Square brackets in certified translations: the translator's voice, and how to format it in one pass

Not everything on the page of an official document is text. There are seals, stamps, signatures, barcodes, letterheads, coats of arms, handwritten notes, and the occasional line that is half cut off by the scanner. A translation still has to account for all of it, and the standard way to do that is to describe each element in square brackets: [Signature], [Barcode], [QR Code], [Inked stamp: …], [illegible].

Two kinds of parentheticals

Official documents are full of round parentheses. The source author puts them there, so they get translated like everything else. Square brackets are different: they signal that the text inside is the translator's, not the author's.

A reviewer, a credential evaluator, or an immigration officer should be able to tell at a glance what the document says and what the translator adds to the document. Brackets make that distinction visible. They are used for:

• Non-text elements (seals, stamps, signatures, logos, barcodes, QR codes)
• Text that can't be read or is partly missing ([illegible], [partially cut off])
• Handwritten additions, and descriptions of the paper or layout when relevant
• The occasional clarification, such as the original term next to a translated entity name

Conventions vary somewhat between agencies, clients and authorities, so always check what the recipient expects.

Making them stand out

Some translators go one step further and set all bracketed notes in a different font or size, for instance a smaller italic sans-serif. In a one-page certificate with a dozen notes, formatting each by hand is tedious and error-prone. Word can do it in a single pass with a wildcard search.

How to do it

1. Open Find and Replace (Windows: Home > Replace; Mac: Edit > Find > Advanced Find and Replace), click More >>, and tick Use wildcards.
2. In Find what, enter \[*\]
3. In Replace with, enter ^&, which puts back whatever was matched. With the cursor still in that box, click Format > Font and choose the font, size or style you want.
4. Click Replace All.

Find and Replace with wildcards enabled: search for \[*\] and replace with ^&, applying a new font to every bracketed note.

A few notes:

• The backslashes are needed because [ and ] are special characters in wildcard mode.
• When you're done, put the cursor in the Replace box and click No Formatting. Otherwise the font setting carries over to your next search and replace.
• The pattern matches anything between square brackets, so it also catches the long descriptive line at the top of a document. A bracket that runs across a paragraph break won't match.
• Text boxes, headers and footers may need a separate pass, as in the spell check blind spot I wrote about recently.