Edited in place, not typeset again
A translated document is usually a new document that looks like the old one. Here it is the old one. Each paragraph’s style, alignment, indents, tab stops and spacing stay as the file has them, and so do the tables, lists, headers, footers, pictures and page setup. Only the text in the runs changes, and the translated text takes the look of the run it replaces.
A PDF with a text layer is converted to Word first and then translated, so its result is a Word file; how faithful it is to the PDF depends on the conversion, and a clean digital PDF does best.
What we compared
On 15 October 2026 we translated five documents: a structured notice with a heading, a centred paragraph with a bold date, a numbered list, a bordered table, tab stops, a header and a footer, into Telugu and into Hindi; an English and a Hindi test document; and a Telugu stress file into English. Then we compared each with its source element by element: paragraph properties, table grids, page size and margins, header and footer properties, and the first run’s bold, italic, underline, size and colour. There was no difference in any. Rendered by LibreOffice, the page counts were equal in all five, at 1, 1, 1, 1 and 3.
The comparison was first run against a seeded change to be sure it can see one.
What is protected, and how we know
Every number, date, section reference, amount, time of day, e-mail address and web address is replaced by a marker before translation and put back after; an answer that does not return every marker exactly once is not accepted. Across those five documents, 59 of 59 such items of the source were present in the output. A repeat on 16 October 2026 into Telugu and Hindi and back, with the real service, kept all 6 of 6 in each direction, again with no layout difference and one page before and after.
What is not tested yet
Those documents had no pictures, text boxes, footnotes or columns. A translation that needs more room than the original will push later content down, and the result reports that instead of judging it. Footnotes, endnotes and comments are not translated yet. A bold word inside a sentence takes the look of the sentence’s first run, while a bold date or number keeps its own.
When a sentence does not translate
If the engine’s answer fails a check, the sentence is cut smaller and asked again, then asked as written. What still fails stays in the source language, highlighted yellow, so the page never silently mixes two languages. The report counts those and shows no text.