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Editing PDF files
Thread poster: Firas Allouzi
Artem Vakhitov
Artem Vakhitov  Identity Verified
Kyrgyzstan
English to Russian
+ ...
So the new workflow is inferior — good to know Apr 17, 2017

Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:

Luca Tutino wrote:
It looked very promising. But, as far as I can read on their website, the latest version of Infix requires an upload of the original PDF in order to send you a translatable XLIFF, which would normally require a prior client approval. Moreover, to get the final PDF you would also need to upload the translated XLIFF. Do you feel comfortable with this kind of workflow?

Yes, the latest Infix uses this paradigm of uploading PDFs to a website which, then, returns an XLIFF. I have tried that route with poor results. Luckily, Infix still has the old paradigm, which creates XML files locally that you can easily translate with your favourite CAT tool. The 'old' feature is in the Translate - Local submenu.

[Edited at 2017-04-17 05:17 GMT]


Thank you for informing us that the new Infix workflow is inferior. I'm not even going to bother then.


 
CafeTran Training (X)
CafeTran Training (X)
Netherlands
Local time: 10:11
PDF > Extraction > CAT > Review table > DTP Apr 18, 2017

Firas Allouzi wrote:

I have been using Adobe Acrobat DC for editing, but it is a nightmare. I also try converting PDF to Word but still not very helpful - not with a complicated layout as the one with user manuals.



For PDF files with a complex layout, I'd advise to extract all text with an extraction tool (suggested setting: Continuous flow).

E.g. with SolidPDF:

Screen Shot 2017-04-18 at 08.35.13

Then translate the MS Word or plain text document with your preferred CAT tool. During translation you can use font attributes like bold, italics, underlined etc.

Export as a bilingual review table (with bold, italics, underlined etc.) and send this to the PDF expert.


 
José Henrique Lamensdorf
José Henrique Lamensdorf  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 06:11
English to Portuguese
+ ...
In memoriam
Honestly? Apr 18, 2017

Jack Doughty wrote:

@ José

Which word processor do you recommend?


Microsoft managed to smother all word processor developers with their marketing clout. As DOC and later DOCX became the market standard, there is no point in developing a new standard and fighting an uphill battle to make it stick.

The problem, as I see it, is in the way Word stores formatting. Quite often, after you delete one char, one space, perhaps a soft or hard carriage return (aka Enter) in MS Word, an entire paragraph, page, chapter, or book gets all messed up.

My favorite program of all times is PageMaker. I have been using it for 25+ years. Though it's a DTP app, it would have been possible to develop a word processor in a much, much more sensible way along its lines, i.e. in the way it handles formatted text. In fact, it has a built-in word processor; a rather lame one, since the DTP tools outside it are much more powerful.

I stuck with PageMaker v6.52, stable as a rock. No jolts, no surprises. Adobe launched v7, after all, they must keep selling to pay the bills, but it was a flop, worse than its predecessor. That was when - as I envision it - they got desperate, packed together everything they had, and moved on to InDesign.

I chose not to take the plunge. I tried InDesign, and found it an overkill for a translator who had merely to create translated publications, not a radically new design/layout.

I still use Windows XP as much as I can, my default. If Windows 10 is required, I can boot with it from a SSD. What is most amazing is that Windows 10 will refuse to install PageMaker, saying it is "incompatible". However Windows 10 will run, without a hitch, the PM65.exe from its Windows XP installation!

Here in Brazil, sworn translations are a must for any document in a foreign (i.e. other than Portuguese) language. This is regulated by a federal decree dated 1943 and never amended, hence it expects me to use a typewriter or a fountain pen, to issue all such sworn translations in hard copy. Believe it or not, I do all my sworn translations with PageMaker and a laser printer. Of course, I also file them as PDFs, because one day Microsoft will succeed in making PageMaker no longer functional.

So, we - translators - are stuck with MS Word, the market standard. My suggestion is to use the oldest version that serves your purposes. I recall that 2003 was worse than 97. Though 2007 is worse than 2003, I'll keep using it for as long as I can, because I've read that the newer ones are even worse.

C'est la vie...


 
José Henrique Lamensdorf
José Henrique Lamensdorf  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 06:11
English to Portuguese
+ ...
In memoriam
Conversion PDF > DOC Apr 18, 2017

Tom in London wrote:

José Henrique Lamensdorf wrote:

....., now there are many PDF editors, like NitroPDF, which I heard of.

One such editor is Infix.


Yes...I suspect those are the applications my agencies use (I always ask them to convert the PDFs).


Many translators I know (and some agencies too) use ABBYY to convert from PDF to DOC.
I never had ABBYY (I use OmniPage for OCR - came bundled with a scanner, and I upgraded ever since).

Another option I use (for editable PDFs) is the AVS Document Converter. This one is a matter of luck. Sometimes you get superb DOC/DOCX/RTF files from a PDF. I think this is when the PDF was distilled from MS Word. However if you are unlucky, the Word-compatible file will be a useless mess.


 
John Fossey
John Fossey  Identity Verified
Canada
Local time: 05:11
Member (2008)
French to English
+ ...
PDF Transformer 2.0 Apr 19, 2017

The best PDF to Word converter I know is the old PDF Transformer 2.0 from ABBYY. I have been using it for years and whenever I try something else I end up going back to it. I have tried more recent versions, with hopeless results. PDF Transformer 2.0 lets you specify which area is Text, Table or Image and generally creates a usable Word (rtf) document. It's not fully automated, which is it's advantage, I believe.

 
Artem Vakhitov
Artem Vakhitov  Identity Verified
Kyrgyzstan
English to Russian
+ ...
So true John Apr 19, 2017

John Fossey wrote:

The best PDF to Word converter I know is the old PDF Transformer 2.0 from ABBYY. I have been using it for years and whenever I try something else I end up going back to it. I have tried more recent versions, with hopeless results. PDF Transformer 2.0 lets you specify which area is Text, Table or Image and generally creates a usable Word (rtf) document. It's not fully automated, which is it's advantage, I believe.


These could be my words exactly. I always go back to the good old PDF Transformer 2.0, even though I do try other software from time to time and occasionally use FineReader, PDF Transformer+, and FlexiPDF (a fork of Infix) for specific tasks.


 
clairetransl (X)
clairetransl (X)
United Kingdom
Local time: 09:11
French to English
+ ...
Spending more time on the conversion than the translation Apr 20, 2017

Tom in London wrote:

My suggestion: politely ask the client to provide a conversion to MS Word.

You are a translator, not a converter of PDF files.

I find that even with good conversion software like ABBYY or Acrobat Professional, the results are hit-and-miss, especially with diagrams and tables. If the pages are numbered, that adds chaos to chaos. You could end up spending more time on the re-formatting than you spend on what you are being paid for: the translation. And nobody will ever thank you.

[Edited at 2017-04-15 21:23 GMT]


I've had more than one agency get quite huffy when I politely requested a conversion. I try to stick to my guns, though. I don't see why I should do two, three, four hours of unpaid formatting work, especially when the job is from an agency and they have their own staff who are supposed to be doing it. The few times I have agreed to work on PDF documents, I spent more time trying to convert them to OCR files and then make the end result look presentable than actually translating. Very frustrating.


 
mk_lab
mk_lab  Identity Verified
Ukraine
Local time: 11:11
Member (2004)
English to Russian
+ ...
This is very strange and wrong opinion Apr 20, 2017

Luca Tutino wrote:
But, as far as I can read on their website, the latest version of Infix requires an upload of the original PDF in order to send you a translatable XLIFF, which would normally require a prior client approval. Moreover, to get the final PDF you would also need to upload the translated XLIFF. Do you feel comfortable with this kind of workflow?

Probably you mean their Infix Server. This is for special purposes (for corporative purposes and online business). Infix PDF Editor (latest versions 7.x) is still completely offline software which is very easy to start with. Also portable versions exist.


 
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