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Creating a formatted document from a scanned file.
Thread poster: taranhart
taranhart
taranhart
English to Spanish
May 26, 2010

Hi I´m translating my own university degree, but I need to hand in the degree along with academic transcripts in identical format to the original, just in the target language. I´m wondering if anybody has any advice to accomplish this task, or should I just do my best in word?

Thanks in advance,

Taran

[Edited at 2010-05-26 19:02 GMT]
 
Henry Hinds
Henry Hinds  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 02:31
English to Spanish
+ ...
In memoriam
Does not work well May 26, 2010

Just do your best in Word.
 
Christine Andersen
Christine Andersen  Identity Verified
Denmark
Local time: 10:31
Member (2003)
Danish to English
+ ...
Maybe get help from a Word expert May 27, 2010

I agree with Henry

Using Word is the method I find fastest and easiest. Also the simplest to adjust where one language takes up more space than the other.

You may be able to make use of most of the formatting facilities in Word yourself, but many people who compile documents are not, as I can see from the ones I receive for translation. It is well worth spending a little time on learning to use them properly, and then you can get the effects you want.

It mi... See more
I agree with Henry

Using Word is the method I find fastest and easiest. Also the simplest to adjust where one language takes up more space than the other.

You may be able to make use of most of the formatting facilities in Word yourself, but many people who compile documents are not, as I can see from the ones I receive for translation. It is well worth spending a little time on learning to use them properly, and then you can get the effects you want.

It might help if you get someone who is familiar with these functions to give you some tips, because guessing can be frustrating, and you need to know the official names of the functions to look them up in Help.

If you have the documents in editable electronic form (NOT PDF!) you can ´write over´ them and keep the formatting that way, but my guess is that most documents of that kind are not editable, because they need to be tamper-proof.

Best of luck with it all!

[Edited at 2010-05-27 08:47 GMT] ▲ Collapse
 
Mark Straver
Mark Straver
Sweden
Local time: 10:31
English to Dutch
+ ...
PDF, then convert? May 27, 2010

What I would do myself is to scan it to a PDF document, then use a converter to retain all graphics and layout to produce a pre-formatted word document with layout equivalent to the original. For example ABBYY's software, which seems to do a pretty decent job with some control over the actual conversion process.
 


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Creating a formatted document from a scanned file.







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