Translate a PDF into Korean and keep the layout

What hangul changes in a PDF

Moving a PDF into Korean is more than swapping words. Three technical points matter more than with a Latin-script language.

• Fonts. Most fonts found in Western PDFs (Helvetica, Garamond, corporate typefaces) contain no hangul glyphs at all. Manuce sets the translation in the original font or an equivalent one; for Korean, that almost always means an equivalent that covers hangul syllables. The look shifts slightly, even though block position and size are preserved.
• Width. Each Korean syllable fills a full square, wider than a Latin letter. Korean often uses fewer characters than an English or French source, yet it is not necessarily narrower on the page. When the translation does not fit its box, the text size is reduced until it does.
• Legibility at small sizes. Syllables such as 뷁 or 읽 stack several components into one square. Shrunk into a footnote or a tight table cell, they become hard to read far sooner than an "e" or an "a".

Italics, used in English for titles or foreign terms, have no real tradition in Korean typesetting. Italicised passages are better rendered with quotation marks or bold in the Word version.

Register, numbers and Korean conventions

Korean encodes politeness in verb endings. A business document, manual or report is normally written in the formal -습니다 / -ㅂ니다 style (for example 확인하십시오, "please check"), while the softer -요 style suits a consumer leaflet. A PDF that mixes the two reads as careless, so mention the intended audience if in doubt.

Conventions to check in the Korean version:

• Dates: largest unit first, 2025년 3월 14일 or 2025. 3. 14., never 14/03/2025 or March 14.
• Large numbers: Korean counts in units of ten thousand (만). "1.5 million" becomes 150만, so tables of figures deserve a careful read.
• Currency: won follows the number (5,000원) or the symbol precedes it (₩5,000).
• Plurals: a single form; "3 files" uses a counter word, 파일 3개. The suffix 들 is optional and often left out.
• Names and addresses: family name first; addresses run from province down to street number.

Korean separates word groups with spaces, and particles (은/는, 이/가) attach to the preceding noun, so a line break never splits a noun from its particle.

What Manuce delivers, and what it does not do

Manuce reads the PDF block by block, recording each block's position, font, size and colour. You receive:

• the original PDF in Korean: text removed and replaced in place, images and background intact, layout included in the price;
• a Word version with editable text, useful for adjusting a phrase or a figure written in 만;
• a formatted PDF and plain text, handy for reusing the hangul on a website or in an email.

What Manuce does not do:

• A scanned PDF (an image of a page with no selectable text) is not read. A photographed certificate or a signed contract that was scanned cannot be processed as it is.
• Manuce does not produce sworn or certified translations. For a visa application, degree certificate or civil-status record going to a Korean authority, you need a certified translator.

Korean is one of the languages with a surcharge (a ×1.6 coefficient on the per-word rate); the quote appears as soon as you upload, based on the exact word count.

Preparing the PDF and checking the Korean

Before uploading:

• Try selecting a sentence in the PDF. If nothing highlights, it is an image: go back to the source file (Word, InDesign and so on) and export a fresh PDF.
• Spot the tight areas (tables, captions, footnotes); these are where text is most likely to be shrunk. If you control the source, give them more room before exporting.
• List proper names and brands that should stay in Latin script.
• Request the free excerpt of one paragraph: it shows the register chosen before you pay.

On delivery, ask a Korean reader to check first:

• small body text, where shrunk hangul may become illegible;
• converted amounts and dates;
• consistent register from page to page;
• places where the source relied on italics.

If a passage needs changing, edit it in the Word version rather than in the PDF.

In practice

1. Check that the PDF's text can be selected.
2. Upload the file, choose Korean and a level: the quote appears.
3. Read the free excerpt to confirm the register.
4. Download the Korean PDF, the Word version, the formatted PDF and the plain text.
5. Have a Korean reader check tables, amounts and small text.