If you would like to translate your PDF document from one language to another, your best bet is to use translation tools. These will automatically translate the PDF to your preferred language without the hassle of having to go through the process manually. They can therefore be useful if your goal is to get an accurate translation, but also if your document is too large to justify the hours needed to translate it manually.
But with so many tools to translate PDFs, you may be wondering which tool is best for you. Here, we look at some of the best PDF translation tools in the market to help you narrow down your choices.
Part 1: The Best PDF Reader and Editor Across All Platforms
UPDF is an all-in-one PDF solution across all platforms, including Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android. It allows you to view, edit, annotate, convert, protect, organize, crop, and share PDFs effortlessly.

With the UPDF PDF editor, you can add or delete texts and edit the text font, color, and size. Moreover, you can add, delete, crop, rotate, replace, and extract images. It can also add and edit the links, watermarks, and backgrounds in PDF documents. It is also available to protect your PDF documents by adding an open password and permission password for restricting access to the document.
You can also make annotations on PDF with many annotation tools, such as highlight, underline, strikeout, shapes, sticky notes, stickers, stamps, and so on. Besides, you can convert PDF to many other formats, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, CSV, Image, etc. You can also organize PDF pages quickly as you desired.
Pros of UPDF:
- Rich powerful features for processing PDF files
- Delightful and user-friendly interface
- Embed hundreds of beautiful stickers
- Stable and fast performance
- Many quick operations to edit PDF
- Convert up to 5 PDF files for free without limits.
Part 2: Quick Methods to Translate PDFs
The following are the best tools that you can use to automatically translate even the largest PDF documents;
1. Google Translate PDF
Overview: Google Translate is one of the most popular solutions when it comes to translation, even PDF translation. It is very easy to use and easily accessible on most platforms.
Supported Languages: More than 175 Languages
Technology: OCR and Machine Translation
Steps: Go to Google Translate on your browser and click on the "Documents" section at the top. Select the language to translate from and to and then click "Browse" on your computer to choose the PDF. Click "Translate" to begin the translation.
Accuracy: Google Translation will give you the best results if you are translating a formal document and translating to and from English.
Pros: Fast translation, reliable, supports numerous languages, is highly accurate, and accepts files up to 10MB.
Cons: It may be less accurate when translating to and from non-English languages. The accuracy drops further when the language is not a commonly used language like Spanish or Chinese.
Best Features: Has a long translation history, translation memory has a long memory, and crowdsourcing the translation can improve accuracy over time.
Suited for: Daily use and simple communication.
2. DocTranslator
Overview: This is a free and easy-to-use machine translation tool that can be very useful when translating documents including PDFs to various languages.
Supported Languages: 100 languages supported
Technology: OCR and Machine Translation
Steps: Go to the main DocTranslator website to access the online tool. Click on the "Documents" button on the left and browse your computer for the PDF file you want to translate. Choose the language to translate the file to and click "Translate." You will be able to review the translated document and download it as an HTML page.
Accuracy: This solution can have a translation accuracy of up to 80-90%.
Pros: Offers a high number of language pairs and the layout of the website is easy to navigate.
Cons: Translation can take a while. The free plan limits document translation to 2000 words.
Best Features: You can also use it to translate Excel files.
Suited For: It is a good choice for a beginner or when you are translating fairly smaller files.
3. Smartcat
Overview: If you are looking for a complete solution for all your document editing needs, Smartcat is one of the best options to choose from. It combines machine translation, OCR, AI technology, and human editing for high accuracy.
Supported Languages: It supports more than 175 languages.
Technology: OCR, Machine Translation, AI technology, and human editing
Steps: To get started, log in to your Smartcat account and create a new translation project. Select the language pair you'd like to use and then drag and drop the PDF file into the window to upload it. Click on "Translate" and when the translation is complete, you can download the file.
Accuracy: Smartcat has flexible accuracy allowing you to translate your PDF according to your needs. It combines various technologies and systems to come up with the most suitable translation for the language pairs that you select.
Pros: It is fully customizable and can therefore be used to translate your document into any language. It also suitable for larger files up to 30MB
Cons: You need to log in to use it.
Best Features: You can use the built-in editor to edit the file after translation and you can choose to download the converted file in the .docx format
Suited For: It is the most ideal solution for specialists at any level
4. DeftPDF
Overview: This document translation tool can be used to translate many different file formats including PDF. It is available on most platforms and even comes with a Chrome browser extension.
Supported Languages: It supports 112 languages
Technology: OCR and Machine Translation
Steps: Go to the main website to access the translation tool and upload the PDF document want to translate. Select the current language on the document and the language that you want to translate to. Click "Translate" and you will be able to download the translated document.
Accuracy: It has an above-average accuracy
Pros: It is easily accessible on most platforms including mobile and the user interface is very easy to navigate.
Cons: Doesn't support some languages, accuracy of the translation may vary when translating to non-common languages
Best Features: It comes with a built-in PDF editor
Suited For: Ideal for the beginner user and for translating simple documents.
Part 3: Tips for Translating PDF
The accuracy of any translation process depends on the tool you choose to use, but also on how you use your preferred tool. The following are some tips to ensure high accuracy when translating PDF documents;
- Ensure that the document you want to convert is not password-protected. Most translation tools and services are not equipped to handle protected files. If it is, remove the password before translating.
- Sometimes translation can fail especially if the document contains too many vectors and objects. Removing or flattening the objects can make the process easier.
- To avoid any problems with links (both hyperlinks and non-linked items), check to make sure that you've added all links to the document before attempting to translate the document.
- Once the translation is complete, check to make sure that all images with text fields retained their original formatting. It is not uncommon for formats and spacing to be misaligned during translation. Choosing a translator that will not affect the formatting of the document can help.
Part 4: Frequently Asked Questions
How Can I Translate a PDF for Free?
Most of the tools above offer a free solution to translate a PDF. But some of them will limit the document size or the number of words that you can translate on the free plan. The only tool that you can use for free with no limits is Google Translate.
What is the Best PDF Translator?
The best PDF Translator to choose will depend on your document, its content, and even the formatting of the document. For example, if the document you want to translate is informal, Google Translate can be a good solution. But if your document contains a lot of technical and industry-specific content, a paid solution like Smartcat may be a good choice.
How Do You Translate a PDF on a Mac?
You have several options when translating a PDF on Mac. You can choose to use a free solution like Google Translate, or Microsoft Word or you can choose to use a paid translation app like Smartcat.
Conclusion
This article introduces some of the methods that can translate PDFs, is it not so difficult to feel? This article even prepared UPDF PDF reader thoughtfully, which can help you read the PDF documents before and after translation. It is not just a reader so simple, it can also edit, manage, convert PDFs, and so on.
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