How to translate a PDF into another language
· 4 min read
Translate a PDF from any language into English, Spanish, French, Arabic, Chinese or 35 other languages, and download it as a Word file.
A letter from a foreign office, a product manual, a research paper or a lease in a language you don’t read: copying it into a translator page by page is slow and loses the paragraphs. Translate PDF reads the whole document and gives back the translation with its headings and lists in place.
Translate a PDF in four steps
Which result do you need?
What will you do with the translation?
Read the translation on screen. You can switch the To language and translate again in seconds.
Download the Word file. Headings, paragraphs and lists are kept, so it is ready to format and send.
First convert the PDF with PDF to Word to keep its layout, then translate the text. Translate PDF gives you the text, not the design.
Use the AI translation to understand the document, but have a certified translator prepare anything you must submit to a court, embassy or university.
Good to know
- Up to about 10 pages of text are translated in one go. Split longer PDFs.
- Right-to-left languages such as Arabic and Hebrew come out right to left, in Word too.
- Names, numbers and dates are kept as they are.
- Scanned pages need OCR PDF first.
Only the text is sent for translation, never the PDF file. Avoid AI tools for confidential documents.
Questions people ask
Which languages can I translate a PDF into?
Any of 40 languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Turkish, Arabic, Persian, Hindi, Bengali, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai and Indonesian.
Does the translation keep the PDF’s layout?
It keeps headings, paragraphs and lists, but not the design. For the design, convert the PDF to Word first.
Is the PDF translator free?
Yes, several translations a day are free, with no sign-up.