Translate a Word document into Portuguese

Portugal or Brazil: decide before you upload

Manuce treats European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese as two separate languages, and the choice matters. A Word document for readers in Lisbon that uses arquivo, tela and usuário reads as Brazilian; in São Paulo, ficheiro, ecrã and utilizador read as Portuguese.

• Vocabulary: autocarro / ônibus (bus), telemóvel / celular (mobile phone), equipa / equipe (team).
• Spelling: even after the 1990 Orthographic Agreement, some accents and letters differ: económico in Portugal, econômico in Brazil; facto versus fato.
• Addressing the reader: in Brazil, você is standard, even in manuals and procedures; in Portugal, tu is informal and business documents favour the third person or o senhor / a senhora.
• Letters: a formal letter opens with Exmo. Senhor in Portugal, more often Prezado Senhor in Brazil.

If one document has to serve both markets, order both languages: the multi-language discount applies from two languages (−20%).

What changes in the text once it is Portuguese

Length. Portuguese generally runs longer than English: contracted prepositions (do, da, nos) and more analytical phrasing add up. Word reflows body text without trouble; the problems appear in fixed spaces: a table cell with a set width, a fixed-size text box, a heading designed to fit on one line, a footer that only just fits.

Characters. Portuguese uses ã, õ, ç, á, â, à, é, ê, í, ó, ô, ú. Mainstream fonts include them; a decorative heading font or an older corporate typeface may fall back to a substitute font. Test words: Informação, Gestão, Atenção.

Numbers and dates. Both variants use a decimal comma. Brazil: 1.234,56 and R$ 1.234,56; Portugal: 1 234,56 €, with a space as thousands separator. Dates run day/month/year with lower-case months: 15 de março de 2025. Ordinals: 1.º in Portugal, 1º in Brazil.

Punctuation. Portugal often uses angle quotes « », Brazil curly quotes “ ”. No space goes before colons or question marks, unlike French; worth checking if your source document is French or if colleagues edit the text afterwards.

Plurals. Portuguese has three plural categories (one, many, other). The many category covers large round numbers, which take de: 1 milhão de habitantes. Check this in mail-merge documents where figures are inserted automatically.

What Manuce delivers, and what it does not do

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

You receive:

• the translated .docx, text replaced in place, original layout included;
• a Word version and a PDF, handy for sign-off by a contact in Porto or Recife;
• the plain text, useful for a quick review or for reuse in another tool.

What is not done:

• Page numbers in the table of contents and cross-references: automatic fields keep working but are not recalculated during translation. Because the Portuguese text is longer, a chapter may move to the next page: update the fields in Word once you receive the file.
• Sworn translation: Manuce does not produce certified translations. A diploma, civil-status record or court document for a Portuguese or Brazilian authority usually requires an authorised translator (in Brazil, a tradutor juramentado).

Preparing the file and checking the result

Before uploading:

• Finalise the text: accept or reject tracked changes so that the translated version is the final one.
• Leave some room in tables and text boxes sized to the millimetre: a Date column becomes Data, but Lead time becomes Prazo de entrega.
• Check your fonts with Atenção and Gestão: if the tilde appears in a different typeface, change the font in the original.
• Spot text inside images: a diagram or screenshot is not Word text and is not among the elements translated.

After delivery:

• Update fields to recalculate the table of contents and cross-references.
• Scan tables and headers for awkward line breaks.
• Set Word's proofing language to Portuguese (Portugal) or Portuguese (Brazil) before editing, or the spell checker will wrongly flag facto or fato.
• Check country-specific identifiers: a UK company number or VAT number stays as it is; it has no direct equivalent in the Portuguese NIF or Brazilian CNPJ.

In practice

1. Choose European or Brazilian Portuguese according to who will read the document.
2. Upload the final .docx with tracked changes resolved: the quote appears from the exact word count.
3. Read the free sample paragraph to check register (você, o senhor) and vocabulary.
4. After delivery, update fields in Word and check tables and text boxes.