Translate a Word document into Turkish, layout intact

What Turkish changes in a Word file

Turkish uses the Latin alphabet and runs left to right, so there is no script or direction switch. The difficulties lie elsewhere.

• Long words. Turkish is agglutinative: an idea that takes several words in English often becomes one suffixed word, such as değerlendirilmesinden ("from its evaluation"). In a narrow table column or a centred heading these words do not break naturally and can force awkward line wraps.
• Word order. The verb goes to the end. "Click Save" becomes "Kaydet'e tıklayın": the bold word moves to the front. Formatting follows the text, but check that bold or italics land on the right word.
• Extra letters. Ç, ğ, ı, İ, ö, ş and ü must exist in the font. Common fonts have them; a decorative or older font may lack ğ or ş, and Word then substitutes another font for that letter, which shows in a heading.

Dotted and dotless i, numbers, plurals: Turkish conventions

The trickiest point is the letter i. Turkish has two: i (capital İ) and ı (capital I). Bilgi is BİLGİ in capitals; sınıf is SINIF. If a heading style uses the all-caps font effect and the text language is not set to Turkish, the display may show "BILGI", which is a spelling error. Look out for all-caps styles in your template.

• Numbers: decimal comma and full stop for thousands, 1.250,50; the percent sign goes before the number, %25.
• Dates: 15.03.2025 or 15 Mart 2025; months and weekdays are lower case mid-sentence.
• Plurals: after a number the noun stays singular: 3 sayfa ("3 pages"), never 3 sayfalar.
• Suffixed proper nouns: an apostrophe separates the name from the suffix, which follows vowel harmony: Ankara'da, Londra'da, Paris'te. In a mail merge, a field followed by a fixed suffix ("«City»'de") will be wrong for some cities: rephrase to avoid the suffix.
• Register: business documents use the formal siz; instructions read tıklayın, not tıkla.

What Manuce delivers, 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 piece of text by piece of text: fonts, sizes, colours, bold and italics, 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 the plain text. The plain text is handy for having a Turkish-speaking colleague review terminology without touching the layout.

What Manuce does not do:

• Automatic fields (table of contents, cross-references) keep working, but their page numbers are not recalculated: updating the fields in Word after translation does that. Because Turkish changes paragraph length, a cross-reference can move to another page.
• Table widths are not widened to fit a long Turkish word; they remain those of the original.
• Manuce does not produce sworn or certified translations. For a certificate or diploma going to a Turkish authority, a translation by a sworn translator (yeminli tercüman) is generally required.

Turkish carries a surcharge: a ×1.25 coefficient applies to the per-word rate.

Preparing the .docx and checking it on delivery

Before uploading:

• Check that your fonts include ğ, ş, ı and İ; type them into a heading and see whether Word switches font.
• Keep text in real paragraphs, cells and text boxes: text baked into an image is not text to Word.
• Leave some room in very narrow table columns where you can.
• Request the free sample on a dense paragraph to judge register and terminology before paying.

After delivery:

1. Update the fields to recalculate the table of contents and cross-references.
2. Scan all-caps headings for "I" where "İ" belongs.
3. Check tables for broken long words and overflowing cells.
4. Check figures, amounts and dates in Turkish format (1.250,50 TL, %25).
5. Set the text language to Turkish if you want Turkish spell-checking and hyphenation in Word.

In practice

1. Check that your .docx fonts contain ç, ğ, ı, İ and ş.
2. Upload the file: the quote appears based on the exact word count.
3. Request the free one-paragraph Turkish sample and choose your level.
4. Download the translated .docx, PDF and plain text from your client area.
5. In Word, update the fields and proofread all-caps headings.