ready to be published
Faster turnaround time for translated content

It’s especially useful for:

Product sheets and brochures
Sales and marketing presentations
Training manuals and internal documentation

What File Types Are Supported?

Redokun supports the most common file types used for business and marketing materials, including:

PowerPoint (PPTX)
Word (DOCX)
InDesign (IDML)
Excel (XLSX)

See the entire list of supported file types here.

So whether you’re working on product sheets, training decks, sales presentations, or internal documents, automatic formatting helps your layout stay consistent and clean.

Reduce manual formatting with automatic file formatting

To put it simply, you don’t have to touch the formatting after translating your file. That means:

No time spent fixing broken layouts
No design headaches
No delays in sending or publishing your content
Saying goodbye to copy and paste!

You just translate, download, make small tweaks and move on. Easy!

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If you're wondering how this feature would work with your specific files or workflow, just reach out to me from here. I’d be happy to walk you through it or show you an example.

Until next time,

Lynn

Article by

Lynn Yuen

Lynn Yuen est une Customer Success Manager expérimentée, qui aide les clients à maximiser la valeur de la plateforme. Grâce à son expertise en matière de démonstration de produits, d'assistance personnalisée et de résolution des problèmes techniques, Lynn veille à ce que chaque client atteigne ses objectifs de manière efficace.

Son approche axée sur les solutions et sa passion pour la satisfaction des clients font d'elle une ressource inestimable pour les entreprises qui gèrent des flux de travail de traduction multilingue.