Translate a Sales Brochure PDF into Spanish

How Spanish changes a brochure

Spanish runs noticeably longer than English and close to French in length. If your brochure was designed in English, every short line grows: Get a quote becomes Solicite un presupuesto, Our team becomes Nuestro equipo. On buttons, banners and badges, space runs out quickly, and headlines set on a single line are the first to suffer.

A few typographic rules worth knowing before you proofread:

• Opening punctuation: questions and exclamations open with ¿ or ¡. It is ¿Por qué elegirnos?, not Por qué elegirnos? A section heading missing the opening mark stands out immediately to a Spanish reader.
• Capitalisation: only the first word of a heading and proper nouns take a capital. Nuestras soluciones para la industria, not Nuestras Soluciones Para La Industria, a common carry-over from English title case.
• No space before colons or question marks: Contacto: ventas@…
• Plurals: Spanish has a singular, an ordinary plural and a separate form for large round numbers, which takes de: 1 producto, 25 productos, but 1 millón de unidades, 2 millones de piezas.

Spain or Latin America: vocabulary, register, conventions

A brochure targets a specific market, and Spanish is not the same in Madrid, Mexico City or Buenos Aires. The differences lie mostly in everyday vocabulary: ordenador in Spain, computadora in Mexico; móvil or celular; coche, carro or auto. A single one of these words in your sales copy is enough to place the text.

Register matters just as much. Consumer marketing in Spain readily uses the informal tú (Descubre nuestra gama), whereas the formal usted (Descubra nuestra gama) remains more usual in business-to-business material and in many Latin American markets. A consistent brochure keeps the same choice throughout, calls to action included.

Number formats differ too: in Spain, 1.200,50 €, with the symbol after the amount; in Mexico, $1,200.50. Dates are written day/month/year. Dialling codes, addresses and contact details should match the target country.

In practice: decide on the market before ordering, then read the free sample looking for these markers (tú or usted, vocabulary, number format).

What Manuce delivers, and what it does not do

Your brochure is handled by Calliope, our engine specialised in marketing and sales: headlines, selling points and calls to action are treated as sales copy, not as a manual. Manuce reads the PDF block by block, with the position, font, size and colour of each block.

You receive:

• the re-laid-out PDF: the original text is removed and the Spanish placed in the same box, in the original font or an equivalent; images and background stay in place. Where the translation is longer, the text size is reduced until it fits;
• an editable Word version, for reworking a headline or updating a price;
• a formatted PDF and the plain text, handy for proofreading or for bringing the copy back into your design software.

For a four-page brochure of around 1,200 words, the translation arrives within minutes. What Manuce does not do:

• a scanned PDF, a mere picture of the page with no selectable text, is not read;
• text embedded in images (captions baked into photos, a logo with a strapline, a flattened infographic) stays as it is, since images are kept;
• if a headline must keep its original size, shortening it is up to you, in the Word version;
• Manuce does not produce sworn or certified translations.

Preparing the file and checking the result

Before uploading:

• Test the text: try selecting a word in the PDF. If it will not select, export again from the source file rather than uploading a scan.
• Export with fonts embedded. Fonts are often only partly embedded, with just the characters used: an English brochure may contain no ñ, no ¿ and no accented vowels. Manuce then uses an equivalent font; check that the result suits you.
• Spot the text inside images: if it needs to be in Spanish, plan to replace those visuals.

Once delivered, check in the re-laid-out PDF:

1. buttons, banners and headings where the type was reduced: Solicite una demostración gratuita can end up too small on a narrow button;
2. product and brand names that must stay unchanged: check them in the free sample, then in the translation;
3. that every question and exclamation opens with ¿ or ¡;
4. prices, phone numbers and addresses, to be adapted to the target country.

For a brochure going to customers, the Professional level, ready to send out, is the sensible choice; a final read by someone from the target market remains good practice before printing.

In practice

1. Check that the text in your PDF can be selected.
2. Upload the brochure, choose Spanish and a level: the quote appears straight away.
3. Read the free sample: register, vocabulary, product names.
4. Pay, then download the re-laid-out PDF, the Word file, the formatted PDF and the plain text.
5. Check buttons, headlines, prices and contact details before printing.