Translate a PDF into Turkish and keep the layout

Turkish takes more room in a PDF than you might expect

Turkish is agglutinative: where English strings several words together, Turkish attaches suffixes to a single root. ‘in our documents’ becomes belgelerimizde, ‘from our suppliers’ becomes tedarikçilerimizden. The word count may drop, but each word gets longer, and in a PDF it is the width of a word, rather than the number of words, that causes trouble.

Every text block in a PDF sits in a fixed box. A narrow column header, a caption under a diagram or a chart label leaves little room for a word such as sorumluluklarımız (‘our responsibilities’), which cannot be broken just anywhere. When the translation does not fit, Manuce reduces the text size until it does: nothing spills into the next block, but a heading may end up noticeably smaller than those around it.

• Identify the tight areas beforehand: table headers, drawing title blocks, footers, figure captions.
• If a label must stay readable at a given size, shorten it in the supplied Word version rather than accept very small type.

Turkish letters, fonts and the dotted i trap

The Turkish alphabet adds ç, ğ, ı, İ, ö, ş, ü to the basic Latin letters. Fonts embedded in a PDF often contain only the characters used in the source document, so a font that rendered English or German text perfectly may have no ‘ğ’ or ‘ş’. Manuce places the translation in the original font or an equivalent one; on the output, check that these letters match the design of the rest of the word and that no empty boxes appear.

Turkish has two i’s: dotted i, whose capital is İ, and dotless ı, whose capital is I. A heading in capitals must read BİLGİ İŞLEM, not BILGI IŞLEM, which reads as different words. The same applies to İSTANBUL and İZMİR.

• Proofread headings, banners and buttons set in capitals first.
• Search the delivered PDF for ‘I’: every occurrence should stand for a lower-case ı, not an i.

Turkish conventions to check in the document

• Numbers: a full stop for thousands and a comma for decimals, 1.250,75. Coming from an English source written 1,250.75, this is the change most likely to make a table ambiguous.
• Percentages: the sign goes before the number, %15, not 15%.
• Dates: 14.03.2025 or 14 Mart 2025, with the month capitalised in a full date.
• Suffixes after proper names and figures: separated by an apostrophe and following pronunciation, Londra'da, 2025'te, ISO 9001'e uygun. References and standard numbers in your PDF must keep their exact form, suffix aside.
• Plurals: Turkish has only two forms (one, other) and the noun stays singular after a number, 10 sayfa, not 10 sayfalar.
• Register: documents for clients or authorities use the polite form, Lütfen formu doldurunuz (‘Please fill in the form’).

What Manuce delivers, and what it does not do

Manuce reads the PDF text block by block, with its position, font, size and colour. Because Turkish uses the Latin alphabet and runs left to right, the re-laid-out PDF is produced, unlike for Arabic or Hebrew. You receive:

• the PDF in its original format, with the Turkish text placed where the original was, images and background kept, layout included in the price;
• a Word version with editable text, for adjusting an over-long label;
• a formatted PDF and the plain text.

Limits worth knowing:

• A scanned PDF, a page image with no selectable text, is not read.
• Manuce does not produce sworn translations. For a diploma, civil-status record or court document submitted in Turkey, authorities usually ask for a translation by a sworn translator (yeminli tercüman).

Turkish carries a surcharge: a ×1.25 coefficient applies to the per-word price.

Preparing the PDF and checking the Turkish version

1. Make sure the text can be selected: try highlighting a sentence. If you cannot, the file is an image; export a new PDF from the original source file.
2. Read the free sample before paying: it shows the register and how your field’s terminology comes out in Turkish.
3. On the delivered PDF, zoom in on a few words containing ğ, ş and ı, then on headings in capitals, to check the font and the dotted capitals.
4. Go through the tables: reduced header sizes, numbers as 1.250,75, percentages as %15.
5. Have a Turkish speaker review anything binding: terms, safety instructions, legal notices.

In practice

1. Check that the text in your PDF can be selected.
2. Upload the file and choose Turkish: the quote appears straight away, based on the exact word count.
3. Read the free one-paragraph sample at your chosen level, then pay.
4. Download the re-laid-out PDF, the Word version, the formatted PDF and the plain text.
5. Check capitals (İ/I), the letters ğ and ş, and any shrunken table headers.