Sometimes we may need to translate our presentation into another language, especially if we have to teach foreign students or in a business meeting with representatives of other nationalities. Luckily, this task is not difficult to perform and we have different ways to carry it out.
It should be borne in mind that in the case of the documents that we design with PowerPoint, they contain different types of elements, either in the form of text or visuals that with the translation could lose their shape. Given the importance of design in the presentation, it is essential that the translation is carried out preserving its structure and design.
PowerPoint translation tool
PowerPoint incorporates its own tool with which to perform simple automatic translations of the content of our PPT files. To do this, once the application is open, we must click on the “Review” tab, within the toolbar at the top. Here in the Language section, we click on “Translate”.
This will make the «Translator» menu appear on the right side of the screen. Next, we click on the text box that we want to translate and select all the content. This will be reflected in the Spanish section at the top, while the translation in the desired language will be reflected at the bottom. By clicking on the language it will be possible to choose between all the available ones.
Once the translation is done, just click on the “Insert” button. This will cause the original text on the slide to be replaced by its translation. It is important to know that this tool has some limitations, as we can only translate one text box at a time. In the event that we have several text boxes per slide, we must insert them individually to obtain their corresponding translation.
Likewise, since it is a job that is done manually, we must have control over the design of the slides, since we must spend time adjusting the styles and sizes of the font in case the target language is not compatible with the original text.
Use an online application
If the translator that incorporates the application itself does not convince us, as it is impractical for us, we can always opt for various websites that will help us to carry out translations either by texts or the entire document. These are Google Translate, DocTranslator, and DeepL. All of them are free or have a free version with which to carry out this work, so we can obtain our translations for free and without the need to install any type of software on our PC.
Google translate
A quick and free method with which to be able to translate PPT files is to use the Google translator, which we can access by clicking on this link to its main web page. Once here, we click on the Documents tab, select the language of the source and destination text, and click on the Explore computer button, from where we will load the .ppt or .pptx file containing our PowerPoint presentation.
Once this is done, we click on the “Translate” button. In this way, the Google application will be in charge of carrying out a complete translation of all the content of the file as plain text. This is why neither the images nor the font styles will be kept. Its main drawback is that, once the translation is achieved, we can only transfer it to the document copying and pasting the text, it is not possible to save the file with the translation made.
DocTranslator
This powerful online application can translate any type of PowerPoint presentation, whether in .ppt or .pptx format. It’s compatible with more than 100 languagesincluding Spanish, English, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, etc. This translator works with neural machine translation technology that is capable of maintaining a quality similar to that of people, obtaining between 80 and 90% accuracy. In addition, it retains its original design and provides a fast response time, even for large documents.
DocTranslator has a free plan for documents from up to 2000 words, being compatible with Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, as well as Adobe InDesign .idml files. It also has a payment plan for larger documents with a price of $ 0.002 per translated word.
To start using it, it will be necessary to create a new account, although a credit card is not required and it can be canceled at any time. Once this is done, on the next screen we must load our file, which must contain a 20 MB maximum size. Later we select the original language, as well as the language to which we want to translate. Finally, we click on the Upload button.
Once uploaded, the name of this, the selected languages, the price, the status and the upload date will appear in the corresponding window. All you have to do is click on the «Translate» button, or in case we have made a mistake on the «Delete» button. In a matter of seconds, the translation process will be completed and we will be able to download our fully translated PowerPoint file, preserving its entire structure.
DeepL
Another website that we can use to translate our .pptx files online is DeepL. It has support for languages such as English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Japanese, among others, up to a total of 26 languages. Although it does not have the variety that other options offer, it is compatible with the most common ones. Along with the ability to translate PowerPoint presentations it also supports Word and PDF documents. For this it will only be necessary to access its official website.
Once we have accessed we find an interface very similar to that of Google Translate. It will only be necessary to click on the button «Translate files». Then we click on “Select one from the computer” to add a saved PPT file. Once added, we must choose the language to which we want to make the translation. Finally, we only have to wait a few seconds for the conversion to finish and we can automatically save the translated file in the same format that we have uploaded.
