Forum: SDL Trados support
Topic: PDF file in Trados Studio 2014 - How do I procede? (New to Trados)
Poster: Irene Johnson
Post title: PDF and OCR shouldn't be problems
Hi Paula,
First, it's not true that you can't use a PDF file in Trados. Trados will read true PDF files. It won't read the PDF files that are made from scanned documents, though. As long as the PDF contains actual text instead of an image of text, you should be okay. Just check the layout afterwards to make sure Trados didn't mix things up.
Second, the reason clients don't want you to use OCR is that some people who use it aren't aware of/don't pay attention to/don't know how to fix OCR errors.
In my opinion, as long as you do a professional job and give your client satisfaction, the means you use to do it isn't really your client's business, as long as you're not breaching any confidentiality or other agreements. Unless your client has access to your computer, they won't know you used OCR.
If you have very good OCR software (I recommend ABBYY Finereader), you can certainly use it. Then proofread the text you get from your OCR to make sure it didn't make any mistakes. For complex documents, you'll have to rework the page setup in Word afterwards. Also, to eliminate some of the problems with OCR, such as frames, paragraph formatting and tags, use TransTools, which you can get here: [url removed]
If you're forced to work without CAT tools, you'll likely spend about twice as long on your translation, and you should bill accordingly.
My two cents.
Topic: PDF file in Trados Studio 2014 - How do I procede? (New to Trados)
Poster: Irene Johnson
Post title: PDF and OCR shouldn't be problems
Hi Paula,
First, it's not true that you can't use a PDF file in Trados. Trados will read true PDF files. It won't read the PDF files that are made from scanned documents, though. As long as the PDF contains actual text instead of an image of text, you should be okay. Just check the layout afterwards to make sure Trados didn't mix things up.
Second, the reason clients don't want you to use OCR is that some people who use it aren't aware of/don't pay attention to/don't know how to fix OCR errors.
In my opinion, as long as you do a professional job and give your client satisfaction, the means you use to do it isn't really your client's business, as long as you're not breaching any confidentiality or other agreements. Unless your client has access to your computer, they won't know you used OCR.
If you have very good OCR software (I recommend ABBYY Finereader), you can certainly use it. Then proofread the text you get from your OCR to make sure it didn't make any mistakes. For complex documents, you'll have to rework the page setup in Word afterwards. Also, to eliminate some of the problems with OCR, such as frames, paragraph formatting and tags, use TransTools, which you can get here: [url removed]
If you're forced to work without CAT tools, you'll likely spend about twice as long on your translation, and you should bill accordingly.
My two cents.