Plants are very much like people. If you spend much of the year (winter months) indoors and then spend 12 hours in the sunlight on the first nice day of spring, you are likely to get a bad sunburn. If you slowly work up the number of hours of direct sunlight, you can escape getting burned.
What I do with my plants, when I move the back outside, I put them up against the house that faces north (I live in the northern hemisphere). Some of them get a slight sun burn, but they generally recover. I then slowly, over a few weeks, move them further away from the house until they are out in the open for the entire day. Even some of my plants, that are supposed to be shaded for much of the day, can tolerate the sun for longer hours if you slowly introduce them to longer hours of sunlight.