ProZ.com Translation Forums

Best OCR and translator program | Re: MC1529

Samuel Murray — Wed, 31 Jul 2019 07:16:00 +0000

Forum: Software applications
Topic: Best OCR and translator program
Poster: Samuel Murray
Post title: Re: MC1529

[quote]mc1529 wrote:
The following video will tell you how to most efficiently and successfully translate scanned documents. It also provides a recommendation for a translation software program with a robust, competitive OCR engine that will OCR your document for you, convert it to a Word doc and keep as much of the layout/formatting intact as possible. [/quote]

What MC1529 (who has been a member here since January 2108) is trying to recommend, is PairaPhrase, but PairaPhrase is not an OCR tool. It is a translation management system for large companies, and it has an OCR module (not a very good one, either). No translator here will ever get access to it.

The video does explain some of the problems that OCR'ed texts have and how to overcome some of those problems.

[Edited at 2019-07-31 08:24 GMT]

Best OCR and translator program | Automatically maintain the format via OCR - a pious hope

Rolf Keller — Wed, 31 Jul 2019 06:18:00 +0000

Forum: Software applications
Topic: Best OCR and translator program
Poster: Rolf Keller
Post title: Automatically maintain the format via OCR - a pious hope

Theoretically it is possible to OCR a file to Word and maintain the format. But what does "format" mean here? It does mean the visible representation only. It does not mean that the resulting Word document is easily & resonably editable (let alone translatable). Why? Because images (OCR = interpret images of pages!) don't include all necessary formatting information. Even worse: Actually some formatting information is lost even when the original author converted his wordprocessor file to PDF. That's a technically caused fact - whatever some software vendors promise. So you often get a Word file that isn't translatable. On principle it works only sometimes and only for simply formatted files.

So an additional step is needed: Postedit the automatically created OCRed file manually or use the non-automatic interactive features of the OCR software.

Best OCR and translator program | Translate scanned document, convert to Word & keep layout/format simultaneously

mc1529 — Tue, 30 Jul 2019 20:50:00 +0000

Forum: Software applications
Topic: Best OCR and translator program
Poster: mc1529
Post title: Translate scanned document, convert to Word & keep layout/format simultaneously

Hi Traducción Global Vida Sapir,

There are translation software programs available that you can upload a scanned document PDF to, have it converted to Word, have it OCR the document and translate it––all simultaneously.

Which program you choose depends on how often you plan to do this, the other features you desire in translation software, and whether or not you need high-caliber OCR.

While there have been significant improvements made to OCR, the translation quality and formatting output will partly depend on the quality of your document. Low-resolution documents with text obstructions will make it more difficult for the OCR to be successful and the formatting to stay in place, regardless of the translation software you choose.

The following video will tell you how to most efficiently and successfully translate scanned documents. It also provides a recommendation for a translation software program with a robust, competitive OCR engine that will OCR your document for you, convert it to a Word doc and keep as much of the layout/formatting intact as possible.

[url removed]

Hope this is helpful.

Best OCR and translator program | Try Small Pdf

Roy Williams — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 10:44:00 +0000

Forum: Software applications
Topic: Best OCR and translator program
Poster: Roy Williams
Post title: Try Small Pdf

I've had good results here [url removed] It converts Pdf to Word and other formats as well. With the free version, you can
convert two files per hour. It does a really good job of maintaining the formatting of the original document. The downside though, it cannot convert scanned PDFs

[Edited at 2018-01-26 10:44 GMT]

Best OCR and translator program | Moon on a stick

neilmac — Thu, 25 Jan 2018 10:13:00 +0000

Forum: Software applications
Topic: Best OCR and translator program
Poster: neilmac
Post title: Moon on a stick

I use Nitro Pro for OCR and PDF conversion. However, after that I'm on my own and I have to cobble my translations together myself...

Best OCR and translator program | Aren't you the translator?

Sheila Wilson — Thu, 25 Jan 2018 09:13:00 +0000

Forum: Software applications
Topic: Best OCR and translator program
Poster: Sheila Wilson
Post title: Aren't you the translator?

[quote]Traducción Global Vida Sapir wrote:
I would like the translated document to keep its original format. Many thanks. [/quote]
Most of the CAT tools will handle PDF files, I believe. It's only the very basic ones like Wordfast Classic that don't. I know Wordfast Pro and SDL Trados do. And so does the free Wordfast Anywhere. Mind you, I don't know how good a job they do with the formatting. I have Abbyy PDF Converter: sometimes it works well and other times it's rubbish.

But I'm concerned at this idea of a computer program translating the file for you. A lot of them will populate the target file with output from Google Translate or similar, but you can't call that a translation. It's your job to provide that.

Best OCR and translator program

Traducción Global Vida Sapir — Thu, 25 Jan 2018 00:32:00 +0000

Forum: Software applications
Topic: Best OCR and translator program
Poster: Traducción Global Vida Sapir

Hello, I'm looking for a program that contains an OCR that converts the PDF into Word (maintaining the same format) and also translates the document for you. I know that Abby Fine Reader converts PDF's to Word, but doesn't translate the document. I would like the translated document to keep its original format. Many thanks.