How to translate PDF files

You have downloaded some documents in PDF format from the Internet, would you like to translate them from English to Italian but you don’t know how to do it? Don’t panic. There are several applications and, above all, several online services that allow you to translate PDF files to and from all major languages ​​in the world.

Do you want me to introduce you to some and explain how to use it? With great pleasure. Take a few minutes of free time and immediately try one of the solutions listed below. These are services, both free and paid, which allow you to translate the content of PDF documents very quickly without having to make tedious copy-and-paste from Adobe Reader or other PDF file readers.

Watch out, the translations you get won’t be perfect. Machine translation services, as is well known, are not yet 100% reliable, but to increase the comprehensibility level of a foreign language text I would say that they are just fine. So let’s ban the chatter and immediately take action by seeing which online translators are able to “digest” PDF documents without problems.

Google Translate

Not everyone knows this, but the very famous Google Translate also includes a tool that allows you to translate the content of PDF files directly, without doing tedious copy-and-paste. How does it work? I’ll explain it to you right away.

All you have to do is connect to the main page of the service and click on Translate a document that you see at the bottom left. Then click on the Choose file / Browse button, select the document you want to translate, set the departure and destination languages to Detect language and Italian and click the Translate button (located at the top right) to view the content of your translated PDF.

If you don’t want to translate your PDF into Italian but into another language, all you have to do is select one of the many languages ​​available in the menu located at the top right (by clicking on the button with the arrow ) and that’s it.

There are no strict upload limits, however it must be said that translated documents lose all images and most of the text formatting. In case you want to save the translated PDF on your PC, use the File> Save As function of your browser to save it locally as an HTML page. If you want to get a real PDF, use a virtual PDF printer.

Microsoft Word

Do you have a copy of Office 2013 or Office 2016 on your PC ? Then I have great news for you. You can use good old Word to translate the content of your PDF documents through Bing Translator, the online translation service of the Redmond giant.

The procedure you need to follow is very simple. Start Word, open the PDF file you want to translate ^[1] and accept its import into the program. Then, select the Revision tab from the Word toolbar, press the Translate button and select the Translate document item from the menu that appears. Within a few seconds, a Bing Translator page will open with the text of your translated document inside (there will be no images and formatting, as in the other services previously analyzed together).

If you want, you can also select individual phrases or words from within the document. Just highlight them with the mouse, click on the Translate button in Word and select Translate selected text from the menu that appears. The tradition will appear in the right sidebar of the program. To set the input and output languages, use the From and To drop-down menus that appear in the sidebar.