Translate from pdfs or Word conversions
Thread poster: Anne Gaujard-Scott
Anne Gaujard-Scott
Anne Gaujard-Scott  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 17:05
Member (2016)
English to French
Apr 5, 2019

Hi,

Let's be honest, I am not very technology-savvy and I need advice from all those people who will read what follows and think I am useless!

I rarely work on pdfs and one of my clients sent me two touristic-type brochures with a complicated layout involving lots of graphics, texts, photos etc. I am not fond of Studio but I do work with Trados Studio (2015 version) on a regular basis because a lot of agen
... See more
Hi,

Let's be honest, I am not very technology-savvy and I need advice from all those people who will read what follows and think I am useless!

I rarely work on pdfs and one of my clients sent me two touristic-type brochures with a complicated layout involving lots of graphics, texts, photos etc. I am not fond of Studio but I do work with Trados Studio (2015 version) on a regular basis because a lot of agencies use it.

Here are my questions :
1) Is it better to translate directly from the pdf or to use a converted Word document instead? (The client provided me with the converted document, although there seems to be a few typos in that conversion).

2) I do not have to deliver the translation as a brochure. The client is Ok with a bilingual table-type document and their designer will handle the layout work (thank goodness!). I will just try to keep the French as short as possible as it is always much longer than the English. Can I easily generate a bilingual target file that would be easily usable by the client or will I have to copy-paste text from the CAT tool into a table in Word?

Thank you for sharing your thoughts!
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Panopticon
Panopticon
Spain
Local time: 17:05
Member (2012)
Spanish to English
It depends... Apr 5, 2019

My advice would be that if the pdf is a direct conversion of a Word document to a pdf (i.e. not a scanned image) then you should just add it to a new project in Studio and let the program process the pdf. It should treat it exactly like a Word document if it is a direct conversion to pdf (when it's a scanned image, I think Studio can attempt to extract the text, but the results usually aren't too good) and then when you finish the translation you can simply export the brochure again in pdf forma... See more
My advice would be that if the pdf is a direct conversion of a Word document to a pdf (i.e. not a scanned image) then you should just add it to a new project in Studio and let the program process the pdf. It should treat it exactly like a Word document if it is a direct conversion to pdf (when it's a scanned image, I think Studio can attempt to extract the text, but the results usually aren't too good) and then when you finish the translation you can simply export the brochure again in pdf format. Although I'm not sure what the final layout would be if French sentences are generally longer than English ones. It may be that some of the text gets cuts off or hidden behind other elements in the pdf (such as images, photos, etc.). In that case, it might be better to work on the Word document provided by the client because then you (or they) can adjust the positioning of the text at the end, if necessary. Studio generally does a good job whenever I have translated from pdfs by loading them directly into the program, but then English sentences are generally shorter than Spanish ones and my pdfs don't tend to contain many images.Collapse


 
Anne Gaujard-Scott
Anne Gaujard-Scott  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 17:05
Member (2016)
English to French
TOPIC STARTER
Thanks for the tip Apr 5, 2019

Thank you for your help, Martin. I will check with the client how the pdf was created in the first place.

 
Roy Oestensen
Roy Oestensen  Identity Verified
Denmark
Local time: 17:05
Member (2010)
English to Norwegian (Bokmal)
+ ...
My advice would be to convert the pdf to Word before importing Apr 5, 2019

If the pdf is complicated, you will in all probability end up with a terribly formatted project file with a lot of tags. My advice would be to convert it to a Word document with for instance Abbyy Finereader and clean up the Word document before importing it.

When converting the document, choose Plain Text. That way you get rid of most unwanted formatting.

To get a table form of the translation, I would choose External View in Studio. That way Studio export the whole tr
... See more
If the pdf is complicated, you will in all probability end up with a terribly formatted project file with a lot of tags. My advice would be to convert it to a Word document with for instance Abbyy Finereader and clean up the Word document before importing it.

When converting the document, choose Plain Text. That way you get rid of most unwanted formatting.

To get a table form of the translation, I would choose External View in Studio. That way Studio export the whole translation in a table (in Word) where you have source-target side by side.

One other way to work (which may not be very useful for your client this time) would be to use a program called InFix. It makes it possible for you to import the text from the pdf, and then place the translation in a pdf document in the same places as the source document. I have not done this much, partly because I very seldom receive a pdf from my customers, and partly because they usually want a Word document, not a pdf in return.

Roy

[Edited at 2019-04-05 16:58 GMT]
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Anne Gaujard-Scott
Anne Gaujard-Scott  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 17:05
Member (2016)
English to French
TOPIC STARTER
This is really useful advice Apr 5, 2019

Thank you Roy!

Just to get an idea, I fed both pdf and converted Word versions into my CAT tool and the result seems pretty similar. Lots of awkwardly cut off segments and some approximations in the spelling of the extracted texts... not ideal, but workable.

I will try your external view idea. Thanks again!


[Modifié le 2019-04-06 11:37 GMT]


 
DZiW (X)
DZiW (X)
Ukraine
English to Russian
+ ...
Either ...or Apr 6, 2019

Anne, as far as the PDF [Portable Document Format] is for final publishing (DTP), not for translation (edit), I always either
1) ask for an editable file (TXT, DOC/X, XLS/X, RTF), or
2) let the client know and charge extra.

The problem is not that a PDF may contain a variety of content with a complicated layout, but the time one has to spend on (1) converting, (2) re-checking spelling/format, (3) re-formatting, and so on--which is rather time-hungry and e
... See more
Anne, as far as the PDF [Portable Document Format] is for final publishing (DTP), not for translation (edit), I always either
1) ask for an editable file (TXT, DOC/X, XLS/X, RTF), or
2) let the client know and charge extra.

The problem is not that a PDF may contain a variety of content with a complicated layout, but the time one has to spend on (1) converting, (2) re-checking spelling/format, (3) re-formatting, and so on--which is rather time-hungry and exhausting.

So, I either get a simple doc or get a compensation)


* If I really must, I mind the NDA and never use on-line tools for sensitive data, yet at the office I prefer FineReader to Acrobat XI Pro, because it's been trained well to recognize our papers, introducing less errors and simplifying the post-processing.
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Roy Oestensen
Roy Oestensen  Identity Verified
Denmark
Local time: 17:05
Member (2010)
English to Norwegian (Bokmal)
+ ...
Did you clean up the Word document before import? Apr 6, 2019

Anne Gaujard-Scott wrote:
Thank you Roy!
Just to get an idea, I fed both pdf and converted Word versions into my CAT tool and the result seems pretty similar. Lots of awkwardly cut off segments and some approximations in the spelling of the extracted texts... not ideal, but workable.
I will try your external view idea. Thanks again!


[Modifié le 2019-04-05 19:07 GMT]


I would always clean up the Word document before import, not least to remove unwanted line breaks and also remove a lot of unwanted tags. Often copying the whole document and pasting it as text only in a new document would help with that if you don't scan the pdf with Abbyy as Text only first.


 
Roy Oestensen
Roy Oestensen  Identity Verified
Denmark
Local time: 17:05
Member (2010)
English to Norwegian (Bokmal)
+ ...
Source document is regrettably not always available Apr 6, 2019

DZiW wrote:
Anne, as far as the PDF [Portable Document Format] is for final publishing (DTP), not for translation (edit), I always either
1) ask for an editable file (TXT, DOC/X, XLS/X, RTF), or
2) let the client know and charge extra.


I agree, and I should have mentioned this solution first. A pdf document is always a document that has been produced from a different type document, like Indesign, Quark XPress or Word. But it does happen very often that the source document just isn't available, and then some other solution would be appropriate.


 
Anne Gaujard-Scott
Anne Gaujard-Scott  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 17:05
Member (2016)
English to French
TOPIC STARTER
Thank you all for your input! Apr 6, 2019

I realise now that whatever way turns out to be the easiest, it will always involve some extra-time transferring stuff and fiddling with it... I took note of all your advice and really appreciate that you took some time to help me out! Cheers

 


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Translate from pdfs or Word conversions







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