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Russian and Chinese type
For the first time in my career, I have to design a fashion catalog in 4 different languages : English, French, Chinese and Russian. I have no problem setting type in French and English (since Montréal is bilingual), but I'm a little confused with the last two languages.
The copywriters will send me the final texts in a couple days. So far, I have no idea what its going to look like.
Unfortunately, I don't know anything about setting type in Chinese and Russian. Should I use Cyrillic characters for Russian ? Are there a lot of typefaces available in Roman/Russian/Chinese ?
How should I set the punctuation in Russian ? Same as in English ? Do they even have punctuation in Chinese ?
Anybody has a good resource website for this issue ?
So many questions ! Any advice will be much appreciated !
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14 Feb 2006 — 8:49am
Don't even attempt the Chinese. In the past, when I worked on projects that required Chinese typesetting, I found that local Chinese-language newspapers were an excellent (and reasonably priced) resource. Montréal is bound to have at least one such paper.
14 Feb 2006 — 9:25am
That's a good idea. Comparing different Chinese-language newspapers might help me find out some "rules".
Anything about Russian ?
All I have is two articles on Wikipedia
Russian Orthography
Russian Language - Alphabet
14 Feb 2006 — 10:49am
>> Should I use Cyrillic characters for Russian ?
Sure.
>> Are there a lot of typefaces available in Roman/Russian
Check out here www.paratype.com
>> punctuation in Russian ? Same as in English ?
No, it's a bit different.
You can look at russian newspaper here http://izvestia.ru/pdf/
14 Feb 2006 — 11:04am
cedilla
Russian punctuation closer to French rules.
For example, quotes like this: «».
14 Feb 2006 — 11:21am
There are of course some Open Type fonts with Cyrillic glyphs, so you could set at least the English, French and Russian with the same font. Hopefully you can get a native speaker to proof read the finished lay out.
14 Feb 2006 — 12:23pm
Are there any known Chinese variation of nice Roman + Cyrillic typefaces ? Or do type designers and/or foundries never really create the asian version of their fonts ?
Oh! It would be nice to be able to browse through the FontShop library using language categories!
15 Feb 2006 — 7:13am
"I have to design a fashion catalog in 4 different languages "
sorry? all in one layout, or in 4 localized layouts?
15 Feb 2006 — 7:30pm
(Sorry for the delay)
Four in one layout. I don't have that much text, but it's still pretty crazy!
18 Feb 2006 — 4:48am
Are they mixed in composition or are seperate blocks of text imagined in sequence?
22 Feb 2006 — 6:22pm
www.how-to-learn-any-language.com
for information on resources for Chinese and Russian.
Maybe you could also contact Sinoquebec Newspaper (http://www.sinoquebec.com/sinoquebecmedia/sinoquebecnewspaper_e.htm) to see about Chinese typesetting. Anyway you can surely find someone to inform you about it in Montreal's Chinese community.