WORKED EXAMPLE · POWERPOINT TRANSLATION
A 23-slide development deck in French, then three fixes
A consultant had a 23-slide deck on women’s economic empowerment in Côte d’Ivoire, written for the UK government’s WOW Helpdesk. They asked to translate it into French for a ministry in Abidjan, in the same PowerPoint file, with the figures, names and organisations left as written.
translated every slide and table in place. Then, in the French deck, it rewrote the footer on 15 slides, corrected the query number on the cover and in a citation, and deleted a leftover template line.
- 23slides translated in the same file
- 15 / 15footers rewritten in request 2
- 0figures changed from the English format
- 0.16credits for both requests
Open the real files
These are the actual decks from the run. Download them and open them in PowerPoint.
Where the file comes from: GOV.UK, Work and Opportunities for Women (WOW) Helpdesk, Query 57, women’s economic empowerment in Côte d’Ivoire, prepared by Social Development Direct for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. Published under the Open Government Licence v3.0. The FCDO has not reviewed or endorsed this example.
01 · THE STARTING FILE
Tables, pictures, a footer on 15 slides and two template leftovers
The deck has a 16-row table of employment by sector and gender on slide 8, two recommendation tables on slides 19 and 20, photos on most slides and a footer reading “Document Title” on 15 of them. It also carries two leftovers from its template: the cover says Query 55 instead of 57, and slide 22 still says “Disclaimer to go in here”.
The file is a normal PowerPoint deck, so nothing had to be converted. edited the slides’ own text boxes and table cells.
02 · REQUEST 1
"Translate it into French for the ministry in Abidjan"
What the consultant typed
Please translate the attached deck (23 slides, women's economic empowerment in Côte d'Ivoire) into French for our counterparts at the ministry in Abidjan. - Keep every slide, picture, layout and table structure as it is - Keep all figures exactly as written, including the English number format (e.g. 5,406,838 and 43.0%) - Do not translate names, emails, phone numbers or the organisation names FCDO, DFID, WOW Helpdesk and Social Development Direct - Leave the footers alone for now; I'll fix them separately - Make sure the French text still fits its boxes, especially the slide 8 table and the recommendation tables on slides 19 and 20
What did
- Translated all 23 slides into French in the same file, tables included, and left the pictures and slide layouts as they were.
- Left FCDO, DFID, WOW Helpdesk, Social Development Direct, the names, emails and phone numbers in English, and did not touch the footers.
- Kept every figure as written, in the English format: 5,406,838, 43.0%, 49.3% and the rest.
- Kept the recommendation tables on slides 19 and 20 inside their slides, each bullet still a bullet.
- Left the three sentences of the “About WOW Helpdesk reports” box on slide 8 in English, under a French heading, and wrote the report title in its suggested citation as “Women’s Economic Empowerment en Côte d’Ivoire”.
- Its finish message counted 137 paragraphs rewritten and listed, under “Not done”, the English still in the deck: a job title, a report name (“Women Business and Law”) and the slide 8 sentences.
We checked it against the original: 23 slides in each file; FCDO, DFID, WOW Helpdesk and Social Development Direct appear as often as in the original; on every slide the figures are the same as in the English deck, written the same way.
03 · REQUEST 2
"Three fixes on the French deck, nothing else"
What the consultant typed
Three fixes on the French deck, nothing else: 1. The slide footers still read '<number> | Document Title'. Replace the title part with 'Autonomisation économique des femmes – Côte d'Ivoire' on every slide that has that footer, and keep the slide number. 2. This is WOW Helpdesk Query 57, but the cover (slide 1) and the suggested citation in the 'About WOW Helpdesk reports' box on slide 8 both say 55. Change both to 57. 3. Slide 22 still has the template text 'Disclaimer to go in here' (or its translation). Delete that text.
What did
- Worked in the French deck from request 1.
- Replaced “Document Title” with “Autonomisation économique des femmes – Côte d’Ivoire” in all 15 footers and kept each slide number.
- Changed 55 to 57 on the cover and in the suggested citation on slide 8.
- Deleted the “Disclaimer to go in here” line on slide 22.
- The longer footer wraps to two lines on the slides with a logo.
We checked it: no “Document Title” is left and the new footer appears 15 times; “57” is on slides 1 and 8 and “55” nowhere; no disclaimer placeholder is left. Select “French, request 2” in the viewer above to see the result.
Your deck, translated in its own file
translates the text boxes and tables of your PowerPoint where they are, keeps the pictures and layouts, and makes the follow-up fixes in the same deck.
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