How to Translate a PDF Into Another Language
A tenancy agreement in a language you do not read, a product manual from an overseas supplier, a letter from a foreign school: copying a PDF paragraph by paragraph into a translation website is slow and loses the structure. Translating the whole document at once gives you a readable version in a minute.
Translate the PDF
Open Translate PDF and add the file from your device, Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive. Under Translate to, pick the language you want; it starts on your browser's language, and eleven languages are available, including English, Arabic, Urdu, Hindi, French and Spanish. Press the Translate button. The translated text appears on the page with headings and lists kept, and you can copy it or download it as a .txt or .md file.
The result is the translated text, not a copy of the original page layout. That is usually what you need to understand a document; if you need a translated document with the original formatting, convert the PDF with PDF to Word and work from the Word file.
Scanned and long documents
A scanned PDF holds pictures of text, so there is nothing to translate until the words are recognised. Run OCR PDF first, choosing the document's original language, then translate the searchable PDF it produces.
Each translation covers a limited amount of text, so a long document, such as a full contract with schedules or a book chapter, may come back translated only in part. Split it into sections of a few pages with Split PDF and translate them one at a time, and check that the translation ends where the original section ends.
How good is AI translation?
For understanding everyday documents, letters and manuals, AI translation is usually good: it keeps the meaning and the tone rather than translating word by word. It can still misread names, technical terms, abbreviations and anything ambiguous, and it does not know the legal meaning a word has in a particular country.
For anything you will sign, submit to an authority or rely on in a dispute, use the AI translation to understand the document and a qualified human translator for the version that counts. Many courts and government offices require a certified translation anyway.
Your document and the AI provider
Like HuntPDF's other AI tools, translation sends the document's text to an outside AI provider to produce the result. Card numbers, IBANs, long bank account numbers and similar identifiers are replaced with placeholders before the text leaves HuntPDF's server. If a document must not reach any third party, do not translate it with an online AI tool.
Shorter routes
For a long report where you only need the main points, AI PDF Summarizer gives a summary, and Chat with PDF answers specific questions such as 'what is the notice period?'.