Translate a PowerPoint Presentation into Russian

What Russian changes on screen

On a slide, Russian text shows first in its shape: a different alphabet, longer lines, and long words that break in awkward places. Three things are worth checking before you translate anything.

• Fonts. A font without Cyrillic glyphs shows empty boxes instead of letters, or PowerPoint swaps in a substitute font with different widths and heights. Common system fonts such as Calibri, Arial and Times New Roman cover Cyrillic. Many brand and decorative display fonts do not. Test every theme font, in regular and bold, with a line such as Съешь же ещё этих мягких французских булок, да выпей чаю, which includes ё, й and ъ.
• Length. Russian runs longer than English, and so do its words: «производительность» (performance), «ответственность» (responsibility). In a narrow column or a table cell, a single word can fill the whole line.
• Headings. Russian does not use title case. A heading reads «Результаты третьего квартала», not «Результаты Третьего Квартала». All-caps headings, common in corporate templates, get even wider in Cyrillic.

Numbers, plurals and punctuation

Russian has four plural categories (one, few, many, other), and the noun changes with the number in front of it: 1 участник, 3 участника, 5 участников, 1,5 участника. The form follows the last digit, not the size of the quantity. So 21 участник takes the singular, while 11 участников does not. In practice, if you change a figure on a slide after translation, the word after it often has to change too.

• Separators: a decimal comma and a space for thousands, as in 1 250 000,5.
• Abbreviations: тыс., млн, млрд (no full stop on the last two). They save space on a busy slide: 2,4 млрд руб.
• Dates: day, month, year, usually in figures separated by full stops: 05.03.2025.
• Punctuation: angle quotes «ёлочки» rather than English quotation marks, and a spaced em dash. Unlike French, there is no space before :, ? or !.
• Register: a speaker addresses the audience as «вы» in lower case. The capitalised «Вы» belongs to a letter addressed to one person.

What Manuce returns, and what it leaves alone

Manuce translates the text on every slide: titles, placeholders, text boxes, shapes, shapes inside groups, and tables. You get your original .pptx back. The theme, images, shape positions, animations and transitions stay exactly as they were, and only the text is now in Russian. The same content also comes as a Word file, a PDF and plain text. These are handy for a Russian-speaking colleague who needs to review the wording without opening PowerPoint.

The following stays in the source language, so plan for it from the start:

• speaker notes, which are not translated at present;
• text in charts (axes, legends, data labels), in SmartArt and in slide masters, such as a «Confidential» footer placed on the master;
• text embedded in images;
• mixed formatting within a paragraph. A line such as «Revenue up year on year» takes the formatting of its first characters, so the bold word loses its bold. Russian word order differs anyway, so that emphasis needs placing by hand on the right word.

Text box sizes are not recalculated. A fixed-size box may overflow once the text is in Russian; if autofit is set in PowerPoint, it applies. Manuce does not provide sworn or certified translation.

Preparing the file and checking the result

1. Fonts: replace any theme font that lacks Cyrillic with one that covers it. Do this before uploading rather than afterwards, so that every heading changes at once.
2. Tight boxes: for one-line titles, labels and table cells, turn on autofit or leave spare room.
3. SmartArt: convert it to shapes if its text needs translating. Once converted, those shapes are handled, even when grouped.
4. Charts and images: list the ones that contain text. Their labels will need typing in Russian in the chart data or in the source image.
5. Notes: if you need them in Russian, copy them into a Word document and have that translated separately.

When the file comes back, go through it slide by slide in slideshow view. Look for boxes in place of letters, words split at line ends, text spilling out of shapes and, after any edit, a number followed by the wrong plural. The free sample translates one paragraph of your own file before you pay, so you can judge the register first.

In practice

1. Test your theme fonts with a Cyrillic sentence and replace any that show empty boxes.
2. Convert SmartArt to shapes, and note which charts, images and masters contain text.
3. Upload the .pptx: you get an instant quote and a free translated paragraph.
4. Download the Russian .pptx, along with the Word, PDF and plain-text versions.
5. Review in slideshow view for overflow, broken words and plurals after numbers.