Translate a business plan into Spanish

Spain or Latin America: the financial vocabulary differs

A business plan for investors in Madrid does not read like one for Mexico City or Bogotá. The differences fall precisely on the terms a financial reader notices:

• Income statement / P&L: cuenta de pérdidas y ganancias in Spain, estado de resultados across much of Latin America.
• Working capital: fondo de maniobra in Spain, capital de trabajo elsewhere.
• Turnover / revenue: cifra de negocios or facturación in Spain, often ventas or ingresos in Mexico.
• The document title itself: plan de negocio is common in Spain, plan de negocios in Latin America.

None of these is wrong, but mixing both usages in one document stands out. Find these terms in the returned file and make them consistent for your reader.

Figures, millions and separators: Spanish-specific traps

The costly mistakes in a translated plan are usually in the numbers.

• The billón false friend: in Spanish, un billón is a million million (10¹²). The English "billion" is mil millones. A market worth "2 billion" must become 2.000 millones, never 2 billones. Check this first if your source is in English.
• The preposition de: 1 millón de euros, 3,5 millones de euros. This is why Spanish has a separate plural category for large numbers, alongside the ordinary singular and plural.
• Separators: common usage in Spain is 1.250.000,50 €, with the symbol after the amount; in Mexico you will usually see 1,250,000.50. The same figure can be misread from one country to another.
• Currency: $ means pesos in Mexico or Colombia. If your projections are in US dollars, write USD.
• Dates: day before month, months in lower case: 31 de diciembre de 2026.

Keep your company's legal form as it is (Ltd, GmbH, SAS); do not swap it for S.L. or S.A., which are Spanish company types.

Register, length and layout

Spanish business plans use an impersonal tone or the first person plural: se prevé alcanzar el punto de equilibrio en 2027, prevemos. Rhetorical questions in a summary take inverted marks: ¿Por qué ahora?

Spanish runs longer than English, roughly as long as French. Tight tables in the executive summary (resumen ejecutivo), funding-plan cells and key-figure boxes may overflow: Punto de equilibrio is far longer than Break-even.

Industry acronyms such as EBITDA or TAM / SAM / SOM are widely understood and often kept in Spanish investment documents.

What Manuce returns, and what it does not do

• Your text goes to Métis, the finance-specialist engine, which handles the vocabulary of forecasts, funding and valuation.
• Accepted formats: Word, PDF, PowerPoint, Excel, plain text, Markdown, HTML, RTF, CSV. The file comes back in its original format with the layout preserved, so your Excel appendices stay workbooks.
• A quote appears as soon as you upload, based on the exact word count, and one paragraph of your file is translated free at the chosen level before you pay.
• For a standard document such as a 25-page business plan, the translation arrives within minutes and stays in your client area.

What Manuce does not do:

• A scanned PDF (an image with no selectable text) cannot be read. Upload the source file or a PDF exported from your word processor.
• Manuce does not produce sworn translations. If a Spanish authority requires one, for instance for an entrepreneur visa application, you need a traductor-intérprete jurado appointed by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
• Manuce does not take glossaries or terminology instructions. For a product name or term that must stay unchanged, check it in the free sample and then in the translation.

For a document going to a bank or investor, the Professional level is designed to be sent as is; Premium adds a cross-review.

Preparing the file and checking the Spanish version

1. Decide on the reader's country first: Spain, Mexico, Argentina… It settles ordenador versus computadora, fondo de maniobra versus capital de trabajo.
2. Upload the original Word file and Excel workbook rather than a flattened PDF where possible.
3. In the free sample, look at the register and how amounts are written.
4. In the returned file, check every large figure: millones, mil millones, and no unexpected billón.
5. In Excel, numeric cells usually display according to the reader's regional settings; focus on amounts typed as text in labels and comments.
6. Have someone from the target country read the resumen ejecutivo: it is the page everyone reads.

In practice

1. Choose the reader's country (Spain or Latin America) and gather the Word file and Excel appendices.
2. Upload, select Spanish and review the quote based on the exact word count.
3. Read the free sample: register, financial terms, how amounts are written.
4. Pay, then download the translated business plan from your client area.
5. Check large figures, separators, currency and any overflowing tables.