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Trouble with Arabic PDF in Trados
Thread poster: Eyal Sherf
Eyal Sherf
Eyal Sherf  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 09:29
Arabic to English
+ ...
Nov 18, 2011

Hello fellow Arabic Translators,

I'm currently enrolled in a CAT Tools course as part of an Arabic>English Translation Certificate at NYU.

We have been introduced to Trados. Importing a WORD document in Arabic led to quite a smooth process (difficulties of first time use notwithstanding). However, when importing a PDF, trouble appeared before my eyes. The Arabic is gobbled, or garbled, but totally no good and useless. ... See more
Hello fellow Arabic Translators,

I'm currently enrolled in a CAT Tools course as part of an Arabic>English Translation Certificate at NYU.

We have been introduced to Trados. Importing a WORD document in Arabic led to quite a smooth process (difficulties of first time use notwithstanding). However, when importing a PDF, trouble appeared before my eyes. The Arabic is gobbled, or garbled, but totally no good and useless.

I've used this converter http://www.doc2pdf.net/PDF2Word/#convert, but with mixed success.

What are some other CAT Tools that people have used successfully with Arabic? Or, has anyone been successful with importing Arabic PDFs into Trados, i.e. having NO trouble viewing the piece in the Editor, even if it has bullet points or numbering?

Thank you
Ethan ▲ Collapse
 
dimamarcel
dimamarcel
Local time: 07:29
English to Arabic
+ ...
I don't think it can be done Nov 19, 2011

Hi Ethan,

The couple of times I tried to open a PDF file in Trados were not successful at all. At best, I would get all Arabic characters to display but as mirrored.

Generally speaking, copying and pasting from Arabic PDF files is not consistent. It depends on how PDFs were created (image vs renderable text), what fonts were used, were those fonts embedded or not and whether the system you're working on has the embedded fonts or not.

As for OCR, my persona... See more
Hi Ethan,

The couple of times I tried to open a PDF file in Trados were not successful at all. At best, I would get all Arabic characters to display but as mirrored.

Generally speaking, copying and pasting from Arabic PDF files is not consistent. It depends on how PDFs were created (image vs renderable text), what fonts were used, were those fonts embedded or not and whether the system you're working on has the embedded fonts or not.

As for OCR, my personal experience is Acrobat Pro and Readiris OCR Software work best with Arabic text.

If the Job is not a big one, I usually save myself the time and trouble and type it in a Word document and then open it with SDL.

Check this link out:
http://www.proz.com/forum/sdl_trados_support/36574-how_to_translate_pdf_files_with_trados.html

[Edited at 2011-11-20 03:43 GMT] ▲ Collapse
 


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Trouble with Arabic PDF in Trados






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