Translate a sales brochure PDF into English

What changes when a brochure goes into English

English is compact. From French, it usually runs 10 to 15% shorter; from other source languages the gap varies, but English copy rarely overflows a brochure layout. In practice the text fits its boxes and almost never needs to be shrunk; you may simply see a little more white space under a paragraph.

The points that need a decision or a check:

• British or American: colour or color, organise or organize, centre or center. A brochure for a UK trade fair and one for a US distributor should not mix the two.
• Dates: 03/04 means 3 April in London and 4 March in New York. For an event or a dated offer, spell the month out: 3 April.
• Numbers: English uses a decimal point and a comma for thousands, so 1.250,5 kg or 1 250,5 kg becomes 1,250.5 kg. The currency symbol goes before the figure.
• Plurals: English has only two forms, but a compound adjective stays singular: a two-year guarantee is a 2-year warranty, never 2-years.
• Headings: American style often capitalises every main word (Our Key Services); British style often keeps sentence case (Our key services).

Sales copy pitfalls to watch

A brochure is not a manual: it has to persuade in few words. English sales copy favours short sentences, a direct ‘you’ and action verbs. A long sentence like ‘our teams are available to study your project’ works better as Talk to our team about your project. That is why brochures go to Calliope, Manuce's marketing and sales engine, rather than a general-purpose one.

Typical traps when the source is a European language:

• false friends: French actuellement or German aktuell mean ‘currently’, not actually; eventuell or éventuellement mean ‘possibly’, not eventually;
• flat calls to action: ‘Request a quote’ or ‘Book a demo’ read better than a literal rendering;
• vague praise words (‘performant’, ‘innovative solution’) that sound stiff in English and are better replaced by a concrete benefit.

The footer deserves a look too: tax terms become excl. VAT and incl. VAT, the head office becomes registered office, and phone numbers should be in international format, +33 1 … or +49 30 …, without the leading zero. Company legal forms (SAS, GmbH, S.L.) stay as they are.

What Manuce delivers, and what it does not do

Manuce reads your PDF block by block, with each block's position, font, size and colour. The original text is erased and the English translation is placed in the same box, in the original font or an equivalent one. Photos, icons and backgrounds stay where they are. If a translation is longer than the original, the text size is reduced until it fits; into English this is uncommon.

You receive:

• the brochure as a PDF with the text replaced in place (layout included in the price);
• an editable Word version, handy for polishing a tagline;
• a formatted PDF and the plain text.

What Manuce does not do:

• a scanned PDF (a picture of the page, with no selectable text) cannot be read;
• text that is part of an image (a slogan baked into a photo, a logo, a flattened chart) stays untouched, because images are kept as they are;
• it does not redesign the layout to fill space freed by shorter English copy;
• it does not produce sworn or certified translations, which a sales brochure normally does not need.

English is charged at the base rate (×1 coefficient). If the same brochure is going into several languages, a discount applies to the whole order from two languages.

Preparing the file and checking the English

Before uploading:

1. Run the selection test: open the PDF and try to highlight a sentence. If nothing selects, the text is an image or was converted to outlines on export; go back to the layout file and export a PDF where text remains text.
2. Spot text inside visuals: if a key selling point sits in an image, move it into a text box before exporting.
3. Pick the free sample paragraph carefully: choose the strapline or the most sales-driven paragraph, where tone matters most.

On delivery, check:

• product and brand names: confirm in the sample, then in the full translation, that they were left unchanged;
• spelling variant: colour or color should be consistent throughout and suit your market; the Word file makes harmonising easy;
• figures: separators, dates and units (a US audience may expect feet or pounds alongside metric);
• contact details and footer;
• narrow boxes such as buttons and call-outs: make sure nothing was shrunk to a size that will be hard to read in print.

In practice

1. Check that the text in your brochure PDF can be selected.
2. Upload the file: an instant quote appears, based on the exact word count.
3. Ask for the free sample on your strapline or most persuasive paragraph.
4. Pay and receive the English brochure laid out in place, plus Word, formatted PDF and plain text.
5. Proofread product names, figures, dates, contact details and spelling variant.