# Is There a Language Translator for .pdf Files?



## rake60

My youngest boy is fluent in spoken German but for pages of text he just 
can't do it. 

Last year we were in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. 
last summer. We were following a German tour group and my boy turns to me and asks:
*"Verstehen Sie Deutsches?"*
I don't speak German but guessed by his tone at what he had said and answered:
*"Nein"*
20 people in that tour group turned around and laughed while my son was trying
to figure out how I I could answer his question. OK, so I know ONE word! 
 :big:

Anyway...
I have a .pdf file of plans for a flame licker engine that was published
in German. Does anyone know of a computer language translator that will
convert a .pdf file from German to English?

Rick


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## applescotty

One option is to open it in Acrobat Reader and use the "Save as Text" option to save it to a text file, then translate the text file. Might be difficult to match up the text file to where it came from in the PDF, though.

Scott


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## rake60

I tried that, but the pictures and drawings cause errors.


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## rickharris

rake60  said:
			
		

> My youngest boy is fluent in spoken German but for pages of text he just
> can't do it.
> 
> Last year we were in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C.
> last summer. We were following a German tour group and my boy turns to me and asks:
> *"Verstehen Sie Deutsches?"*
> I don't speak German but guessed by his tone at what he had said and answered:
> *"Nein"*
> 20 people in that tour group turned around and laughed while my son was trying
> to figure out how I I could answer his question. OK, so I know ONE word!
> :big:
> 
> Anyway...
> I have a .pdf file of plans for a flame licker engine that was published
> in German. Does anyone know of a computer language translator that will
> convert a .pdf file from German to English?
> 
> Rick




This may do it for you http://www.exinfm.com/training/language_translation.html

Unless there is a kind bilingual member here?


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## shred

I've not had good luck with machine translations of model engineering things.. too many terms 'don't compute'. Witness how much trouble the USA folks have even discussing drill rod and slot drills with the Brits.


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## Hilmar

> Anyway...
> I have a .pdf file of plans for a flame licker engine that was published
> in German. Does anyone know of a computer language translator that will
> convert a .pdf file from German to English




How much Text is there?
Hilmar


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## Kermit

Babelfish.com

You will have to type in the German to get the English.


Manual Labor - sigh!  I wonder how you say that in spanish... ;D


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## mu38&Bg#

translate.google.com does surprisingly well with technical language. Copy and paste from your document, assuming the text is selectable.

I translated some model airplane kit manuals from German to English about 10 years ago. It was a chore. With the help of my sister I was able to get the literal translations and then make it understandable with common English terms.


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## rodbuilder

Use dieselpilot's advise and use http://translate.google.com/, but you will have to upload the file somewhere. I wish you could use the hard drive, but google seems to want it as a url. Maybe some one can figure out how to url your own computer.


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## burntcav

Continuing from rodbuilder's advice, if you have FTP access to a web server, probably could upload it there to a temp folder (example.com/temp/file.PDF) then use that path as your URL in Google's translator


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## John S

shred  said:
			
		

> I've not had good luck with machine translations of model engineering things.. too many terms 'don't compute'. Witness how much trouble the USA folks have even discussing drill rod and slot drills with the Brits.



We don't have a problem, it's silver steel and slot drills, anything else is an abomination ;D

JS


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## arronlee

I wonder whether it can be helped with some 3rd party PDF SDKs?



Regards,
Arron


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## cynthiamyra

You can use Bing Translator for converting your German pdf file into English. Have a look on these steps: 
Step 1: Open your German PDF file in a free PDF viewer such as Adobe Reader or FoxIt Reader.
Step 2: Click Edit and Select All to select your entire document. Press Ctrl-C to copy the document.
Step 3: Open your Web browser to the Bing Translator Reader. Click the Translate From drop-down menu and select German. Select the Translate To drop-down menu and select English.
Step 4: Click in the Enter Text or Webpage URL field and press Ctrl-V to paste your document into the field. Click Translate.
Hope it will help you!


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## cynthiamyra

You can use Bing Translator for converting your German pdf file into English. Have a look on these steps: 
Step 1: Open your German PDF file in a free PDF viewer such as Adobe Reader or FoxIt Reader.
Step 2: Click Edit and Select All to select your entire document. Press Ctrl-C to copy the document.
Step 3: Open your Web browser to the Bing Translator Reader. Click the Translate From drop-down menu and select German. Select the Translate To drop-down menu and select English.
Step 4: Click in the Enter Text or Webpage URL field and press Ctrl-V to paste your document into the field. Click Translate.
Hope it will help you!


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## Scrat

If it is not too long you could email it to a German who speaks English......
*hint*


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## ddmckee54

Scrat even that won't work sometimes, I've tried. 

We're sliding down the slippery slope from language to jargon.  Most of what we do is referred to as technical jargon for a reason, it's like a language that's all by itself.  I work a lot with grain and bulk materials handling so terms like slidegate and diverter come up a lot.  Every translator that I have seen pukes all over terms like them.

I have translated programs, and their comments, from a couple different languages to English.  Italian and German both come to mind, but it wasn't easy.  If I remember correctly I used both Babelfish and Google translate, along with a lot of creative guessing from the content that I could translate.  It is POSSIBLE, but it is not easy, and many times you will ask yourself - "I wonder is this is what they meant?"

It all depends on how much you really want that translation.

Don


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## oldchadders

rake60 said:


> My youngest boy is fluent in spoken German but for pages of text he just
> can't do it.
> 
> Last year we were in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C.
> last summer. We were following a German tour group and my boy turns to me and asks:
> *"Verstehen Sie Deutsches?"*
> I don't speak German but guessed by his tone at what he had said and answered:
> *"Nein"*
> 20 people in that tour group turned around and laughed while my son was trying
> to figure out how I I could answer his question. OK, so I know ONE word!
> :big:
> 
> Anyway...
> I have a .pdf file of plans for a flame licker engine that was published
> in German. Does anyone know of a computer language translator that will
> convert a .pdf file from German to English?
> 
> Rick



First thing is to ascertain if the pdf page in questionwas an image file or a text file before it was converted to pdf format. If the former then things get more complex. You will need to export the text as a text file (if you export it as an image you can use an optical character recognition program to convert the words to "real text" - I use Omnipage, but there are lots of others). I use the full Acrobat program which allows the user to recognise text in the pdf file, but not to export it. Other pdf readers may offer other useful options.
As your pdf is of plans, I suspect they were created in a drawing program, thus will be digital image files (including the text). If the file is commercial, it may be protected to stop you messing with it - however  there are many programs which allow you to "print" a file to pdf -including pdf files, and this "printed" pdf copy will not be protected, so you will be able to OCR the pages then convert text in whatever way you wish.


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## Cogsy

I don't know how successful it would be for technical jargon, but there is a Google Translate app for smartphones that allows you to use your phones' camera to translate in real time, for a variety of languages (you download each language you're interested in). You activate the camera through the app and watch as it translates and replaces text in live images and even attempts to match the font of the original. For example, point it at a STOP sign which is in French and it quickly changes to look like a perfectly 'normal' sign with STOP in English. I imagine if this technology was embedded in a pair of glasses, no matter where in the world you went, everything would be in your preferred language. It's amazingly close to magic...


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## oldchadders

rake60 said:


> My youngest boy is fluent in spoken German but for pages of text he just
> can't do it.
> 
> Last year we were in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C.
> last summer. We were following a German tour group and my boy turns to me and asks:
> *"Verstehen Sie Deutsches?"*
> I don't speak German but guessed by his tone at what he had said and answered:
> *"Nein"*
> 20 people in that tour group turned around and laughed while my son was trying
> to figure out how I I could answer his question. OK, so I know ONE word!
> :big:
> 
> Anyway...
> I have a .pdf file of plans for a flame licker engine that was published
> in German. Does anyone know of a computer language translator that will
> convert a .pdf file from German to English?
> 
> Rick



If you have still not sorted this, if you email the file to me, I will sort it for you.
[email protected]


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## oldchadders

cynthiamyra said:


> You can use Bing Translator for converting your German pdf file into English. Have a look on these steps:
> Step 1: Open your German PDF file in a free PDF viewer such as Adobe Reader or FoxIt Reader.
> Step 2: Click Edit and Select All to select your entire document. Press Ctrl-C to copy the document.
> Step 3: Open your Web browser to the Bing Translator Reader. Click the Translate From drop-down menu and select German. Select the Translate To drop-down menu and select English.
> Step 4: Click in the Enter Text or Webpage URL field and press Ctrl-V to paste your document into the field. Click Translate.
> Hope it will help you!



That will only work if the file is not secured in any way and if the original document was a text file, not an image file


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## e.picler

I would use google translator for the entire text and download a thecnical dictionary for the specific terms.

Edi


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## Wizard69

I have a little experience trying to translate German programs for some machines at work.   In general on line services will only get you part way with technical jargon.   Part way might be as little as 5% translated in a way that makes sense.  

What i have done is to use a platform that supports online translation dictionaries (the Mac does this well).  The combination of a translation, dictionary and a ful sentence of text can often allow you to make sense of the jargon.   Often this can require block of text to start to make sense.  

In a nut shell the simple translation often fails to convey the programmers intent or is just local slang.   It can take awhile to come to a rational translation if the local jargon escapes you.


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