How To Translate PDF Files to Any Language for Free

August 27, 2024 by Hung Nguyen

You can also read this article in German, Spanish, French, Indonesian, Italian and Portuguese.

Learn how to translate a full PDF online, or get a translated summary in seconds. In this guide, we’ll show you how to do both options for free.

Do you have a PDF that’s not in your native language?

It’s now easier than ever to read in the language you need.

In this article, we’ll show you how to translate full PDF documents—and how to get translated summaries of PDFs—using free online tools.

You’ll learn how to use Google Translate in a way you’ve probably never seen before.

You’ll also see a new tool from Smallpdf with translation options that didn’t exist before. It works for full document translations, and it can also provide a translated summary of a PDF in your preferred language.

Both tools can translate a PDF to and from English, Spanish, French, German, Chinese, and hundreds of other languages. You don’t even have to know the language of the original PDF.

Translate PDF

How to Translate Full PDF Documents Online for Free

If you want to translate a PDF right away—into nearly any language, for free—the easiest way to do it is with the PDF Translator by Smallpdf. Here’s how:

Go to the Smallpdf online PDF Translate tool.
Drag & drop your PDF into the box.
Select “Entire document”, then click “Translate”.
Choose the language to translate to from the dropdown.

The Smallpdf translator is super simple to use. You can read the full version directly in the tool without any signup or download, and you easily copy and paste the translated version if needed.

It’s also got built-in optical character recognition (OCR), so it can even read scanned docs and images.

Another benefit: You can upload pretty much any size PDF to the translator, so you won’t run into document limits that you might hit with other tools like Google Translate.

Entire PDF translated for free from English to German

Get a Translated Summary of a PDF in Your Preferred Language

You’re probably aware of Google Translate, but did you know it can translate entire PDF files, too? Just follow the steps below.

How to Google Translate PDF files for free: 1. Access the Google Translate Document tool. 2. Choose the languages to translate from and to. 3. Set the input language to ‘Detect language’ if you’re unsure. 4. Drag & drop your PDF or click ‘Browse your files’ then the ‘Translate’ button. 5. Let Google work its magic. 6. Click to download your translation or open it in another tab

The Google translate feature works well for full document translation, but it does have a 10MB limit. So if you’re working with larger PDF files, you’re better off with the Smallpdf PDF Translator we mentioned above.

It also doesn’t work consistently with scanned PDFs with unreadable text. For these documents, the Smallpdf Translator should do the trick, or you can first run it through a PDF OCR tool to recognize and convert text into a readable format.

There’s another, perhaps counterintuitive, limitation: it translates the entire document, so after translation you still have to read the whole thing! Of course that’s not a true limitation, but if you just want a translated summary of what’s in the PDF, you’ll want to check out this next option.

Get a Translated Summary of a PDF in Your Preferred Language

Another option is the Smallpdf PDF Translator Summary tool. We’re excited about this one not just because we love PDFs, but also because of its unique ability to instantly provide a translated summary of a PDF document for free.

To translate a PDF online into a summarized document:

Go to the Smallpdf online PDF Translator.
Drag and drop your PDF into the box.
Select “Summary”, then click “Translate”. A summary is instantly generated.
Choose the language to translate to from the dropdown.
Ask the AI chat anything about your doc to get exactly what you need to know.
Download your translated PDF summary.

This translation summary tool can give you a quick feeling of whether it’s worth translating and reading the entire PDF into your native language. It’s a great way to grab the gist of a PDF in an instant, so you can save time by getting straight to the point.

When you’re done, you’ll have lots of options for what you can do next.

What Else Can I Do With This PDF?

Once you translate your PDF into the language you need, Smallpdf has over 20 other useful tools for converting, organizing, and editing PDFs—all for free. Here’s a few favorites:

eSign PDFs - Electronically sign your (translated) PDF contracts.
Merge PDF - Combine multiple PDF files into one.
Split PDF - Extract translated PDF pages or separate them into different files.
PDF Converter - Transform your translated PDFs into other formats like Word or Excel.
Password Protect PDF - Encrypt your PDFs with a password.
PDF Editor - Annotate or add images, shapes, and drawings onto the translated file.
Delete Page From PDF - Remove unwanted pages from PDFs.
PDF Summarizer - Summarize and query PDFs for additional insights.

And that’s a partial list. Did we mention you don’t need to sign up or provide an email address to do all those things?

It’s truly remarkable how small the world has become. Despite the shrinking digital distance, different languages remain. And that’s amazing! In Switzerland, where Smallpdf was born, there are four national languages, and there are hundreds of other written languages across the world.

With the help of AI and PDF translate tools from Google and Smallpdf, working and learning across languages has never been easier. You can translate a PDF from German to English, or English to Spanish in seconds—along with French, Chinese, Russian, or whatever other language you need.

Now, don’t let this prevent you from actually learning another language—it’s absolutely worth the years of effort. But when you just need to translate a PDF, it only takes seconds.

Translate PDFs Now

Try Translate PDF in Your Native Language

Are you comfortable in English but prefer another language? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. You can try the Smallpdf Translate PDF tool in one of these languages too: