Translate a PDF into Portuguese, European or Brazilian

European or Brazilian Portuguese: decide before you upload

Manuce treats European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese as two separate languages. You pick one when you upload the PDF, and the difference shows on the first page:

• Vocabulary: ficheiro (Portugal) / arquivo (Brazil) for 'file', ecrã / tela for 'screen', utilizador / usuário for 'user', comboio / trem for 'train'.
• Spelling and accents: económico / econômico, facto / fato, António / Antônio.
• Addressing the reader: in Brazil você is the everyday form; in Portugal tu is informal, and formal documents often use the third person or o senhor / a senhora.

A brochure written for Lisbon and read in São Paulo, or the other way round, will feel 'badly translated' even when the meaning is correct. Choose by the final reader, not by whoever orders the job. If the PDF targets both markets, order both languages: the multi-language discount applies from two languages (20% off).

What changes on the page when the text becomes Portuguese

A PDF fixes the layout: every text block sits in a box of fixed size. Portuguese raises four specific points.

• Length. Portuguese usually runs longer than English, largely because of prepositional phrasing: Sales report becomes Relatório de vendas. When the translation overflows its box, Manuce reduces the text size until it fits, so in a narrow table column or a footer the type can end up noticeably smaller.
• Diacritics. ã, õ, ç, á, â, ê, ô and à must all display. A PDF often embeds only the characters used in the original, so an English document may carry no ã or ç in its font. Manuce then uses an equivalent font; check words such as informações or não.
• Numbers and currency. Both variants use a decimal comma, unlike English. Thousands are separated by a full stop in Brazil (1.250,00) and a space in Portugal (1 250,00). The symbol follows the amount in Portugal (12,50 €) and precedes it in Brazil (R$ 12,50).
• Capitals and plurals. Months and weekdays are lower case (15 de março), and headings do not capitalise every word as English title case does. Portuguese has three plural categories: 1 página, 10 páginas, and the form used with large round numbers, which takes 'de': 2 milhões de euros.

What Manuce delivers, and what it does not do

Portuguese uses the Latin alphabet, left to right, so the re-typeset PDF is produced. You receive:

• Your original PDF with the text replaced in place: each block is read with its position, font, size and colour; the source text is removed and the Portuguese placed in the same box. Logos, photos, backgrounds and rules stay as they are. This layout work is included in the price.
• A Word version with editable text, to fix a heading that was shrunk too far or adjust a form of address.
• A formatted PDF and plain text, handy for proofreading or reusing the text elsewhere.

What Manuce does not do:

• A scanned PDF (an image of a page, with no selectable text) is not read. Text inside images, such as a chart exported as a picture or a stamp, also stays in its original language, since images are kept as they are.
• No certified translation. Civil records, diplomas or court documents submitted to Portuguese or Brazilian authorities generally require a certified translation (in Brazil, a tradução juramentada). A Manuce translation is for understanding or preparation, not an official document.

Preparing the PDF and checking the Portuguese version

1. Test text selection: open the PDF and try to highlight a sentence. If nothing selects, the page is an image; go back to the source file and export it to PDF again with its text.
2. Ask for the free sample: one paragraph of your file translated at the level you choose, before paying. Use it to check terminology, for instance contrato de arrendamento (Portugal) versus contrato de aluguel (Brazil) for a lease.
3. Proofread tight areas: table cells, footnotes, captions, headers. If shrinking makes a line too small, fix it in the Word version.
4. Check numbers and dates: day/month/year in both variants, the right thousands separator for the country, currency symbol on the correct side.
5. Look at bold headings: that is where a substitute font for ã or ç is most visible.

Portuguese is charged at the base rate (×1 coefficient). For a PDF going to a Portuguese-speaking partner, the Professional level hands the text to the domain specialist; Essential is enough to understand a document you have received.

In practice

1. Check that the text in your PDF can be selected.
2. Upload the file and choose Portuguese (Portugal) or Portuguese (Brazil).
3. Review the quote, based on the exact word count, and the free sample.
4. Pay, then download the re-typeset PDF, the Word file, the formatted PDF and plain text.
5. Proofread tables, notes and figures, and correct in the Word version if needed.