Back to projects
Active

AI Deck Translator

Automatically translate presentations while preserving formatting and structure

PythonClaude APIGoogle Slides APIPowerPoint

A tool that automatically translates presentations (Google Slides and PowerPoint) between languages while preserving formatting, images, and slide structure.

The Problem

Translating a 50-slide presentation manually takes hours. Copy text, translate, paste back, fix formatting that broke. Repeat for every text box, table cell, and speaker note.

Existing translation tools either:

  • Don't preserve formatting
  • Can't handle complex layouts
  • Produce awkward machine translations

The Solution

Feed the tool a presentation and a target language. It:

  1. Extracts all text including tables, SmartArt, and speaker notes
  2. Deduplicates content to reduce translation costs (repeated phrases only translate once)
  3. Translates via Claude for natural, context-aware output
  4. Rebuilds the presentation with translated text in the original formatting
  5. Creates a copy rather than overwriting the original

Key Features

Format Preservation

The tool maintains:

  • Font styles, sizes, and colors
  • Text positioning and alignment
  • Table structures and cell formatting
  • SmartArt and diagram layouts
  • Image placement

Smart Deduplication

Corporate decks often repeat phrases: product names, taglines, legal disclaimers. The tool identifies duplicates and translates each unique string once, then applies the translation everywhere it appears.

Multiple Formats

Supports both:

  • Google Slides via the Slides API (creates a translated copy in your Drive)
  • PowerPoint (.pptx) via direct file manipulation

Progress Tracking

Real-time progress bar showing percentage completion. Useful for large decks that take several minutes to process.

Technical Approach

The architecture separates concerns cleanly:

  1. Extraction layer handles format-specific parsing
  2. Translation layer batches requests to Claude
  3. Reconstruction layer applies translations back to source format

This separation means adding support for new formats (Keynote, for example) only requires new extraction and reconstruction modules.

Use Cases

  • Sales teams localizing pitch decks for regional markets
  • Marketing adapting campaign materials across geographies
  • Training departments translating onboarding materials
  • Executives preparing presentations for international meetings

Limitations

  • Complex animations may not transfer perfectly
  • Embedded videos remain in original language
  • Very large presentations (200+ slides) may hit API rate limits