Translate a PowerPoint presentation into Korean

What Hangul changes on your slides

Korean is written in Hangul, left to right, with spaces between word groups, so your layout does not need mirroring. Three things still need attention.

• Fonts. Many Latin display and brand typefaces contain no Korean characters at all. A PowerPoint theme has a separate font slot for East Asian text: if it is not set, or the font is missing on the presenting computer, a substitute appears, sometimes as empty boxes. Common fonts such as Malgun Gothic (Windows), Apple SD Gothic Neo (Mac) or Noto Sans KR cover Hangul.
• Italics. Korean fonts rarely have a true italic, so the syllables are slanted artificially and read poorly. Korean emphasis is normally bold, colour or quotation marks.
• Density. A syllable such as 했 or 습 stacks several letters into one square block. Korean often uses fewer characters than English, but becomes unreadable sooner at small sizes: tiny footer text that worked in the source may not survive projection.

Also watch line breaks: depending on paragraph settings, a title such as 2025년 매출 전망 may break in the middle of a word group, which a Korean audience notices at once.

Register, numbers and Korean conventions

Korean slides are not written like prose. Business bullet points often use a nominal style with no conjugated verb: "Revenue up 12%" becomes 매출 12% 증가. Full sentences addressed to the audience take the formal -습니다 ending: "Thank you for your attention" is simply 감사합니다. Keep one register throughout; mixing 해요 and 합니다 in the same deck looks careless to a corporate audience.

• Plurals: Korean has a single form. "1 client / 3 clients" becomes 고객 1명 / 고객 3명, using a counter (명 for people, 개 for objects).
• Large numbers: Korean counts in 만 (ten thousand) and 억 (one hundred million). "15 million won" is written 1,500만 원.
• Dates: year-month-day, 2025년 3월 14일 or 2025. 3. 14.
• Names and job titles: family name first, title after the name: 김민수 부장.

What Manuce delivers, and what it leaves untranslated

Manuce translates the text on every slide: titles, placeholders, text boxes, shapes, shapes inside groups, and tables. You get back your original .pptx with only the text changed: theme, images, shape positions, animations and transitions stay as they were. You also receive a Word version, a PDF and plain text, handy for a Korean reviewer who does not have PowerPoint.

Left in the source language:

• speaker notes, which are not translated at present, worth knowing if a Korean presenter will rely on them;
• text in charts, SmartArt and slide masters: a "Confidential" footer placed on the master stays as it is;
• text embedded in images, including screenshots.

Two formatting limits: a paragraph mixing several formats takes the formatting of its start (and since Korean puts the verb last, a bold word mid-sentence would not sit in the same place anyway); text box sizes are not recalculated, only the autofit setting in PowerPoint applies. Korean carries a ×1.6 coefficient on the per-word rate. Manuce does not provide sworn or certified translation.

Preparing the file before upload

• Font: set an East Asian theme font that includes Hangul, or plan to apply one on delivery.
• Charts and SmartArt: if their labels must be in Korean, rebuild the key ones as shapes and text boxes, or plan to type the labels yourself.
• Masters: move visible wording ("Confidential", event name) from the master onto the slides so it gets translated.
• Emphasis: swap italics for bold, and put a key term in its own paragraph rather than mid-sentence.
• Notes: if the speaker needs them, copy them into a separate document to translate on its own.
• Proper nouns: decide whether product names stay in Latin script or are transliterated ("Pro Pack" or 프로 팩) so you can check consistency later.

Checking the Korean deck before you present

1. Open the .pptx on the computer you will present from: no empty boxes, no unexpected substitute font.
2. Run the slideshow and look for overflowing text and titles broken mid-word-group.
3. Have a Korean speaker review the PDF: consistent register, correct terminology, names and titles in Korean order.
4. Check figures: conversion into 만 and 억, axis units, currencies unchanged (a sum in pounds or euros stays in that currency).
5. Look for leftover source text in charts, SmartArt, masters and images.

In practice

1. Check that your .pptx theme uses a font able to display Hangul.
2. Upload the file: the quote is based on the exact word count.
3. Pick a level and read the free sample paragraph to judge the Korean register.
4. Pay, then download the translated .pptx, Word version, PDF and plain text.
5. Open the deck on the presenting computer and have the PDF reviewed.