APP "IRIS PDF OCR Support" doesn't work

Question

Hello, yesterday I got crazy trying to translate a not editable PDF (result from the scan of a certificate). I watched a video tutorial on Trados web site and installed IRIS PDF OCR Support. The installation has been completed successfully but when I started to use it, it didn't work! The editor view comes out empty, as in the picture I attach. Can anyone hlep me? In the end, I wrote the document by hand in a word file but for future cases I would like to understand the problem. Quite often I have to transalte certificates and the clients send me the scanned document, that is a not editable PDF,so I need to know how to deal with those formats...Thanks!!!

Trados Studio project template settings window showing options for file types and layout recovery.

Generated Image Alt-Text
[edited by: Trados AI at 1:22 PM (GMT 0) on 29 Feb 2024]

Paul · Answer

Antonella Pecchioli 
 Unfortunately PDF files are just tricky! We also had problems with IRIS technically, it was a 3rd party technology we paid for and it didn't always work well. So in 2022 you'll see we removed the PDF filetype altogether that worked with IRIS and have replaced it with something new. Unfortunately the new filetype doesn't OCR at all, but we did create a free plugin for 2022 that does a reasonable job most of the time. You can read about it here: 
 PDF Assistant for Trados 
 The principle with this is to use the app to convert the file to a DOCX first. Then you can tidy up the PDF as needed, and I recommend TransTools to help with this: 
 https://www.translatortools.net/products/transtools 
 Ideally, I think if you get a lot of PDF files to work on, it may be worth investing in something like Adobe Acrobat ( https://www.adobe.com/acrobat.html ) or Abbyy FineReader ( https://pdf.abbyy.com/ ) as these tools provide better control over the editing of PDF files so that you can prepare them properly for translation first.

Paul · Answer

Yulia Kovalskaya 
 I think we all have questions about PDF files!!! 
 Yulia Kovalskaya said: So there is no point in installing IRIS OCR on Trados 22 SR1, as far as I can understand? 
 Correct... no point. 
 Yulia Kovalskaya said: Actually, in my case, the option does not even appear in the PDF settings window (does anyone else have this same problem? 
 Everyone! This is because the new filetype doesn't use IRIS and we replaced the old one. 
 Yulia Kovalskaya said: Then, according to Google, PDFelement is the best OCR program nowdays. What is your opinion on it? Would you recommend investing in it? 
 I'm not familiar with it. Even though this thread is only a few months old I actually added to my choices in my personal life. I still use NAPS and sometimes FreeOCR, but I now choose two other tools: 
 
 PDF-XChange Editor - https://pdf-xchange.eu/pdf-xchange-editor/ Mainly because I wanted a good PDF editing capability. I haven't played with the OCR yet so I took a screenshot of your image (that already was a poor resolution), saved as a PDF and tried it - Also not perfect and you'd still need to do some work removing superflous tags before processing but I was quite impressed with this quick test. It also has a lot of other very nice features. I use Adobe at work on my work laptop but I found that too pricey for my needs at home. PDF-XChange Editor is a lot cheaper, it's perpetual, and I actually find it a lot more functional and user friendly than Adobe too. 
 ChatGPT for many things I receive where I want the text it's brilliant for screenshotting the image and asking for the text, and the translation ;-) 
 
 Yulia Kovalskaya said: As for the FreeOCR you mentioned, it is 100% online, isn´t it? 
 Nope... it's a desktop application: http://www.paperfile.net/ 
 But note it's incredibly basic. I like it because it's simple and fast and often served my purpose perfectly. No substitute for a more professional tool though. 
 Ultimately there are no easy answers for PDFs. All PDF files are different and depending on how they were created, how good the quality is, what the content is, what language the content is, the less consistent your results. So it's often a case of knowing your tools and finding the most appropriate for the job. Or encourage your clients to stop providing PDF files as much as possible!!

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APP "IRIS PDF OCR Support" doesn't work

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