Converting a Chinese pdf file (picture pdf) into a Word document

[JinWenSen]

Does anyone know how to do this ? Basically I'm interested in being able to put chunks of texts in Google translate or in Lingq but I'm working from a pdf picture file (I can't highlight select or copy the text). 

 

Thanks !

[Jan Finster]

You need "OCR" (optical character recognition). There are several online options. Otherwise, use Adobe Acrobat Pro, Omnipage or the like.

[大块头]

Check out this thread.

[Zeppa]

I use Abby Fine Reader on Windows, usually for German texts but Ihave used it for Chinese too. I think there are some one-off online options that are free of charge - maybe just google "OCR for Chinese". You have to check the result but the software is good nowadays. Have you got a lot to do or just one file?

Pleco has a function that can read and OCR, don't know if it's free.

[alantin]

I have used google docs to OCR hundreds of pages of text. I wanted my favorite book in Chinese translation in pleco for convenient dictionary lookups but it only seems to exist in print. You just open the pdf in google docs and it will do OCR automatcally for you and convert it into a text file. The quality is good enough I think but it helps if you can prepare the pdf so that the text is as clear as possible.

[Publius]

I have used Adobe Scan and Microsoft Lens before, and also a Chinese app called 白描. They should be able to do OCR on non-text PDF files, which is basically a set of pictures bundled together. I no longer have the apps on my phone, but as far as I can remember the results were pretty good, especially 白描.