Translate a Word document into Romanian

What Romanian changes in a Word file

Romanian uses the Latin alphabet, reads left to right and runs to roughly the same length as French. Coming from English, expect paragraphs to grow somewhat and narrow table cells to wrap more often; coming from French, Italian or Spanish, the layout will barely move.

The real trap is in the diacritics: ă, â, î, ș, ț, and in particular comma-below versus cedilla. The correct characters are ș (U+0219) and ț (U+021B), with a comma under the letter. The cedilla forms ş and ţ are Turkish characters or leftovers from old keyboard layouts, and they still turn up in many Romanian documents. Romanian readers notice them, and a search for “știință” will not find “ştiinţă”.

• Check that your document fonts include the comma-below glyphs. Some older or decorative typefaces do not, so Word shows an empty box or substitutes another font, which spoils the look of a heading.
• Capitals count too: Ș and Ț appear in all-caps headings such as “ÎNȘTIINȚARE”.

Romanian typography and conventions to check

Several Romanian rules differ from English and are obvious in a polished document:

• Quotation marks: Romanian opens low and closes high, „like this”, keeping « » for nested quotes: „Contractul «de bază» rămâne valabil”.
• Numbers: decimal comma and a full stop for thousands, 1.250,50 lei.
• Dates: 15.03.2025 or 15 martie 2025; month and day names are lower case.
• â and î: under the Romanian Academy norm, î is written at the start and end of a word (început) and â inside it (când, România), and the verb form is sunt, not sînt.
• Plurals: Romanian has three categories (one, few, other). It is 1 pagină, 3 pagini, but 25 de pagini: from twenty upwards the noun takes de. A Word template that drops a number in front of a fixed word, such as “[N] pagini”, will be wrong for some values.
• Register: letters and client-facing documents use the polite form dumneavoastră.

What Manuce returns, and what it does not do

Manuce translates body paragraphs, tables, headers and footers, and text boxes. A merged cell is translated and charged only once. The .docx is rebuilt text run by text run: fonts, sizes, colours, bold and italic, styles, numbering and table widths stay exactly as in the original. 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 PDF and the plain text. The original layout is included in the price. Romanian is a surcharge language: a ×1.25 coefficient applies to the per-word rate.

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 refreshes the page numbers. If Romanian lengthens a chapter, the contents page (Cuprins) will show outdated numbers until you do this.
• Manuce does not provide sworn or certified translation. A document submitted to a Romanian or Moldovan authority that requires one must be translated by an authorised translator.

Preparing the file and checking the result

Before uploading:

• Keep text as live Word text: a paragraph pasted as an image will not be translated.
• Pick fonts that handle ș and ț. Most current standard fonts do; test by typing “știință” in each style you use.
• Avoid sentences assembled from fragments around a variable number (“You have [N] days”); write full sentences that the translation can inflect correctly.

After delivery:

• Update all fields so the contents page and cross-references match the new pagination.
• Search for cedilla ş and ţ, especially in quoted passages or names copied from older documents, and replace them.
• Set the document proofing language to Romanian so spell-checking and hyphenation follow Romanian rules.
• Review narrow table cells and fixed-size text boxes, where longer text can overflow.

In practice

1. Check that your fonts display ș and ț, then upload the .docx.
2. Review the quote, based on the exact word count, and read the free Romanian sample paragraph.
3. Choose a level, pay, and download the translated .docx, the PDF and the plain text.
4. Update the fields in Word to refresh the contents page and cross-references.
5. Search for cedilla ş and ţ and review tables and text boxes.