Translate a Word document

What stays as it was

Octoolo reads the Word file with the same reader as its Documents app, translates the words and writes a new .docx:

• Kept: headings, paragraphs, bulleted and numbered lists, checklists, quotes, tables (every cell is translated), pictures, page breaks and the page size.
• Simplified: each paragraph is translated as a whole, so bold or italic on a few words inside it is dropped; a paragraph that is bold or italic all through keeps it. Links stay as text.
• Not kept: headers and footers, columns and section breaks. Octoolo tells you when the file had them.

Translating a paragraph as a whole is deliberate: word order changes between languages, so formatting tied to words in one language seldom lands on the right words in the other.

Text files keep their lines

A .txt or .md file is translated line by line and saved as the same kind of file. Blank lines, indents, bullets ("-", "•") and numbered lines ("1.", "2)") stay as they were, and lines with no words, such as numbers or dividers, are copied unchanged. Markdown symbols around the words are usually kept by the model, but check headings and links in the result.

For a quick look at a shorter text, paste it into Text Studio instead: the translation appears beside it as you type, and Insert below puts it under the original.

Long documents

The sentences are translated in batches of similar length, so a long report goes much faster than sentence by sentence; a repeated sentence, such as a heading on every section, is translated once. The panel shows how many sentences are done, and Stop cancels without saving anything. Each translated sentence is remembered for a while, so translating the same document into the same language again is quick.