Problems working on Word Document converted from PDF Thread poster: Jon Fedler
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Jon Fedler
Local time: 08:36
German to English
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On numerous occasions I have been asked to do a translation (German/Hebrew-English) on a Word copy of a PDF document. Almost every time this leads to layout problems, e.g. changing of fonts without my intervention, blank pages, irregulare spacing of lines.
and in general apperance. The programmes I am using are Word 2007 and Windows XP (No CAT tools).
The results are so bad that sometimes I am forced to give up, and translate on a clean Word document instead.
I have been told ... See more On numerous occasions I have been asked to do a translation (German/Hebrew-English) on a Word copy of a PDF document. Almost every time this leads to layout problems, e.g. changing of fonts without my intervention, blank pages, irregulare spacing of lines.
and in general apperance. The programmes I am using are Word 2007 and Windows XP (No CAT tools).
The results are so bad that sometimes I am forced to give up, and translate on a clean Word document instead.
I have been told to work with the paragraphing key operating, and to press control + enter at the end of each page.
This helps sometimes, but not always.
I would like to know if this is a common problem.
Any suggestions would be welcome ▲ Collapse
| | | | Jerzy Czopik 
Germany
Local time: 07:36
Member (2003)
Polish to German
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| Of course a common problem | Mar 18, 2010 |
An automatic PDF- converter will nearly always create a mess on formatting.
Up to now I did not meet any PDF-converter, which would provide me a nicely formatted Word file.
So I decided to extract only text and format everything on my own. This way I can achieve very good results.
| | | | | Reformatting is far more efficient for now | Mar 18, 2010 |
Jerzy Czopik wrote:
So I decided to extract only text and format everything on my own. This way I can achieve very good results.
Indeed. Unfortunately PDF converters try to mimmick the format of the original Word file so accurately that the Word file is pretty useless for translation because of the excess of formatting. We over here also grab the unformatted text and format it again if the PDF has a simple-to-regular formatting.
A recommendation is to take the source text and format that before translation, until you get a faily good representation of what is in the PDF file. Then you translate and only need to make minor adjustments after translation.
| | | | Craig Meulen
United Kingdom
Local time: 06:36
German to English
| More details needed of your problem | Mar 18, 2010 |
Jonathan Fedler wrote:
On numerous occasions I have been asked to do a translation (German/Hebrew-English) on a Word copy of a PDF document. Almost every time this leads to layout problems, e.g. changing of fonts without my intervention, blank pages, irregulare spacing of lines.
and in general apperance.
I'm not sure exactly what you are asking. So some specific questions:
Does the client provide the "Word copy" of the PDF? Or do you produce it yourself? How is it produced?
What does the client expect from you?
i) A good translation of the text in the document (obviously including basic syntactically meaningful formatting such as paragraphs, bold, italic).
OR
ii) Do they expect a Word "copy" back, layouted to look like their PDF?
i) is realistic, imho, but ii) is too much for them to demand. If they want ii) it is their responsibility to deliver a layouted, formatted Word document which you then translate without destroying their formatting.
I have been told to work with the paragraphing key operating, and to press control + enter at the end of each page.
This helps sometimes, but not always.
All this does is create fixed page breaks.
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| Text (.txt) format | Mar 18, 2010 |
I sympathise with your problem - luckily it is one I rarely come across.
Perhaps when you have your PDF document converted to Word, you could then save the Word document again, but in .txt format. You could then copy the text from the .txt document, and paste it into a new Word document.
This way you lose any annoying codes that mess up your formatting. You're still going to have a bit of work to do to to format your document so it resembles the original, but at least ... See more I sympathise with your problem - luckily it is one I rarely come across.
Perhaps when you have your PDF document converted to Word, you could then save the Word document again, but in .txt format. You could then copy the text from the .txt document, and paste it into a new Word document.
This way you lose any annoying codes that mess up your formatting. You're still going to have a bit of work to do to to format your document so it resembles the original, but at least all your text is there and you don't have to type it from scratch.
Just a suggestion. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Problems working on Word Document converted from PDF | Mar 18, 2010 |
Jonathan Fedler wrote:
On numerous occasions I have been asked to do a translation (German/Hebrew-English) on a Word copy of a PDF document. Almost every time this leads to layout problems, e.g. changing of fonts without my intervention, blank pages, irregulare spacing of lines.
and in general apperance. The programmes I am using are Word 2007 and Windows XP (No CAT tools).
The results are so bad that sometimes I am forced to give up, and translate on a clean Word document instead.
I have been told to work with the paragraphing key operating, and to press control + enter at the end of each page.
This helps sometimes, but not always.
I would like to know if this is a common problem.
Any suggestions would be welcome
Read and try this, please:
http://www.proz.com/forum/dtp_desktop_publishing/131071-tips_for_pdf_translation-page2.html#1200659
At the same forum you will find other tips related to pdf=>rtf or doc.
[Editado a las 2010-03-18 12:35 GMT]
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