Google Translate

**TramFan** · #1 10-02-2017, 09:51 PM

I know this subject has been discussed before but perhaps a member can help. I am trying to translate from Polish to English using Google Translate but it will not translate any document that has images or sketch's in the content of the document. I have tried to use PD Fill to convert the image to a PDF but it still will not translate, HELP.
Regards
Owen

**MrConk** · #2 10-02-2017, 10:15 PM

I don't know if this will solve your problem as you do have to type in the instructions, but I often use Type Polish characters - online Polish keyboard which has the necessary Polish characters you would need. Good luck

**MrConk** · #3 10-02-2017, 10:17 PM

I forgot to say that I then paste that into Google Translate.

**catopower** · #4 10-02-2017, 10:23 PM

Just turning the image into a PDF won't help. You have to process the image with software that will turn it into selectable text. That is, you need to be able to copy the text in the pdf to be able to past it into the translator.

I do this with Japanese and it's a rather painful process. If you have Adobe Acrobat Pro, it has a built-in feature that will embed selectable text into the pdf for you. It's not 100% perfect, but most of it works pretty well.

If you don't have that, you'll need some kind of OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software. Sometimes basic versions are bundled with scanners. Just do a Google search for OCR software for your computer. This software effectively reads the image and creates a file containing just the selectable text, which you can copy and paste into Google or Bing Translators.

You can also find some free online OCR tools that work okay. I've used this site i2OCR - Free Online OCR for translations, but Adobe Acrobat Pro is much easier to use for this and the character recognition, at least for Japanese, is very good.

Problem with most OCR is that you have to clean up the text a little afterwards to fix all the misread characters. That means that it would be helpful if you have the capability to type Cyrillic characters on your computer, so you get correct translations.

Hope this helps!
Clare

**imcold** · #5 10-03-2017, 12:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by catopower

Cyrillic characters

Polish doesn't actually use Cyrillic (Russian does); their special characters are called accented characters, or something like that.

**Kevin WS** · #6 10-03-2017, 02:33 AM

Google Translate will normally do anything with ease since the recent upgrade - which has dramatically improved its capabilities.

However, rather than pasting complete documents, the easiest way is often just highlight blocks of text, copy, paste - then the translation will occur.

You can do this with PDFs as well.

I know this sounds tedious and can be so if you have a huge document, but if you are trying to translate instructions it is reasonably fast and quicker than wasting time trying to convert whole documents!

**TramFan** · #7 10-03-2017, 05:05 AM

Thanks to Richard, Clare, imcold and KevinWS for all the info, I am sure I will be able to do something with it to help do the translation.
Thanks
Owen

**TramFan** · #8 10-03-2017, 05:07 AM

Thanks to Richard, Clare, imcold and KevinWS for all the info, I am sure I will be able to do something with it to help do the translation.
Thanks
Owen

**Captain Wildchild** · #9 10-03-2017, 06:08 AM

Hey TramFan. I second what catopower said. I searched for "convert image to text" and used pretty much the first link that popped up; then copy-pasted the result to images. The result is about 80% comprehensible.

**SCEtoAUX** · #10 10-03-2017, 07:26 AM

Another problem with translating is sometimes the text in a pdf does not have proper encoding so when you try to copy and paste the text into a translator the pasted output is just a bunch of random letters and symbols instead of the actual text.