Translate a PowerPoint presentation into Vietnamese

Vietnamese diacritics: fonts and line height

Vietnamese uses the Latin alphabet (quốc ngữ), but almost every syllable carries one or two marks: a vowel modifier (â, ă, ê, ô, ơ, ư, plus the letter đ) and a tone mark above or below. In Kế hoạch phát triển (‘development plan’), the ‘ế’ stacks a circumflex and an acute accent. On a slide, this has two direct consequences.

• The font must cover the full Vietnamese set. A display font bought for a theme may include é and ê but not ế or ệ. Missing letters are then drawn in a fallback font, so the word looks patched together or shows empty boxes. Common system fonts such as Arial or Times New Roman handle Vietnamese; check the fonts in your own theme before uploading.
• Lines need vertical room. Tight line spacing, common in the titles of modern templates, makes stacked tones collide with the line above. Capitals are the most exposed: in KẾ HOẠCH, the accent rises well above cap height.

This is not just cosmetic. In Vietnamese, the tone changes the word: ma, má, mà and mả are four different words, so an unreadable mark can make a heading ambiguous.

Length, line breaks and Vietnamese conventions

Every syllable is written as a separate word, and many concepts take two: ‘revenue’ is doanh thu, ‘strategy’ is chiến lược. Coming from English, the text usually grows; from other source languages it depends on the content. Either way, it takes up more height.

• Line breaks: a line can wrap between two syllables of one compound, chiến / lược. Readers will follow it, but it looks clumsy in a heading; a manual break or a slightly wider box fixes it.
• Punctuation: no space before colons or question marks. A French-style ‘Objectifs :’ becomes Mục tiêu:.
• Numbers and dates: decimal comma and full stop for thousands (12.500,75), dates as day/month/year or written out, ngày 5 tháng 3 năm 2025. The dong symbol (₫ or đ) follows the number. Check any figures in tables, as an English ‘12,500.75’ reads very differently in Vietnamese.
• No grammatical plural: one form only (a single CLDR category, ‘other’). 1 sản phẩm, 5 sản phẩm: the noun does not change, and plurality is shown when needed with các or những. Labels such as ‘item(s)’ have nothing to reproduce.
• Register: pronouns depend on the relationship. A sales deck often addresses clients as Quý khách, an internal training deck more often uses bạn, and the company refers to itself as chúng tôi. Check the choice stays consistent from slide to slide.

What Manuce returns, and what it leaves untouched

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, useful for having the Vietnamese reviewed by someone without PowerPoint.

What currently stays in the source language:

• speaker notes, which matters if a Vietnamese presenter will speak from your notes;
• text in charts, SmartArt and slide masters (a footer typed into the master, for instance);
• text embedded in images, including screenshots.

Two formatting limits to know about. A paragraph that mixes several formats takes on the formatting of its beginning: if doanh thu should stand out in bold mid-sentence, reapply the bold. And text box sizes are not recalculated: if the Vietnamese, taller with its stacked marks, overflows a fixed box, whatever autofit setting you chose in PowerPoint applies. Because only the text changes, the theme fonts stay yours too; if one of them does not cover Vietnamese, you will need to swap it.

Preparing the file and checking the result

1. Test your fonts before uploading: type Tiếng Việt: ệ ở ẫ ự Đ into a text box in each theme font. If any letter changes appearance, pick a font that covers Vietnamese.
2. Move text out of untranslated elements: a key heading sitting in a SmartArt graphic or an image can be retyped into an ordinary text box; speaker notes can be copied elsewhere and translated separately.
3. Give headings room: at least single line spacing, with autofit switched on for crowded boxes.
4. After delivery, go through every slide: tone marks touching the line above, letters in a different font, compounds split at line ends, bold lost mid-sentence, overflowing text.
5. Have a native speaker review slides meant for clients or partners: the PDF or Word version is enough for this, and number formats in tables deserve a second look.

In practice

1. Check that your theme fonts display ệ, ở and ự without switching appearance.
2. Upload the .pptx: the quote appears straight away, based on the exact word count.
3. Read the free Vietnamese sample to judge the register, then choose a level.
4. Download the translated .pptx, the Word version, the PDF and the plain text.
5. Check each slide for tone marks, line breaks and overflowing text.