Translate PDF

How do I translate a PDF?

Open this page in desktop Chrome, press Choose a PDF, pick the language you want, and press Translate PDF. The tool finds the language of the PDF, translates each paragraph on your device, and gives you a Word file, a PDF or plain text. The first use of a language pair downloads a language pack.

1. Press Choose a PDF.
2. Check Language of the PDF (or leave it on automatic) and pick Translate into.
3. Choose Save as: Word, PDF or text.
4. Press Translate PDF. A bar shows the paragraph being translated; Stop ends it at any time.

Can I translate a PDF and keep it private?

Yes, in Chrome. The Translator API runs a language model stored on your computer, and this page reads the PDF in your browser. Neither the file nor its text is sent to a server or a cloud translator. Chrome downloads the language pack once, and that download holds none of your text.

Where the browser has no Translator, this page does not send the text anywhere to make up for it. It shows a message and stops. Scanned pages are read with OCR on your device first, if you press the OCR button.

Which browsers can translate a PDF this way?

Desktop Chrome 138 or later, according to Chrome's developer documentation. The Translator and Language Detector APIs do not work on phones, and Firefox and Safari do not have them. If your browser lacks the API, this tool says so and offers no translation; use Chrome on a computer.

The tool checks for the API when you open a PDF. Chrome may also ask you to wait while it downloads a language pack, which it shows as a percent. Chrome's own pages explain the API and how downloads are shown: Translation with built-in AI. The list of languages comes from that page, and your browser's answer for a pair always decides.

How well does it translate a PDF?

Chrome's on-device translator handles ordinary prose well, but it can miss names, numbers, idioms and technical terms, and it does not see the page layout. Read the result before relying on it, and keep the original PDF next to it. This tool translates what the PDF says word for word and nothing more.

A real test shows how the tool splits the work. The 6-page guide chrome-guide.pdf holds 115 paragraphs (8 headings and 6 list items) and 1,354 words. The tool sends the longest paragraph, 395 characters, as one piece. Anything over 1,500 characters (or half the quota Chrome reports) is cut at sentence ends and joined back after translation. Every paragraph is translated on its own, so the number of paragraphs is the number of steps on the progress bar.

Does the translated PDF keep the layout?

No. The translation comes out in reading order: headings, paragraphs and list items, without the original columns, tables, pictures or fonts. Page breaks in the source are not kept either. The PDF output is a simple reflowed document, and Word output gives you headings and body text to edit.

The PDF writer includes fonts for Latin, Cyrillic and Greek letters and for Simplified Chinese, Japanese and Korean. For Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Thai and the other scripts, the PDF option is switched off, because the PDF writer has no font for them; Word and text keep every character. Need to keep the layout? Start from PDF to Word, then translate the Word text.