Translate a Word document into Hindi

What Devanagari changes in a Word file

Hindi is written in Devanagari, left to right, so pages and tables keep their direction. The challenge lies elsewhere. Letters hang from a continuous horizontal bar (the shirorekha) and combine into conjuncts such as क्ष, त्र and श्र. To display properly, the font must support shaping. With a Latin-only font, Word falls back to a substitute font or shows empty boxes, depending on the machine.

• Fonts: Manuce keeps the original fonts. If your template uses a font with no Devanagari glyphs, set a font that has them in your styles, such as Nirmala UI (on recent Windows versions) or Noto Sans Devanagari.
• Line spacing: vowel signs sit above the bar (ि, ी) and below the letters (ु, ू). Line spacing set to an exact, tight value clips them; single or multiple spacing adapts.
• Capitals: Devanagari has none. A heading styled as all caps or small caps loses that emphasis in Hindi; bold still works.
• Italic and underline: italic artificially slants Devanagari and reads poorly, and underlining can collide with the lower vowel signs. Both are carried over as they are; decide whether they still suit.

Register, punctuation and numbers in written Hindi

Several language rules show up directly in the translated document:

• Punctuation: sentences end with the purna viram ।, not a full stop. Commas, question marks and colons follow English usage.
• Technical terms: many stay in Latin script (Excel, API, product names) or are transliterated: software becomes सॉफ़्टवेयर. A single line often mixes two scripts, so the font must cover both.
• Register: business documents address the reader with आप, the polite form, and use polite imperatives such as देखें (“see”).
• Word order: the verb comes last. “See page 12” becomes पृष्ठ 12 देखें, so the page number moves within the sentence, which matters for cross-references.
• Numbers: Western digits are standard in business and official documents; Devanagari digits (१२३) exist but are less common. Large numbers use Indian grouping: 12,50,000 (12.5 lakh) rather than 1,250,000.
• Plurals: two categories, one form for 0 and 1 and another above: 1 फ़ाइल, 0 फ़ाइल, but 3 फ़ाइलें. In a mail-merge template where the number is a variable, the sentence may need rewording.

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 .docx is rebuilt run by run: fonts, sizes, colours, bold and italic, styles, numbering and table widths stay as 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 with the text replaced in place, plus a Word version, a PDF and plain text. The plain text is handy for a Hindi reviewer without Word, or for checking a conjunct outside any formatting.

What Manuce does not do:

• Automatic fields (table of contents, cross-references) keep working but are not recalculated: updating fields in Word after translation refreshes the page numbers.
• Manuce does not swap a Latin font for a Devanagari one in your styles; plan that in the source file or adjust afterwards.
• Manuce does not produce sworn or certified translations. Civil records or diplomas for an Indian authority usually require a sworn translator.

Hindi carries a language supplement: a ×1.6 coefficient applies to the per-word rate and is already included in the quote.

Preparing the .docx and checking the result

Before uploading:

• Make sure text is real text: a table pasted as an image or a logo with a tagline will not be translated.
• In the Normal and Heading styles, replace exact line spacing with single or multiple where you can.
• If your brand requires a Latin font, choose its Devanagari companion now.

On delivery:

1. Check conjuncts: क्ष should appear as one glyph, not as क् followed by ष with the small slanted stroke (halant) visible. If it does, the font does not support shaping.
2. Update fields to refresh the table of contents and cross-references.
3. Look at narrow tables: Hindi words do not hyphenate the way English does, so a tight column may wrap onto two lines.
4. Confirm that names and brands meant to stay in Latin script have done so, first in the free sample, then in the full translation.

In practice

1. Check the .docx contains real text rather than images of text, and relax any exact line spacing.
2. Upload the file: the quote appears at once, based on the exact word count.
3. Read the free sample in Hindi: register, terms left in Latin script, conjunct rendering.
4. Pay, then download the translated .docx, the Word version, the PDF and the plain text.
5. In Word, update fields and check fonts and tables.