What is language expansion?
When you translate from English to another language, there are almost always more words in the other language. English is extremely compact. For example, a sentence translated into Spanish will expand by perhaps 25%, Vietnamese by perhaps 35%. Of course, these figures are educated guesses: the subject and style of the material has a profound effect upon its expandability. There are also a few languages which expand when going into English (German sometimes, Hebrew and Finnish, for example). Why does this matter? If you have a certain layout in the English document you want to duplicate, you will have to account for the expansion factor. One good approach is to start with a generous amount of white space in English, which will be correspondingly diminished in the translated version. Other approaches are to reduce margins and font sizes, steal white space from column gutters and graphical elements, or, as a last resort, expand the amount of paper used. Expansion is also a factor in prici
