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macgyver655
Joined: 22 Aug 2007
Posts: 8508
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| Posted: Thu May 14, 2009 10:29 pm Post subject: Way OT: Pdf to translate |
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Before I throw something out the window, I'll ask for assistance. I've spent a few hours on this already without success. I have a PDF in Japanese and I'm trying to copy a line of text and put it into google translate. But it wont work. I tried pdf converter to other forms of text, no good. Advice????????
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loribates
Joined: 02 Dec 2007
Posts: 185
Location: KS
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| Posted: Fri May 15, 2009 12:24 am Post subject: |
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Using plain old acrobat or adobe pro? If its a doc that was converted to pdf the text can be extracted, if its a scanned image it can't recognize characters without some sort of OCR
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Lori Bates
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macgyver655
Joined: 22 Aug 2007
Posts: 8508
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| Posted: Fri May 15, 2009 12:46 am Post subject: |
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Plain ole acrobat 9 and I believe its an image which is probably why I cant achieve what I'm trying to do.
Guess I'll have to learn Japanese...... 
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k.berger
Joined: 16 Mar 2006
Posts: 84
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| Posted: Fri May 15, 2009 12:50 am Post subject: |
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It's probably not possible, I am afraid. Most likely because the pdf in question is created from bitmap.
Another words, somebody scanned printed page and either choose pdf as output from scanner, or later used Adobe Acrobat (or equivalent) to convert bitmap (like jpg, tiff, gif or other) into pdf document.
To do it using what you have, you would have to have OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software to convert IMAGES of CHARACTERS into actual characters. Don't think those exist, OCR software has enough problems with latin character sets.
Or, your document would have to editable, word-processing document like .doc (Microsoft Word - which I am not sure can handle Japanese alphabet, except for version written for Japanese market of course), or pdf created from such..
I don't see any way around it, with one exception: Assuming you successfully switch MS Word (probably together with whole Windows - which would require you to install extra languages pack for Windows) to Japanese, you could just retype the text, visually matching characters.
That would be of course heck of the job, I am not sure that finding somebody speaking Japanese would be easier.... 
Kris
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k.berger
Joined: 16 Mar 2006
Posts: 84
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| Posted: Fri May 15, 2009 12:52 am Post subject: |
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Lori, you beat me to it (by 4 minutes) 
Kris
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macgyver655
Joined: 22 Aug 2007
Posts: 8508
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| Posted: Fri May 15, 2009 1:00 am Post subject: |
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I actually tried a virtual Japanese keyboard and then did a translate and had some success but many of the characters were not on the keyboard as I believe some characters are phrases and such. I'm still hunting for something but keep posting suggestions. Maybe some one will have a solution. If it wasn't important I wouldn't be so concerned and putting in so much effort.
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bbfarmht
Joined: 27 May 2006
Posts: 1273
Location: Where the Mississippi runs east to west!!
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| Posted: Fri May 15, 2009 1:13 am Post subject: |
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Heres a thought Mac you go to the local community college and ask if they had some body to translate it for you. This may not be the easiest thing to accomplish but its worth a try.
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Adam
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both"
Benjamin Franklin
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k.berger
Joined: 16 Mar 2006
Posts: 84
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| Posted: Fri May 15, 2009 1:15 am Post subject: |
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I hear you...
As far as I know, you are right - Japanese alphabet is actually combination of characters and pictorials (representing whole phrases, concepts etc).
Look into that virtual keyboard - maybe it's switchable somehow? Or maybe there is separate keyboard for those?
Also, depending on where you live, you may have local College which Languages Dep. may include Japanese.
Post ad on Craig's List. Of course, you would have to pay some money, but it would beat hands down using prof. service (I had client running Medical Translation Service, you wouldn't believe their rates!).
Kris
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loribates
Joined: 02 Dec 2007
Posts: 185
Location: KS
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| Posted: Fri May 15, 2009 1:40 am Post subject: |
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How many pages is it? Its a manual of some sort? My birth father married a chinese woman so if it were chinese I could see if she could translate but japanese, not so much
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Lori Bates
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macgyver655
Joined: 22 Aug 2007
Posts: 8508
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| Posted: Fri May 15, 2009 1:49 am Post subject: |
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Its definitely Japanese. I've had some success. I went to a Japanese website and started looking for matching symbols, then copied and pasted into Babel Fish. So far so good but man, my eyes hurt. So many different symbols and some so close but not the same and they mean something totally different. I'm sure I'll get it but it will just take some time. I had enough for tonight, like I said, my eyes hurt.
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jask
Joined: 17 Mar 2006
Posts: 10187
Location: kamloops BC
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| Posted: Fri May 15, 2009 4:31 am Post subject: |
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Try one of the online conversational Japanese/English chat sites, you may be able to offer your time as a conversational native English speaker to someone who is willing to translate the Kana characters.
Not sure of the rules but a site like this one might be a start: http://www.mylanguageexchange.com/Learn/Japanese.asp
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garyfritz
Joined: 08 Apr 2006
Posts: 12088
Location: Fort Collins, CO
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| Posted: Sat May 16, 2009 3:28 am Post subject: |
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| k.berger wrote: | | As far as I know, you are right - Japanese alphabet is actually combination of characters and pictorials (representing whole phrases, concepts etc). |
Yes. Typical Japanese writing mixes Kanji (non-phonetic symbols "borrowed" from Chinese, each one usually representing a word or concept), Katakana and Hiragana (two parallel phonetic alphabets, sort of like our block and cursive letters), and English/Latin writing. There are literally thousands of Kanji in common use, so you're probably out of luck if you try to translate those. There are about 45 individual Katakana/Hiragana characters, most of which represent a consonant-vowel pair (like the four symbols in KA TA KA NA). There are also some modifications to some of those symbols (e.g. turning a HA into a BA or PA) and some combinations (e.g. KI YA = KYA). But most writing will mix Kanji and kana so you can't translate it with just the kana.
I agree with the suggestions to find a native Japanese speaker and ask for help.
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jask
Joined: 17 Mar 2006
Posts: 10187
Location: kamloops BC
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macgyver655
Joined: 22 Aug 2007
Posts: 8508
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| Posted: Sat May 16, 2009 6:08 pm Post subject: |
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I downloaded and installed this program and it may work but.......... everything is in Japanese....... I mean all the tabs and tools...so I dont know what to select to do anything. I was able to load the PDF and it appeared to read it and another window opened up with different symbols but I couldn't read that either. I'm thinking I have to change a setting to translate it to english but again... every thing is in Japanese so I dont know what to change......... 
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macgyver655
Joined: 22 Aug 2007
Posts: 8508
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| Posted: Sat May 16, 2009 7:50 pm Post subject: |
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SUCCESS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 
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