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Article: Handling PDF Documents | PDF conversion impossibility

David Jacques — Sun, 09 Nov 2014 11:36:00 +0000

Forum: Translation Article Knowledgebase
Topic: Article: Handling PDF Documents
Poster: David Jacques
Post title: PDF conversion impossibility

This is an insoluble problem - the formatting in the conversion is always poor and often entire pages vanish. The agency / client then complains. I know of a translator who now refuses to accept files in any format other than WinWord.
The trouble is that agencies never warn you. One in the UK openly admits they cannot perfectly replicate a pdf in any conversion - but require freelancers working for them to do so!
The agencies I love are the ones that send me such files on a Friday evening and then go home. Delivery Monday 9 a.m. I've just finished one and discovered it's missing two entire pages - in the file the agency sent me dragged and dropped into Abby Fine Reader and claimed to be a complete Word file. Since the original was a scanned fax in pdf format the result's a mess. All my fault, of course.
A pity we cannot all get together and refuse pdf files altogether.
One can hope, of course, that SDL or Kilgray or someone will come up with a CAT programme able to deal with this format. Don't hold your breath.

Article: Handling PDF Documents | linux has an excellent pdf editor (http://pdfedit.petricek.net)

holobriadok — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 00:42:00 +0000

Forum: Translation Article Knowledgebase
Topic: Article: Handling PDF Documents
Poster: holobriadok
Post title: linux has an excellent pdf editor (http://pdfedit.petricek.net)

We have been working on a pdf editor and the result can be found at [url removed]

With this tool you can make anything with pdf files. There is a balance between the more you know the pdf specification the more you can edit pdffiles. But the graphical environment provides sufficient features for every day pdf editing.

Article: Handling PDF Documents | Agree and Disagree

bj999xt — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 12:19:00 +0000

Forum: Translation Article Knowledgebase
Topic: Article: Handling PDF Documents
Poster: bj999xt
Post title: Agree and Disagree

Agree: Yes, we have to forget to edit PDF, particularly for translation by CAT tools.
Disagree: Our 5 years' experience in tranlsating PDFs by Trados have paved a clear way to deliver expected results, its visual quality is as the same as the orginal ones, the file from single sheet of marketing brochure to 3000 pages machine documentation, either for web publishing or for pressing, not yet fail to process so far today.
Yes, PDF is hard to work with, and also yes is workable for translation from points of resulting reliablity and cost.

Article: Handling PDF Documents

ProZ.com Staff — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 12:19:23 +0000

Forum: Translation Article Knowledgebase
Topic: Article: Handling PDF Documents
Poster: ProZ.com Staff

This topic is for discussion of the ProZ.com translation article "Handling PDF Documents".