Big language, little language

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Languages come in sizes. English is a relatively small language; Spanish is a relatively large language.

Our client for a project was the Pan American Health Organization, which is part of the World Health Organization, which is part of the United Nations. PAHO wanted us to produce a procedures manual for the warehousing and distribution of medical pharmaceuticals throughout Central America.

Okay, we could do that.

But here was the hook: For some reason, one for which we never got an answer, PAHO required that both the English and the Spanish versions of the manual be exactly the same page length. That’s where a problem arose: Spanish is a bigger language than English, that is, it takes more words, roughly 10 percent more, and thus more space, to express a concept in Spanish than it does in English. Example: This entry is 235 words long in English; in Spanish, it’s 256 words.

And our client wanted both versions to have the same total page count. What to do?

We agonized over this dilemma for several days. Finally, the solution came: We printed the Spanish edition in a type size one point smaller than the one we used for the English version, and we slightly reduced the space (leading) between the lines of type. Result? Both books were easily readable, both were the same length, and everybody was happy. There’s more than one way to skin el gato.