Translate a Word document into Dutch

Closed compounds and length: what Dutch does to a .docx

Dutch writes compound nouns as one word. Where English has “customer satisfaction survey”, Dutch has klantentevredenheidsonderzoek; “liability insurance” becomes aansprakelijkheidsverzekering. These blocks can only break at specific points, so Word cannot spread them over two lines the way it would a string of short words.

In a Word document, three places feel it first:

• Narrow table columns: a heading such as Verzekeringsmaatschappij in a cell sized for “Insurer” may overflow, or break in the wrong place if hyphenation is not set to Dutch.
• Single-line headers and footers, where a longer document title wraps and pushes the body text down.
• Fixed-height text boxes, which can silently hide the end of a sentence.

Coming from English, Dutch text usually runs longer; from French or German the overall difference is smaller. Either way, the compounds concentrate the extra length in a handful of terms, typically in headings and tables. What changes is less the page count than the behaviour of short lines.

Netherlands or Flanders: register, vocabulary, conventions

Written Dutch is shared by the Netherlands and Dutch-speaking Belgium, but a Flemish reader quickly spots a text written for Amsterdam, and vice versa.

• Register: formal u remains standard in official and legal letters. Many Dutch companies address customers as je; in Flanders u is more common in the same setting. Pick one and keep it throughout.
• Vocabulary: gsm (BE) vs mobiele telefoon (NL), beenhouwer vs slager, ajuin vs ui. For a Belgian audience these deserve a review.
• Headings: sentence case, not English title case. “Terms and Conditions” becomes Algemene voorwaarden, not Algemene Voorwaarden.
• The IJ digraph: at the start of a capitalised word both letters are upper case: IJsselmeer, IJzer.
• Spelling: the diaeresis separates vowels (ideeën, coördinatie), and some plurals take an apostrophe (foto's, cd's, baby's).
• Numbers and dates: decimal comma and thousands point (1.250,50), lower-case months and days (maandag 3 maart 2025), currency symbol first (€ 12,50).
• Quotation marks: “…” or ‘…’; French « » or German „…“ from a source document should not survive.
• Letters: Geachte heer Jansen, to open, Met vriendelijke groet, to close.

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. Dutch is billed at the base rate (×1 coefficient on the per-word price).

Your original .docx is rebuilt run by run: each Dutch segment takes the place of the source segment with its font, size, colour, bold or italic, style and numbering. Table widths stay as in the original: a column is not widened to fit aansprakelijkheidsverzekering, so you decide whether to widen it or reduce the font size.

An automatic check compares the layout of the translated document with the original and flags any difference. You receive the file in its original format with the text replaced in place, plus a Word version, a PDF and plain text, handy for a Dutch-speaking colleague to proofread without touching the layout.

What Manuce does not do:

• Automatic fields (table of contents, cross-references) keep working but are not recalculated: after translation, updating the fields in Word recalculates the page numbers.
• No sworn translation. A document for a Belgian or Dutch authority that requires a sworn translator (beëdigd vertaler) must go through one.

Preparing the file and checking the result

Before you upload:

• Accept or reject tracked changes so the translated text is the final version.
• Remove manual line breaks inside sentences: Dutch word order (the verb moves to the end of a subordinate clause, as in …omdat de levering vertraagd is) differs from English, so a forced break ends up in the wrong place.
• If a diagram is an image, its text is not part of the document's paragraphs: plan for it separately.
• Decide on the audience: Netherlands or Flanders, u or je. The free sample, one paragraph of your file translated at the chosen level, lets you judge the tone before paying.

After delivery:

1. Update all fields so the table of contents and cross-references show the right page numbers.
2. Check that the proofing language of the text is Dutch (Netherlands or Belgium); otherwise the spell checker flags everything and hyphenation follows another language's rules.
3. Scan tables and headers: verzekerings-maatschappij split at the join between the two words is fine; a split mid-syllable is not.
4. For a Belgian audience, review everyday terms and letter formulas.

In practice

1. Upload your .docx: the quote appears straight away, based on the exact word count.
2. Read the free sample and check the register (u or je) and the vocabulary for your audience.
3. Choose a level, pay, then download the translated .docx, its PDF and the plain text.
4. In Word, update the fields and check cells and headers that contain long compounds.