# Translate a Draft Without Leaving the Editor

> Translate a draft into another Indian language right inside the editor, keeping structure and clause numbering intact. Now in beta.

Beta · 18 May 2026

## What changed

Documents drafted in Indian legal practice often need to serve more than one language. A notice in English may also need to be filed or served in Hindi, Marathi, Telugu, or another language the other party reads. Until now, translating a draft meant taking it out of Niyam, running it through a separate tool, and then rebuilding it on the way back — because numbered clauses, headings, and structural spacing rarely survive a round-trip through a general-purpose translator intact.

In-place translation, now in beta, lets you translate a draft into another Indian language from within the editor itself. You select a target language, Niyam translates the document, and the result appears in the editor with the original structure preserved: clause numbering remains in sequence, headings stay as headings, and the verification block at the end remains in its correct position.

## How to use it

1. Open the draft you want to translate in the Draft workspace.
2. Select the in-place translation option from the document actions menu and choose your target Indian language.
3. Niyam translates the draft and presents the result in the editor with the original structure intact.
4. Review the translated draft carefully, paying particular attention to terms of art. Legal terms sometimes have a preferred local rendering that differs from a literal translation, and you can correct those directly in the editor.
5. Save the translated version, or use revision history to keep both the source-language and translated drafts available side by side.
6. Export to PDF or DOCX when ready, using the same export workflow as the source-language draft.

## Why it matters

Translating inside the editor means the document never loses its structure. Anyone who has pasted a numbered petition into a separate translation tool knows the result: paragraph numbers restart, indentation collapses, headings appear as plain unstyled text, and the verification block ends up somewhere unexpected. Reassembling the structure after translation adds work that has nothing to do with the substance of the filing.

Doing the translation in place removes that step entirely. The output is a structured draft ready for review and correction, not a body of text that needs to be rebuilt into a document. For advocates who need bilingual filings, or for in-house counsel who need an agreement in both English and a regional language for execution by different parties, removing the reformatting step represents a real reduction in the time between drafting and finalising.

## Good to know

- **This feature is in beta.** Review the translated output before relying on it for any filing or formal service. General legal language translates well; court-specific phrasing, statutory references, and jurisdiction-particular usage deserve careful reading before use.
- Very long drafts may be translated in sections. The structure is preserved throughout, but check the joins between sections for continuity of numbering and tone.
- The original draft is never overwritten. Translation is saved as a revision, so you can return to the source-language version at any time through revision history.
- In-place translation is designed for documents you are actively drafting in Niyam. For scanned filings, received notices, or bulk documents requiring translation, the Translation workspace remains the appropriate tool.
- Clause numbering, headings, and the verification block are preserved in the translated output, so a translated petition reads as a properly structured petition rather than continuous unstructured text.
- Language coverage is expanding during the beta period based on what users are actually translating.

https://niyam.ai/changelog/draft-in-place-translation-beta