Skip to Main Content
This Is Auburn Auburn University Libraries LibGuides

Google Translate & Other Quick Translation Techniques

Most articles in different languages can now be machine translated using Google Translate, Microsoft Word, and sometimes in a combination that may include Adobe Acrobat DC. This guide will help you with the process of translating documents.

You should check with your professor before utilizing machine translated articles in any papers or presentations. Also, we cannot guarantee that documents machine translated this way are correct especially if they are highly scientific or utilize technological terminology. Please rely on your own experience or seek out an expert.

Things to Remember:

  1. New PDFs that have selectable text can be usually be opened and translated in Word.
  2. Documents must have selectable text otherwise you will need to run an optical character recognition program OCR on them. 
  3. If using Adobe Acrobat DC, the language character set need to be loaded prior to using Scan and OCR. Auburn University's Adobe Acrobat DC should already come loaded with a variety of character sets.
  4. Translation programs may not work for all documents or languages.
  5. Google Translate will not accept "scanned" documents"