Best OCR and translator program
Thread poster: Traducción Global Vida Sapir
Traducción Global Vida Sapir
Traducción Global Vida Sapir
Mexico
Local time: 06:50
Jan 25, 2018

Hello, I'm looking for a program that contains an OCR that converts the PDF into Word (maintaining the same format) and also translates the document for you. I know that Abby Fine Reader converts PDF's to Word, but doesn't translate the document. I would like the translated document to keep its original format. Many thanks.

 
Sheila Wilson
Sheila Wilson  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 12:50
Member (2007)
English
+ ...
Aren't you the translator? Jan 25, 2018

Traducción Global Vida Sapir wrote:
I would like the translated document to keep its original format. Many thanks.

Most of the CAT tools will handle PDF files, I believe. It's only the very basic ones like Wordfast Classic that don't. I know Wordfast Pro and SDL Trados do. And so does the free Wordfast Anywhere. Mind you, I don't know how good a job they do with the formatting. I have Abbyy PDF Converter: sometimes it works well and other times it's rubbish.

But I'm concerned at this idea of a computer program translating the file for you. A lot of them will populate the target file with output from Google Translate or similar, but you can't call that a translation. It's your job to provide that.


Magec Borges Gil
 
neilmac
neilmac
Spain
Local time: 13:50
Spanish to English
+ ...
Moon on a stick Jan 25, 2018

I use Nitro Pro for OCR and PDF conversion. However, after that I'm on my own and I have to cobble my translations together myself...

 
Roy Williams
Roy Williams  Identity Verified
Austria
Local time: 13:50
German to English
Try Small Pdf Jan 26, 2018

I've had good results here https://smallpdf.com/. It converts Pdf to Word and other formats as well. With the free version, you can
convert two files per hour. It does a really good job of maintaining the formatting of the original document. The downside though, it cannot convert scanned PDFs

[Edited at 2018-01-26 10:44 GMT]


 
mc1529
mc1529
United States
Translate scanned document, convert to Word & keep layout/format simultaneously Jul 30, 2019

Hi Traducción Global Vida Sapir,

There are translation software programs available that you can upload a scanned document PDF to, have it converted to Word, have it OCR the document and translate it––all simultaneously.

Which program you choose depends on how often you plan to do this, the other features you desire in translation software, and whether or not you need high-caliber OCR.

While there have been significant improvements made to OCR, the tra
... See more
Hi Traducción Global Vida Sapir,

There are translation software programs available that you can upload a scanned document PDF to, have it converted to Word, have it OCR the document and translate it––all simultaneously.

Which program you choose depends on how often you plan to do this, the other features you desire in translation software, and whether or not you need high-caliber OCR.

While there have been significant improvements made to OCR, the translation quality and formatting output will partly depend on the quality of your document. Low-resolution documents with text obstructions will make it more difficult for the OCR to be successful and the formatting to stay in place, regardless of the translation software you choose.

The following video will tell you how to most efficiently and successfully translate scanned documents. It also provides a recommendation for a translation software program with a robust, competitive OCR engine that will OCR your document for you, convert it to a Word doc and keep as much of the layout/formatting intact as possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3xlV80YLeU

Hope this is helpful.
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Rolf Keller
Rolf Keller
Germany
Local time: 13:50
English to German
Automatically maintain the format via OCR - a pious hope Jul 31, 2019

Theoretically it is possible to OCR a file to Word and maintain the format. But what does "format" mean here? It does mean the visible representation only. It does not mean that the resulting Word document is easily & resonably editable (let alone translatable). Why? Because images (OCR = interpret images of pages!) don't include all necessary formatting information. Even worse: Actually some formatting information is lost even when the original author converted his wordprocessor file t... See more
Theoretically it is possible to OCR a file to Word and maintain the format. But what does "format" mean here? It does mean the visible representation only. It does not mean that the resulting Word document is easily & resonably editable (let alone translatable). Why? Because images (OCR = interpret images of pages!) don't include all necessary formatting information. Even worse: Actually some formatting information is lost even when the original author converted his wordprocessor file to PDF. That's a technically caused fact - whatever some software vendors promise. So you often get a Word file that isn't translatable. On principle it works only sometimes and only for simply formatted files.

So an additional step is needed: Postedit the automatically created OCRed file manually or use the non-automatic interactive features of the OCR software.
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John Fossey
 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 13:50
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
Re: MC1529 Jul 31, 2019

mc1529 wrote:
The following video will tell you how to most efficiently and successfully translate scanned documents. It also provides a recommendation for a translation software program with a robust, competitive OCR engine that will OCR your document for you, convert it to a Word doc and keep as much of the layout/formatting intact as possible.


What MC1529 (who has been a member here since January 2108) is trying to recommend, is PairaPhrase, but PairaPhrase is not an OCR tool. It is a translation management system for large companies, and it has an OCR module (not a very good one, either). No translator here will ever get access to it.

The video does explain some of the problems that OCR'ed texts have and how to overcome some of those problems.

[Edited at 2019-07-31 08:24 GMT]


 


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