[Easy Guide] How to Translate PDF

How to translate a PDF to different languages for free? Sometimes when we're searching for information in a PDF in foreign languages, we might need to translate PDF to English or other native languages. In this post, we've collected a few practical and easy-to-use methods to share with you. You can translate PDF with Microsoft Word, Google Translate, Google Docs, and DocTranslator. For each method, we'll show you detailed simple steps that anyone can pick up in a few minutes. After translating PDF to your familiar language, you can start to search a PDF for words or topics.

How to save an article as PDF?

If we see a useful article on a website, how to save it? The best way is to save this webpage as a PDF file, that is, you need to save the webpage where this article is located by pressing "Ctrl+S", and then convert this .html file to PDF. So we don’t have to worry about finding this article later. If you are interested, this article How to Convert HTML Webpages to PDF can help you.

Can I edit this PDF if I want? What can I do?

You can edit PDF files through some PDF editors, such as EasePDF, Smallpdf, Adobe Acrobat, etc. In addition, you can also convert PDF files into other formats.

Part 1. Translate PDF with Google Docs

As powerful as Google Docs is known of, many users might not realize it can be used to translate PDF and other documents. However, when you open a PDF containing images, tables or charts with Google Docs, these elements will not be well presented. So it might not be possible to translate an image or graphic contained PDF and keep it as the original layout.

Therefore, we highly suggest you convert the target PDF to Word before uploading it to Google Docs. After translation, you can convert it back to PDF if needed. If the PDF you need to translate is text-only, you can skip this step.

Step 1. Open Google Docs and click the file icon to upload the PDF file or the Word document you just converted.

Step 2. If the file you upload is a PDF, it will be opened on the web browser. Click the little triangle tab and choose "Google Docs" from the drop-down list. If you uploaded a converted Word document, it will be opened on Google Docs, so just skip this step.

Step 3. Go to the "Tool" option on the top menu bar, then select "Translate document".

Step 4. A small window will pop up. You can click the "Choose a language" to select the language you want the document to be translated to, then click the "Translate" button.

Step 5. Your document will be translated to your selective language in seconds. Now you can save the translated document as a PDF. Just go to the "File" menu on top, and choose "Download" > "PDF Document (.pdf)".

Part 2. Google Translate PDF

You must be familiar with Google Translate, the world-leading multilingual translation machine. Google Translate not only translates text, web pages, and phrases among 103 languages by automatically detection but also supports document translation including Word, PDF, PPT, RTF, TXT, Excel, etc. Now let's go through how to translate PDF with Google Translate.

Step 1. Go to Google Translate homepage and select "Documents"

Step 2. Click the "Browse your computer" button. The browser will navigate to your folders on your computer, select any PDF file that needed to translate, then hit the "Open" button.

Step 3. On the top-left side, you can stay at the default "DETECT LANGUAGE" option or select a language of your PDF file. Then you can select a language that you want your PDF to be translated to from the linguistic data of Google Translate. Finally, hit the "Translate" button to start translating PDF.

The translated PDF will be displayed as a web page. You can save it as an HTML document to your computer by right-clicking on the web page and select "Save As". Need to save it back to a PDF? Well, you can select the "Print" option on your browser, then choose "Save as PDF" on the "Destination" section, and click "Save".

Part 3. Translate PDF in Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office is not the first option jumping into our heads when you need to open a PDF file, let alone to translate PDF. But Microsoft Office is a powerful program that can work the magic. With a translator add-in for Outlook, you'll be able to use the translate feature in Word, Excel, OneNote, and PowerPoint.

Step 1. Open the PDF you need to translate with Microsoft Word. Right-click on the chosen PDF and choose "Open with", then go for "Microsoft Word".

Step 2. A new prompt will pop up to warn you that the PDF will be converted to an editable Word document and it might not look like exactly like the original PDF. Just press the "OK" button to continue. And don't worry about changing the file format. You can easily convert the Word to PDF back after translation.

Step 3. Choose "Review" on the top menu bar, then select "Translate" > "Set Document Translation Language".

Step 4. Translate PDF to English or other languages.

The Translator will be opened in the right column. If you want to translate the whole PDF file, choose "Document". If you only need to translate parts of the PDF, go to the "Selection" mode. On the "From" section, choose "Auto-detect". And you can select any language that you want to translate to. When everything is set up, click the "Translate" button.

Part 4. Translate a PDF with DocTranslator

DocTranslator is an online document translating tool containing translation support for more than 50 languages. With a solid database that Google Translate provides, DocTranslator can precisely translate documents including PDF, Word, Excel, PPT, TXT, and more.

Step 1. Go to DocTranslator and click the "Upload file" button to upload your PDF. Or you can drag and drop the file to the interface.

Step 2. DocTranslator will automatically detect the language of your uploaded PDF. If it didn't detect it right, you can select the language by manual as well. On the right language column, choose a language you want to translate PDF to, then hit the "Translate" button.

Step 3. When your PDF is successfully translated to the target language, there will be a download link showing on the result page. Just click the "Download your translated document" link to save it to your local device. That's it, as simple as you can imagine!

Conclusion

We've shared with you 4 easy ways to translate a PDF online without downloading any program. If you want to translate a scanned PDF, just use Microsoft Word. Because it can convert scanned PDF files into Word documents so that the texts in the scanned PDF became recognizable and translatable. To translate a text-based PDF, Google Translate, Google Docs, and DocTranslator are all good choices.

Which PDF translator is your favorite? Feel free to let us know if you got better ideas. If you like our post, please subscribe to our newsletters to get the latest tips for PDF usages.