Translate an employment contract into Spanish

What changes when an employment contract goes into Spanish

Spanish runs noticeably longer than English. A contract drafted in English will grow: fixed-width tables, salary schedules and signature fields such as Employee signature → Firma de la persona trabajadora may wrap onto a second line. From French the length is similar, so layout shifts are smaller.

• Spain or Latin America. Employment and payroll vocabulary differs by country. A payslip is a nómina in Spain, a recibo de nómina in Mexico and a recibo de sueldo in Argentina. Even everyday words change: ordenador in Madrid, computadora in Mexico City, which matters in an equipment clause.
• Dates. Month names are lower case and dates are written out: 15 de marzo de 2025, never in the US month-first order.
• Amounts. Spain uses a decimal comma (2 450,00 €); Mexico uses a decimal point ($2,450.00). Check every salary figure.
• Naming the parties. Recent Spanish legal texts often use la persona trabajadora rather than el trabajador. Either is found; what matters is consistency throughout.

Concepts that have no exact Spanish counterpart

Employment contracts are full of terms tied to one legal system. Some have close Spanish equivalents; others do not.

• Close equivalents: permanent contract → contrato indefinido; fixed-term contract → contrato de duración determinada; probationary period → período de prueba; notice period → preaviso; non-compete clause → pacto de no competencia; collective agreement → convenio colectivo; severance pay → indemnización.
• No real equivalent: at-will employment, garden leave, PTO, or institutions such as HMRC, National Insurance or a 401(k) plan. The sound approach is to keep the original name, with a brief explanation if needed, rather than substitute a Spanish body that plays a different role.

Crucially, translating a contract does not change its governing law. A UK or US contract rendered in Spanish is still governed by UK or US law. If you are hiring someone under Spanish or Mexican law, the contract has to be drafted or adapted by a lawyer to that law and the applicable convenio colectivo; that is legal work, not translation.

What Manuce delivers, and what it does not

Your contract is handled by Thémis, Manuce’s engine specialised in legal texts. You upload Word, PDF, RTF, plain text or HTML and get the same format back with its layout: numbered clauses, remuneration tables and signature areas stay where they were. A typical contract of around 3,500 words comes back within minutes and remains available in your client area.

The Professional level gives a text ready to send to the employee; Premium adds a cross-review, worth considering for a version that will be signed.

What Manuce does not do:

• No sworn translation. In Spain, an official translation (traducción jurada) must come from a traductor jurado appointed by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. If an authority asks for one, a Manuce translation does not replace it.
• No scanned PDFs. A signed contract that was scanned is an image with no selectable text, and Manuce cannot read it. Use the Word file or a PDF exported from your word processor.
• No legal adaptation to Spanish or Latin American employment law.

Preparing the file and checking the result

Before uploading:

• Use the final version: accept tracked changes and delete internal comments so that only the contract wording is translated.
• Placeholders are translated like any other text: [Employee name] will become something like [Nombre de la persona trabajadora]. Fill them in first, or plan to complete them in the Spanish version.
• If you intend to issue a bilingual contract, add a clause to the original stating which language prevails in case of discrepancy.

On the free sample, pick a representative paragraph if you can, such as probation or pay, and ask: is the vocabulary right for the employee’s country? Are terms like notice period or PTO rendered the way you want?

On the delivered file, check:

• every salary, hourly rate and decimal separator;
• working hours (37.5 hours per week → 37,5 horas semanales in Spain) and dates;
• internal cross-references such as “see clause 7”;
• names, addresses and job titles, for example Project Manager rendered as jefe de proyecto or kept in English if that is company practice.

In practice

1. Upload the final contract as a Word file or text-based PDF, not a signed scan.
2. Review the quote, based on the exact word count, and the free sample: check the variety of Spanish and key terms such as notice period.
3. Choose Professional to send the contract, or Premium for a version to be signed, then pay.
4. Download the Spanish contract in its original format and check amounts, dates, names and cross-references.