Translate a PowerPoint presentation into Japanese

What changes when a slide goes into Japanese

Japanese mixes three scripts (kanji, hiragana and katakana), leaves no spaces between words and uses full-width punctuation. On a slide, this is visible at once.

• Punctuation: commas become 、 and full stops 。. Quotation marks become 「」, so “Next steps” in a sentence turns into 「次のステップ」.
• Bullet points: Japanese decks often end a bullet on a noun rather than a full verb. “Grow sales in Asia” reads more naturally as アジアでの販売拡大. Full sentences are expected in the polite です・ます form, and in keigo when addressing a client.
• Plurals and counters: Japanese has a single plural category, but it uses counter words. “3 subsidiaries” is 3社 and “12 attendees” is 12名. A label such as “{n} item(s)” needs no plural variant.
• Numbers and dates: large numbers are grouped in units of ten thousand. “1.5 million euros” becomes 150万ユーロ, and 1 April 2025 becomes 2025年4月1日.
• Names: Western names are written in katakana with a middle dot, for example ジョン・スミス. Japanese names are given family name first, often followed by 様 on client-facing slides.

Fonts, line breaks and layout

Fonts are the first trap in a Japanese .pptx. Latin theme fonts such as Calibri, Arial or Montserrat contain no Japanese characters, so PowerPoint falls back to a substitute font. That font differs between Windows and Mac, and line height and text width can shift from one machine to another.

• A .pptx theme holds one font for Latin text and a separate one for East Asian scripts. Set a common Japanese font there, such as Yu Gothic or Meiryo on Windows, or Hiragino on Mac. Figures and acronyms stay in the Latin font.
• Japanese often uses fewer characters than English or French, but each character is full-width. Katakana loanwords run long: “marketing” is マーケティング, and in a narrow box it may wrap mid-word.
• Manuce does not resize text boxes. If autofit is set in PowerPoint, it applies. If not, a fixed box can overflow.
• A single bold word inside a sentence is lost, because the paragraph takes the formatting of its first characters. Reapply the emphasis afterwards. Japanese slides often add 「」 for emphasis as well.
• Text boxes stay horizontal, left to right, as in your original.

What Manuce returns, and what stays untranslated

Manuce translates the text on every slide: titles, placeholders, text boxes, shapes (including shapes inside groups) and tables. You get your original .pptx back. Theme, images, shape positions, animations and transitions stay as they were; only the text changes. You also receive a Word version, a PDF and plain text, which let a Japanese reviewer read the result without PowerPoint.

What stays in the source language:

• speaker notes, which are not translated at present. If you will present in Japanese from your notes, paste them into a Word document and have that translated separately;
• text inside charts (axes, legends) and SmartArt;
• text on slide masters, such as a “Confidential” footer (社外秘 in Japanese);
• text embedded in images and screenshots.

Manuce does not provide sworn or certified translation. If your slides must go into an official file in Japan that requires one, use an accredited translator. Japanese carries a surcharge: a ×1.6 coefficient applies to the per-word rate.

Preparing the file and checking the result

Before uploading:

1. Set the East Asian theme font, so the Japanese text looks the same on every computer.
2. If a SmartArt diagram carries a key message, convert it to ordinary shapes in PowerPoint. It will then be translated like any other shape.
3. Note which charts will need their labels retyped in Japanese.
4. Avoid leaving a single bold word mid-sentence where the emphasis matters. You can add it back afterwards.

After delivery, go through the .pptx slide by slide:

• overflow in fixed boxes and katakana words split across lines;
• no line should begin with 。, 、 or ー;
• product and company names: kept in Latin letters or written in katakana, but the same way on every slide;
• counters, amounts in 万 and Japanese date format;
• register: polite forms in full sentences throughout, and keigo for a client audience.

For a deck going to a Japanese client or partner, a review by a native speaker remains the safest step. The PDF lets them review it without PowerPoint.

In practice

1. Set the theme’s East Asian font and list the charts, SmartArt and notes to handle separately.
2. Upload the .pptx to get an instant quote and a free translated paragraph for judging the tone.
3. Choose a level, pay, and download the translated .pptx, Word, PDF and plain text within minutes.
4. Check overflow, line breaks, names and counters, then retype chart and master-slide labels.