Translate a PowerPoint presentation into Ukrainian

What Ukrainian changes on your slides

Ukrainian is written in Cyrillic, left to right, and uses four letters Russian does not have: і, ї, є, ґ. It also uses the apostrophe as a separator inside words: п'ять (five), м'ясо (meat). Your theme font must contain all of these. Many decorative heading fonts cover Latin only, or carry an incomplete Cyrillic set without ґ or ї; PowerPoint then substitutes another font and your headings change appearance from slide to slide.

Ukrainian words are often long and do not break neatly in narrow boxes: Відповідальність (responsibility), Конкурентоспроможність (competitiveness). In a label, button or table cell sized for English, these are the words that overflow first.

Ukrainian headings use sentence case: only the first word is capitalised. A Title Case heading such as “Quarterly Results Overview” becomes Огляд результатів кварталу, not a string of capitals.

Numbers, dates, plurals and punctuation

• Numbers: comma as the decimal separator, space between thousands: 1 500,5, not 1,500.5.
• Dates: day, month, year separated by full stops, 24.08.2025. Month names are lower case: серпень.
• Currency: the hryvnia is abbreviated грн after the amount (250 грн) or shown with the ₴ sign.
• Punctuation: quotations use « » angle quotes with no inner spaces, and a long dash for parenthetical breaks.
• Four plural forms: 1 проєкт, 3 проєкти, 5 проєктів, 2,5 проєкту. If a slide shows “12 projects” and you update the figure by hand later, the noun may need to change too.
• 2019 spelling: current orthography writes проєкт, not the older or Russian-style проект.

Place names should be Ukrainian, not Russian: Київ (Kyiv), Харків (Kharkiv), Одеса (Odesa).

What Manuce returns, and what it leaves out

Manuce translates the text on every slide: titles, placeholders, text boxes, shapes, grouped shapes and tables. You get your original .pptx back 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 Ukrainian-speaking colleague who wants to review without PowerPoint.

What is not done at present:

• speaker notes are not translated;
• text in charts, SmartArt, slide masters and text embedded in images stays in the source language;
• a paragraph mixing formats takes the formatting of its beginning; since Ukrainian word order differs anyway, a bold word mid-sentence will need re-applying by hand;
• text box sizes are not recalculated; only the autofit setting already in PowerPoint applies.

Manuce does not produce sworn or certified translations. Ukrainian carries a surcharge (×1.25 on the per-word rate).

Preparing the file before upload

• Fonts: pick a theme font with full Cyrillic coverage, then type ґ ї є і in a test box to confirm.
• Fixed boxes: switch on text autofit or widen narrow boxes, starting with labels and table headers.
• Masters: a “Confidential” footer or tagline placed in the slide master will stay in the source language. Retype it as a text box on the slides, or edit the master afterwards.
• Charts and SmartArt: if axis titles must be in Ukrainian, list them separately to replace after delivery, or turn key labels into ordinary text boxes.
• Speaker notes: copy them into a Word document and have that translated separately.
• Text in images: replace screenshots containing text with live text if the audience needs to read it.

Checking the Ukrainian version before you present

1. Open the .pptx on the computer you will present from: a missing font there triggers a substitution you will not see on your own machine.
2. Run through every slide in slideshow mode to spot overflowing text or text sitting over images.
3. Check each number followed by a noun, since the plural form depends on the figure (2 клієнти, 7 клієнтів).
4. Look for anything left in the source language: charts, SmartArt, master, images.
5. Re-apply bold or colour to words emphasised mid-sentence.
6. To circulate the deck afterwards, send the PDF, where fonts are fixed.

In practice

1. Check that your theme font displays і, ї, є and ґ.
2. Upload the .pptx: the quote appears at once, based on the exact word count.
3. Read the free sample paragraph at your chosen level, then pay.
4. Download the translated .pptx plus the Word, PDF and plain-text versions.
5. Check overflow, plurals, charts and masters before presenting.