Translate a Telugu Word or PDF document into English

Upload a Telugu Word file, or a PDF whose Telugu can be selected and copied, and get an English document with the same layout. If the Telugu pastes as Latin symbols, it is a legacy font, and it has to be converted before it can be translated.

Telugu, as written

గృహ నిర్మాణ చట్టం, 2016 లోని సెక్షన్ 24(2) క్రింద దరఖాస్తులు ఆహ్వానించబడ్డాయి. చివరి తేదీ 31-03-2027 మరియు రుసుము రూ. 250. సహాయం కోసం help@example.gov.in కు వ్రాయండి లేదా https://www.example.gov.in/apply ను సందర్శించండి.

English, translated

Applications are invited under Section 24(2) of the Housing Development Act, 2016. The last date is 31-03-2027 and the fee is Rs. 250. For assistance, write to help@example.gov.in or visit https://www.example.gov.in/apply.

The Telugu of the test notice (itself machine-made from English) translated back. The six protected items, the date, the section, the amount, the e-mail address and the web address, came back exactly.

Translate a Word file or a PDF with a text layer from Telugu into English. Machine translation, in beta; a free account with a confirmed e-mail address is needed.

Translate into English

First: is your Telugu really Unicode?

Much Telugu in circulation, from government forms to books, was typed in legacy fonts such as Anu, Priyaanka and Kranthi. The page shows Telugu, but the file holds Latin-letter codes, so copied text reads as symbols. Translating that would translate nonsense, so IndicPDF refuses a document set in a legacy font and says so.

The way through is to convert it first. Legacy PDF to DOCX reads each code through the table for the Anu family and writes real Unicode Telugu; the Word file that comes out can then be translated into English.

The English comes back in the same layout

The Word file is edited in place: styles, tables, numbering, header and footer stay as the Telugu document had them. Numbers, dates, section references, amounts and addresses are protected and come back exactly. In the Telugu-to-English run of our test notice, all 6 of 6 were back, and the layout comparison, an element by element check of paragraph, table and page properties, found no difference.

What a round trip shows

Translating our test notice into Telugu and back gave English that read the same as the original except for one name: “Housing Act” returned as “Housing Development Act”. Official names are the thing most worth checking, in either direction. In the check of the Telugu-to-English pair, the Telugu reader found the one sentence tested acceptable. That is one sentence: a reason to read the English, not a measure of quality.

A sentence that cannot be translated

When a Telugu sentence fails a check, it is cut and asked again, then asked as written. A part that still fails stays in Telugu and is highlighted yellow, so a reader of the English sees exactly where the machine gave up.

What it does not take

A scanned page with no text layer is not accepted yet: read it with Telugu OCR first. Footnotes, endnotes and comments are not translated yet. Text inside pictures is not translated.

What happens to each part of the file

Legacy font detected
Refused, not translated. Convert it to Unicode Telugu first with Legacy PDF to DOCX.
Numbers, dates, sections, amounts, addresses
Kept exactly as written.
Layout
Kept. Styles, tables, numbering, header and footer are the source’s.
A sentence that could not be translated
Stays in Telugu and is highlighted yellow.
Names of acts, schemes and offices
Translated like other words; check them against the official English.

Frequently asked questions

My Telugu PDF copies as symbols. Why is it refused?

Because the file holds the legacy font’s codes, not Telugu letters, and translating those would give nonsense. Convert it with Legacy PDF to DOCX, which reads Anu-family fonts correctly, then translate the Word file.

Can I translate a scanned Telugu page?

Not directly yet. Telugu OCR reads the scan into Word, and you can translate that Word file after checking it. OCR errors would be translated like any other text, so correct them first.

Can I get Telugu and English together?

Yes. “Both languages” puts each Telugu paragraph first and its English translation after it.

Is the translation a machine’s, and is it checked by a person?

It is machine translation, in beta. Before it was switched on, a Telugu reader and a Hindi reader read a first round of 16 passages: the Telugu reader found 7 of 7 English-to-Telugu passages acceptable, and the Hindi reader 5 of 6 English-to-Hindi, with one edit. That is a small sample, so read the result before you rely on it, and have it checked by a person for anything official or legal.

Do I need an account, and is there a limit?

Yes. Translation needs a free account with a confirmed e-mail address, and a limited number of pages a day and a month, counted in pages of 2,000 characters. The Limits page lists the numbers as they stand today.

What happens to my file?

It is stored encrypted while it is translated and removed by a cleanup that runs every 15 minutes, so nothing is kept longer than 4 hours after upload. The text is sent to an outside machine-translation service to be translated; the Privacy page says what is sent and what is not.

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