Essential resolutions for even better digital publications

Publishing your digital materials in different languages can be a rewarding strategy—and sometimes a headache to get right. From translating an entire website to translating social media posts, details matter when managing multilingual content. Since we work in seven languages here at Calaméo, today we’re sharing our best tips for managing multilanguage digital publications.

Set a realistic schedule

First things first: it’s easier to start small with multilingual content than it is to translate every single word you publish. Before beginning to plan, you should know which new language(s) you’ll be using and the audience that you’ll be targeting. For example, imagine your product catalogs are not yet available in the language of a fast-growing market. Providing a translated catalog for users to browse may benefit your online sales.

Once you know which content needs translation, you can update your production schedule. Remember that creating multilingual content requires time and resources! You’ll need to budget time to translate your content, as well as format and publish each version. If you work with outside translation services, request an estimate of time and cost to help stay on track.

Keep content organized

Next, choose the best tools to share your multilingual content. If you’re translating pages of your website, research how your CMS handles different language options. For more substantial content like tutorials, white papers and brochures, our platform makes creating beautiful multilanguage digital publications simple. You can upload PDFs, Powerpoints and more to your account in just seconds.

💡 TIP: Have lots of different languages to get online? Our advanced conversion technology accepts batch uploads of up to 10 files at a time.

Then, think about how you’d like to present your multilingual publications. Group them either by the type of content, like magazines and e-books, or by language. Thanks to the Folders feature on Calaméo, you can easily organize multilanguage digital publications according to your needs. Share a Folder directly with your audience, or embed a convenient Library Widget in your website for viewers to explore.

Update search basics

So your content is translated, formatted, uploaded and organized online—whew! But if you haven’t thought about search, don’t start celebrating just yet. Taking a few minutes to improve the SEO of your multilanguage digital publications gives them greater visibility in the future and can help you meet your goals.

Fortunately, publishing your multilingual content with Calaméo means that you’re already a step ahead. That’s because in any language, all non-private publications are automatically indexed for search engines. By entering a title and description, you can associate your publication with relevant keywords in its language and make it easier for your target audience to find via search.

Consider the context

To publish successful multilingual content, you need to do more than copy and paste. In addition to careful strategy and organization, attention to detail within the overall context creates a seamless reading experience for your audience. A wonderfully produced prospectus in Spanish works best when presented in a Spanish-language publication viewer. Not only is this consistency a must for good UX, it’s also a snap to achieve with the right digital publishing solution.

Our viewer is fully translated and ready for you to use in any of the Calaméo platform’s seven available languages: English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portugese, German and Russian. When you share a link to one of your multilanguage digital publications, the viewer will automatically adapt to the reader’s browser. However, you can add a simple URL parameter to guarantee a specific viewer language:

https://www.calameo.com/calameo/read/0000000017fecd1302942?language=es

Go the extra mile

Although we’re proud of our multilingual platform, we know that our users publish in dozens of different languages every day. As a result, we work hard to offer options like RTL reading mode that make managing multilanguage digital publications smoother. But if there’s something missing to make your translated content really shine, you can add it to our viewer by creating a custom theme.

For example, custom themes allow you to control the tooltip text that labels different buttons in the viewer. That means you can translate the publication viewer into the language of your choice with only a few lines of code, as the tutorial below shows:

Plus, our Elements feature has everything you need to whip up themes in multiple languages built right in to your Calaméo account.

💡 TIP: Access to Elements is an exclusive feature of our PLATINUM plan. To test it out yourself, request a two-week free trial today!

Managing multilanguage digital publications often requires a bigger investment of time and energy than publishing content in just one language. With these tips, you should be ready to tackle translations and enjoy the benefits of a more direct relationship with your audience. Bon courage !

Do you have a great hack for handling multilanguage digital publications? Share it with us on Twitter @calameo!

More than thirty years after they were first developed, GIFs have proved that they’re here to stay. These looping animations have become a major part of modern Internet culture. In fact, 36% of American millennials think that GIFs, emoji and stickers allow them to communicate better than words.

It’s clear that GIFs offer a unique way to enrich content and express ideas that is engaging to today’s Internet users. But did you know that you can add GIFs to your digital publications on Calaméo with our Editor? In this article, we’ll explain how to insert GIFs and suggest a few ways to use them in your publications.

GIFs are a simple but mighty technology that compresses multiple images into a short animation. The file size is smaller than a video, which makes GIFs practical for displaying clips that are just a few seconds long.

Including a GIF in your digital publications is easy. You can either use your own or embed one from a GIF sharing service like Giphy or Tenor.

If you wish to add your own GIF, make sure the file is hosted online and available through a secure URL (https://…).

Once you have decided on the perfect GIF, open your publication in the Calaméo Editor. Navigate to the page where you want the GIF to appear and select the images icon. Move the blue image zone to position your GIF and resize the zone as you like.

Next, enter the URL of your GIF in the “Image URL” field. When using a GIF hosted on Giphy, click on “Copy Link” and choose the “GIF Link” option to get the correct URL.

To see how your GIF looks, save your publication and select the eye icon to view.

Adding GIFs to your publications on Calaméo is a breeze, but using these eye-catching animations well can be a little harder. To help you get started, here are some possibilities we recommend:

• Decoration. Whether you prefer a trendy reaction clip or subtle animated effect, GIFs liven up your page. Avoid including too many to balance visual spice with focus on your content.
• Advertising. Businesses are producing GIF ads as the format becomes more and more popular. With Calaméo you can insert advertisers’ GIFs into your digital publications for a twenty-first century experience!
• Instructions. Does your publication have recipes, fashion tips or decorating ideas? How about charts, graphics or information specific to your industry? Creating a GIF to animate any of these examples transforms your content from words on the page to a dynamic illustration that is fun and easy for your readers to watch.

The sky’s the limit when it comes to using GIFs to enhance your digital publications. This engaging and versatile format is a great way to get creative on Calaméo.

See what else you can do with the Calaméo Editor by checking out our Help Center. Have questions? Write to us at contact@calameo.com and we’ll be happy to help.