Upload the file, choose your source — Chinese (simplified) and Chinese (traditional) are separate selectable languages — and Smartcat translates into English and rebuilds the PDF with its tables, images and formatting in place.
Scanned pages take the image-only route, which you pick at upload.
1,000+ enterprise brands translate documents in Smartcat.
To translate a PDF from Chinese to English, upload it and choose your source language — Chinese (simplified) or Chinese (traditional), each with regional variants — with English as the target. You get back a translated PDF with the original layout preserved.
Scanned files work too, on a different route: the AI PDF workflow doesn't handle image-of-text pages, so you select the pdfimageonly parsing method at upload and each page goes through the image-translation pipeline.
30–60%
longer in English than in Chinese
The rebuilt PDF reflows tables, columns and text boxes to absorb the expansion instead of letting it spill.
100 MB
file ceiling, with no page limit
The AI PDF workflow accepts files up to 100 MB, whatever the page count.
15–45 min
for a typical 10–20 page document
Documents of 60+ pages take significantly longer.
Smartcat handles high-volume pairs and long-tail requests from the same workspace.
High volume customer and marketing content
Brand, legal, and support documents
Every source language we support, in one place
Technical, legal, and compliance documents
Product, training, and localization materials
Chinese PDFs fail in ways a generic converter never warns you about.
□□□ boxes where characters should be — the tool substituted a font with no CJK glyphs.
Scans rejected as image-based files — a supplier contract scanned in Shenzhen, red company chop stamped across the signature block.
Traditional read as Simplified — a filing from a Taiwan partner comes back translated as if it were Simplified, mangling terms that differ between the two.
And Chinese text has no spaces between words, so tools that split text on whitespace hack sentences apart mid-word — 合同双方 (“both parties to the contract”) becomes something a lawyer stops trusting on page one.
Then there's room: an English translation typically runs 30–60% longer than the Chinese it replaces. In a fixed PDF layout, that overflow has to go somewhere.
Smartcat handles this at the platform level. You choose Chinese (simplified) or Chinese (traditional) yourself — down to the region — so nothing rests on a detector, and text is segmented linguistically before translation, which is what keeps a clause whole when the source has no word boundaries.
The PDF is then rebuilt rather than patched: tables, columns and text boxes reflow to absorb the longer English, and seals stay as images. Every term you approve compounds in the glossary and translation memory, so the tenth supplier agreement starts with everything the first nine settled.
Comparing approaches rather than translating a file today? Start with our guide to document translation.
Translated, variant-aware — you select the script rather than relying on detection.
Handled via the pdfimageonly route you select at upload — quality follows scan quality.
Kept as images; text inside a stamp is not reliably read.
Rebuilt in place, reflowed for longer English text.
Low-resolution scans, handwriting and seals stamped over text are where hanzi OCR struggles, and a wrong character becomes a confident English sentence.
Keep the AI draft, then put a Chinese-English reviewer on the sections that carry risk — same project, same file.
Upload, select the script, review, export — from one place.
From upload to export
One workflow, five stages, one workspace.
1
Upload your Chinese PDF
Up to 100 MB, any page count. If the file is scanned pages rather than a text layer, choose pdfimageonly as the parsing method in the upload dialog; it is not detected for you.
2
Select the script
Chinese (simplified) and Chinese (traditional) are separate languages, with PRC/Singapore/Malaysia and Taiwan/Hong Kong/Macau variants, plus Cantonese and Pinyin. Pick the one your document is written in.
3
Get the English draft
Your glossary and translation memory apply, so names, legal terms and table headings come out the same way every time.
4
Review what matters
Check the translation against the live layout, alone or with a professional Chinese-English reviewer from Smartcat's Marketplace.
5
Export the finished PDF
Same layout, in English.
Every plan starts with a 15-day free trial that includes 15,000 Smartwords and full access to translation capabilities, no credit card.
Translation is metered in Smartwords — word count, not page count — so a 3-page scan and a 300-page manual are priced by what's actually in them. Full detail on the pricing page.
Supplier and manufacturing contracts, mainland and Hong Kong filings, technical and compliance packs, and stamped back-office scans — the files where layout and terminology carry the meaning.
Keep the AI draft and add a professional Chinese–English reviewer from the Marketplace to the sections that carry risk — same project, same file, nothing re-uploaded.
Each authority sets its own certificate, registration and legalization requirements, so confirm those first — and book a demo if you want help matching a translator to your deadline.
Every translation lands in a complete visual editor. Click any element — a term that reads awkwardly, a table heading that needs different wording — and say what you want in plain language, then see the change before you accept it. No designer round-trips, no re-running the job.
| What you get back | ✓ A finished English PDF that still looks like the Chinese original | ~ A rough file or copyable text | ~ Translated text in a chat window that you rebuild into a document yourself |
| Chinese layout, tables and characters preserved on export | ✓ Yes — document reassembled with tables, columns and images in place, reflowed to absorb English that runs 30–60% longer | ~ Partial — formatting often lost, and longer English text overruns the cell it sat in | ✗ No — it returns text, not your rebuilt Chinese file |
| Scanned / image-only Chinese PDFs | ✓ Yes — select the pdfimageonly parsing method at upload and each page runs through the image-translation pipeline | ~ Limited | ~ Reads many scans, but the output is still text |
| Long Chinese documents in one pass | ✓ AI PDF workflow takes files up to 100 MB with no page limit; 10–20 pages in 15–45 minutes | ~ Per-file size and page caps | ~ Chat context limits — long Chinese documents get truncated or chunked |
| Simplified and Traditional handled as separate languages | ✓ Chinese (simplified) and Chinese (traditional) are separate source languages, down to the region — you select it, nothing is guessed | ~ Detected rather than chosen — a Taiwan filing can come back read as Simplified | ~ You can tell it which script to use in each prompt; nothing is stored as a project setting |
| Chinese–English human review in the same workflow | ✓ Marketplace Chinese–English linguists reviewing against the live layout | ✗ No | ✗ No — you arrange review yourself |
| Run the same job again next month | ✓ Projects, Chat and version history — resume and re-export | ✗ Manual every time | ~ Re-prompting works, but output varies run to run |
Global manufacturers and logistics operators — the segment that actually receives Chinese-language supplier and compliance PDFs — use Smartcat to cut cost and turnaround on document work.
10 → 2–3 days
document turnaround
Smith+Nephew brought translation turnaround down from 10 days to two to three days.
Up to 70%
lower translation cost
Stanley Black & Decker moved from $200–$300 per 1,000 words to $1.20, and cut average turnaround by two weeks.
31 hours
saved monthly
Babbel saved time across marketing and learning teams.
Upload the file, confirm the script, export a finished English document — no font boxes, no collapsed tables, no retyping. Free for 15 days, no credit card.
Choose pdfimageonly in the upload dialog — it is not detected for you. A digital PDF with a real text layer needs no parsing choice at all.
Either way you also select your Chinese variant as the source and English as the target. The layout — tables, images, columns — is rebuilt in the English output, and you can review the draft before exporting.
Yes — and you choose which. Chinese (simplified) and Chinese (traditional) are separate selectable source languages, with regional variants for the PRC, Singapore and Malaysia on one side and Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau on the other (plus Cantonese and Pinyin).
Vocabulary and characters differ between them, so you select the variant your document is written in rather than relying on detection. Vertical Chinese text is not supported.
Yes, but you route it deliberately. The AI PDF workflow doesn't support image-of-text PDFs, so in the upload dialog you choose pdfimageonly as the parsing method and each page runs through the image-translation pipeline — the only pipeline that supports handwritten content.
Clean printed scans work well; handwriting and stamped-over text are unreliable and should get a human review pass. For photos of documents rather than PDFs, use the image translator instead.
That's a font problem, not a translation problem: the viewing font has no glyphs for the characters.
So if a recipient sees boxes, install a CJK-capable font in their viewer, or open the file in a reader that ships one.
English typically runs 30–60% longer than Chinese. Smartcat reflows text boxes and table cells during the rebuild, so the export absorbs the expansion. Extremely tight fixed layouts are worth a visual check in the editor before export.
Smartcat is free for 15 days with 15,000 Smartwords — full access to translation capabilities, no credit card — then paid. There is no permanently free tier.
Genuinely free tools exist and are fine for a throwaway file; what you pay for here is layout fidelity, script handling and terminology that holds across a document set.
Smartcat is SOC 2 Type II compliant. Files are encrypted in transit and at rest, workspaces are isolated per account, and access is role-based. Details on the security page.
Yes. Once review is complete, export the finished English PDF for delivery or distribution.
When the source fights the OCR. Accuracy on hanzi degrades quickly on:
A misread character produces a confidently wrong English sentence, which is worse than a blank. For documents like that, take the machine draft and add a human review pass on the sections that carry risk, or go straight to a professional Chinese-English translator.
Vertical Chinese text is not supported at all. And for a 500-page manual the tool is right but the route is different — see translate large PDFs.
Book a demo — a 1:1 consultation with a Smartcat specialist, no commitment and no form queue.