Translate a Word Document into Czech, Layout Intact

What Czech changes in a Word file

Czech uses the Latin alphabet, but with diacritics that not every font includes: the háček (č, š, ž, ř, ě, ď, ť, ň), the acute accent marking long vowels (á, é, í, ó, ú, ý) and the small ring on ů. Because Manuce keeps your original fonts, a decorative or older heading font without these glyphs forces Word to borrow them from another font. The result is an ř that looks heavier or taller than its neighbours in the middle of a heading.

Word length is the second issue. Czech is heavily inflected: endings attach to the word, and some adjectives grow very long, such as nejpravděpodobnější (most likely). In a narrow table column or a fixed-width text box, one word like this can overflow, or break without a hyphen if Word does not recognise the text as Czech.

Czech also has no articles and a flexible word order, so line counts shift unpredictably compared with English or other source languages. Leave some slack in cells and boxes rather than sizing them to the millimetre.

Czech typography and conventions to check

• Quotation marks: Czech writes „like this“, opening low and closing high, or »like this« in careful typesetting; English-style quotes look foreign.
• Numbers and dates: decimal comma and a space for thousands (1 250,75, not 1,250.75), dates written 12. 3. 2025 with a space after each full stop, and ordinals marked with a full stop: 3. kapitola (chapter 3).
• Punctuation: no space before colons, semicolons, question or exclamation marks: Poznámka: viz příloha.
• One-letter prepositions: Czech typography avoids leaving v, k, s, z, o, u (and often a, i) alone at the end of a line. Word does not handle this by itself; in a carefully set document the following space is replaced with a non-breaking space.
• Register: letters and client-facing documents use the formal form of address (vykání), with Vy and Váš capitalised when writing to one person.

Plurals, the vocative and mail-merge templates

Czech has four number forms: 1 strana (1 page), 2 strany (2 to 4), 5 stran (5 and above), and a separate form for decimals, 1,5 strany. In a sentence written out in full, agreement is handled in the translation; check it when proofreading. The trouble comes from templates where a number is inserted by a field: You ordered «Quantity» items cannot agree in Czech, because the noun form depends on the figure. Rephrase before uploading, along the lines of Number of items: «Quantity», which becomes Počet položek: «Quantity».

Names raise the same problem. A Czech letter opens in the vocative case: Vážený pane Nováku (not Novák), Vážená paní Nováková. A merge field that drops the surname in unchanged gives a wrong form. Use a neutral greeting (Dobrý den, Vážený zákazníku) or prepare a column of vocative forms in your data source.

What Manuce returns, and what it does not do

Manuce translates paragraphs, tables, headers and footers, and text boxes; a merged cell is translated and charged only once. The Czech text goes back into your .docx piece by piece: fonts, sizes, colours, bold and italics, styles, numbering and table widths stay as they were in the original. An automatic check then compares the layout of the translated document with the original and flags any difference.

You receive the file in its original format, plus a Word version, a PDF and the plain text. The plain text is handy for having a Czech-speaking colleague review the wording without the layout.

What is not done:

• automatic fields (table of contents, cross-references) keep working but are not recalculated: updating the fields in Word recalculates the page numbers for the Czech version;
• fonts are not swapped: if your original font lacks ř or ů, choosing a replacement is up to you;
• no certified translation: a document for a Czech authority or court needs a soudní překladatel (court-appointed translator), which Manuce does not replace.

Preparing the file and checking the Czech version

1. Type the pangram Příliš žluťoučký kůň úpěl ďábelské ódy in every style of the document (heading, body, table, header). If any letter changes appearance, the font lacks Czech glyphs; change it in the styles before uploading.
2. Rephrase mail-merge sentences where a number or a name is inserted mid-sentence.
3. Read the free sample, one paragraph translated at your chosen level, to check the register and that a brand name or a term you want kept unchanged has not been translated. Essential is enough to understand a document internally; Professional is meant for documents going to a Czech partner.
4. On delivery, update the fields, set the proofing language of the text to Czech for hyphenation and spelling, then check narrow columns, quotation marks and stray one-letter prepositions at line ends.

In practice

1. Test your fonts with Příliš žluťoučký kůň úpěl ďábelské ódy and replace any that cannot show ř, ů or ě.
2. Upload the .docx: the quote appears straight away, based on the exact word count.
3. Choose a level, read the free sample, then pay.
4. Download the translated .docx, Word version, PDF and plain text from your client area.
5. In Word, update the fields, set the proofing language to Czech and check tables and quotation marks.