Free Translation for large documents

[Kevbad the Bad]

I've been trying to translate a document from Russian to English but all the free translators I've looked at want money. The document I'm looking at is too big. Halfway through the translation I keep getting told I need to upgrade. I've tried Google Docs, Smartcat and some others whose names I've forgotten, but they all object. It's a pdf.

Thanks in advance.

 

[maomao]

If you don't want to pay for a licence then you'll have to chunk it yourself. Copy and paste into Google translate a paragraph or two at a time.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

If you don't want to pay for a licence then you'll have to chunk it yourself. Copy and paste into Google translate a paragraph or two at a time.

I've thought of doing that. It could take a wee while, and I'm not sure that some of these applications don't add up your translation activity over time. I don't want to go to all that trouble and then find I get blocked anyway half way through.

 

[maomao]

Google translate has a 5000 character limit on translations but no limit on requests. I'd I were wrong (I'm not) you could just make a few extra log ins or something (which is why there's no limit on requests).

 

[2hats]

Pull the text from the PDF, chunk into paragraphs and then pipe those to Google Translate (there are numerous tools in the public domain, such as Translate Shell). I did this with similiar the other day (have also done it with srt subtitle files).

Spoiler: Shell example.

pdftotext input.pdf
csplit --quiet --prefix=fortrans --suffix-format=%02d.txt --suppress-matched input.txt /^$/ {*}
for i in fortrans??.txt; do trans -b "`cat $i`" >> output.txt ; done

 

[JimW]

DeepL is better for Chinese in my experience, worth trying for Russian, should imagine that's easier. Just paste the text into the web interface.
ETA Was on phone just, here's the link: DeepL Translate: The world's most accurate translator You can download a version too but not tried that. I use it if I'm asked to do some press release type stuff and while the output needs editing that's mostly a polish and also because I don't want to stiff my clients by just giving them that sort of copy. Pretty rare for it to get completely the wrong end of the stick though I have seen it skip lines so would need a check-over.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

Just in case anyone's interested, I was about to do something about all this when an article by the same author on the same subject appeared unsolicited in my inbox in English. Result!

 

[danny la rouge]

Just in case anyone's interested, I was about to do something about all this when an article by the same artist on the same subject appeared unsolicited in my inbox in English. Result!

So the moral of the story is: if there’s a job you’re struggling to do, put it off for a month.

 

[scifisam]

DeepL is better for Chinese in my experience, worth trying for Russian, should imagine that's easier. Just paste the text into the web interface.
ETA Was on phone just, here's the link: DeepL Translate: The world's most accurate translator You can download a version too but not tried that. I use it if I'm asked to do some press release type stuff and while the output needs editing that's mostly a polish and also because I don't want to stiff my clients by just giving them that sort of copy. Pretty rare for it to get completely the wrong end of the stick though I have seen it skip lines so would need a check-over.

Yes, I'd recommend DeepL too - it's much better than Google translate. You can get a free pro trial of it that allows you to upload longer files.