Foliage Solutions provides multilingual desktop publishing for translation companies and LSPs, across 31+ formats, built around a single standard: publication-ready delivery on the first handback, in every language a document needs to exist in. This article covers what that actually includes, format by format and service by service, for anyone evaluating whether our coverage matches what a specific project needs.
Format range
Format coverage spans InDesign, FrameMaker, QuarkXPress, PowerPoint, and e-learning formats including Articulate Storyline, Adobe Captivate, and SCORM packages. Rather than splitting a batch across multiple vendors by format, which means multiple onboarding conversations, multiple sets of file specifications, and multiple invoices to reconcile, one team handles the full range.
This matters most for LSPs whose project mix genuinely spans several formats within the same client relationship, a technical manual in FrameMaker one month, a marketing brochure in InDesign the next, an e-learning module after that. Consolidating format coverage under one vendor keeps file handling standards and quality expectations consistent across all of them, rather than varying by which specialist happened to handle a given format.
Each format carries its own specific risks that a generalist process misses. InDesign work needs to account for text expansion and reflow across languages. FrameMaker technical documentation often includes conditional text and cross-references that need careful handling through translation. PowerPoint presentations fail differently again, with fixed text boxes and embedded charts creating their own specific problems. E-learning formats add interactivity and timed elements on top of everything a static document has to handle. Covering the format range means covering the specific failure modes for each one, not applying a single generic process across all of them.
File preparation and OCR
File preparation includes PDF and OCR-to-Word conversion, built for translation-ready output rather than simple readability. A scanned document converted by a consumer OCR tool might look correct to a human reader while breaking the segmentation a CAT tool depends on for accurate translation memory matching. Our OCR process is built specifically to avoid that gap, checking structural accuracy, table integrity, and formatting preservation before a converted file ever reaches a translator.
This is often the entry point of a multilingual project, and getting it wrong at this stage creates problems that compound through every later step. A structurally sound OCR conversion protects the translation memory value that a client expects to build up over years of ongoing work together. This work covers tables specifically, since scanned tables are the single most common failure point in generic OCR conversion, along with mixed-script documents that require an OCR engine capable of handling each script correctly rather than defaulting to Latin-only recognition.
PDF remediation
PDF remediation is a core service, not an add-on: accessibility work that survives translation, tested against WCAG 2.1 AA and PDF/UA standards, across every target language a document needs. A PDF remediated for accessibility in its source language does not automatically stay compliant once translated, because the accessibility structure, language tags, reading order, alt text, sits in a separate layer from the visible text that translation changes.
For LSPs serving clients with EU market exposure, this has become a more pressing requirement since the European Accessibility Act came into force in 2025. We handle remediation as part of the same workflow as translation and layout, not as a separate service requiring a second vendor relationship. Every remediated file comes with documentation, an accessibility conformance summary, a language tagging log, and an alt text inventory per language, so the compliance claim is backed by evidence rather than asserted.
CAT-tool-native file handling
Every file we prepare is built to round-trip cleanly through the CAT tools LSPs actually use: Trados, memoQ, Phrase, Smartling, XTM, and Wordfast. This protects the translation memory asset a client builds over the course of an ongoing relationship, since a file that corrupts tag structure during preparation can quietly degrade fuzzy match rates on projects well after the original file was delivered.
This is a substantial enough topic that we cover it separately in detail elsewhere, including what genuine compliance requires beyond a general compatibility claim. The short version here: compatibility is tested against named tools, not assumed from general software familiarity.
The Clean Delivery standard
Every project runs against the same standard regardless of format or service: format range matched to what the batch actually requires, CAT-tool-native file handling that protects translation memory, and delivery that does not require a revision cycle before it reaches your client. Publication-ready on the first handback is the measurable target, not an aspiration stated in a sales conversation.
This standard applies the same way whether the project is a single InDesign brochure or a multi-format batch spanning five different file types delivered across three languages at once.
Who this is built for
Foliage works exclusively with translation companies and LSPs, not directly with end clients and not as a general design studio that happens to accept translation-adjacent work. That exclusivity shapes every part of how we operate: format decisions, file-checking processes, and delivery standards are all built around what a translation-industry workflow specifically requires, not adapted from general design or publishing work after the fact.
The best fit is a mid-size LSP handling medical, technical, or otherwise complex multilingual content at real volume, valuing reliability and a repeatable process over the lowest available invoice rate. A small, occasional project with simple formatting needs may not need the depth of process we bring. A regular pipeline of complex, multi-format, multi-language work is where the standard actually pays for itself.
This fit works both directions. An LSP evaluating us should be asking whether their volume and complexity actually justify a specialist relationship over a generalist one, the same way we ask whether a prospective client’s needs genuinely match what we are built to deliver. A mismatch in either direction tends to produce a strained relationship rather than a good one.
Coverage across time zones
We run CET business hours alongside dedicated US timezone coverage, a combination built specifically for teams managing multilingual production across both regions. For an LSP with clients or internal teams spanning the Atlantic, this means the gap between a question being asked and a question being answered does not depend on which side of the ocean the question originated.
This coverage was not an incidental feature added after the fact. It came directly from client feedback about the actual cost of a timezone gap: a same-day fix request that becomes a next-morning response, stretching a project timeline in a way that has nothing to do with the actual work involved and everything to do with when someone was available to look at it.
What a first project typically looks like
A new relationship usually starts with a single representative file rather than a full production commitment, matching the same one-project evaluation approach we recommend Vendor Managers use with any new vendor. This gives both sides a real, low-risk look at how the working relationship actually functions before committing ongoing volume.
File intake covers the specifics that shape the rest of the project: which formats are involved, which CAT tool needs to be supported, whether accessibility requirements apply, and what the target languages are, including any with known expansion or script-handling considerations. This intake conversation is where format-specific and language-specific planning happens, before any layout work begins, which is the same principle behind every other service covered on this page: plan for the actual complexity upfront rather than discovering it during review.
This same intake process applies whether the first project is small or represents the start of significant ongoing volume. Scaling up does not change the underlying standard, it just means the same checks run more often, across more files, without the standard loosening as volume grows.
Delivery includes the finished files along with documentation of what was checked, matching the same standard covered in our DTP handoff checklist. The goal on a first project is the same as on the hundredth: publication-ready delivery, with evidence of why, not just an assertion that the file is ready. That evidence matters as much on a small first project as it does on a large ongoing one, since it is the basis for every future decision about whether to expand the relationship.
Where to go for more depth
This page covers the full range at a summary level. For the mechanics of what genuine CAT-tool compliance actually requires, including how to verify a vendor’s claim before committing a project, the deeper breakdown covers that specifically. For PDF remediation and why accessibility work does not automatically survive translation, that topic has its own full treatment as well. For evaluating whether a DTP vendor’s process actually holds up, the one-project test methodology walks through exactly how to run that evaluation. And for the specific checks worth running before any file handoff, our DTP handoff checklist covers exactly that.
Talk to Foliage Solutions about what your next multilingual DTP project actually needs, whether that means a single test file or an ongoing production pipeline.