Shorthand stories have been published in more than 30 world languages. While the Shorthand editor is currently only available in English, the platform has many features to support publishing in a wide array of languages.

Fonts and special characters

If you are planning to publish in a language with special characters like accents, diacritics, or symbols, we highly recommend choosing a Shorthand plan that includes a custom branded theme. While the default themes available support a number of characters, we cannot guarantee all languages will be fully supported with only the default theme applied to stories.

To find fonts that support characters in your publishing language, we recommend a resource like Monotype's catalogue. Google Fonts also provides a helpful resource on font selection for different languages here.

Right-to-left languages

Unlike many content creation tools, Shorthand supports right-to-left languages like Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu, or Persian/Farsi.

Some Shorthand plans include the design of a custom branded theme for you that supports your publishing language and is coded to support right-to-left text. All sections will be optimized for your publishing language, so you maintain a high quality reader experience.

On any paid plan, you can request that the right-to-left Shorthand Basic default theme is applied to your account. Get in touch with your designated Editorial Success Manager at [email protected] letting them know that you need the RTL theme, and our team will make sure it is available in your workspace.

Translating stories into other languages

If you are translating a story from one language to another, you can simply create the first version of your story and then make a copy of it before translating the duplicate version of your story to the second language.

If the language you are translating into has different characters, script, or text direction from the original language, make sure that you apply the correct theme to the second version of your story before translation.

Story performance in other languages

Many Shorthand section types including Scrollmation, Background Scrollmation, and Reveal have animated effects that are triggered by reader scroll, and the amount of text you have in these sections affects when they transition.

Because different languages have varying word lengths, conjugation rules, and norms around paragraph breaks, it’s possible that the length of text in your story might differ greatly after being translated into another language.

We recommend that you frequently preview your story to check the reader experience and make sure you are happy with the performance of all language versions of the story.