Is this Chinese document translator free?

You can try it free, with no account needed, and signing in gives you a larger daily allowance. Pro and Scholar are there for longer documents and regular use. The upload limits without an account and on Free or Pro are 20MB and 100,000 extracted characters per file; Scholar allows 50MB and 1,000,000 characters.

Can it translate a scanned document or a photo of a page?

Yes. Upload a JPG, PNG, or HEIC photo — or a scanned PDF — and we read the characters straight from the image before translating. That is how most hukou booklets, notarial certificates, and stamped paper contracts arrive. Photograph the page flat and in even light: printed Simplified Chinese reads reliably, but low-resolution images can confuse look-alike characters (未/末, 己/已), so a sharp photo matters more than a fancy scanner.

How accurate is the translation?

You choose between two quality tiers. Fast is fine for getting the substance of manuals, emails, and routine paperwork. Advanced runs a frontier model and is the right choice for contracts, certificates, and anything in formal written Chinese (书面语) — it handles set legal formulas like 兹证明, keeps 万/亿 number magnitudes straight, and renders names in the right order. For a document you will act on, use Advanced.

Will the translation keep my document's original layout?

The translator produces a translated PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel or EPUB file that aims to preserve the original layout, including tables, columns and headers. Text size, fonts and line breaks may change, so review the result against the original. Chinese text runs 20–30% shorter than English, so the formatted output adjusts type size and line breaks to fit.

Do I get Simplified or Traditional Chinese?

This page translates to Simplified Chinese (简体中文), the script used in mainland China and Singapore. If your document is for Taiwan or Hong Kong, use our Traditional Chinese translator instead — the difference is more than character shapes: vocabulary diverges by region (软件 vs 軟體 for 'software'), and one simplified character often maps to several traditional ones (发 → 發 or 髮), so mechanical conversion mangles text. Going Chinese to English, upload either script and it will translate.

What file types can I upload?

PDF, Word (DOCX), PowerPoint (PPTX), Excel (XLSX), and EPUB, plus JPG, PNG, and HEIC photos of paper documents. Spreadsheets with mixed English and Chinese cells, pitch decks, and scanned multi-page PDFs all work — upload the file as-is rather than copy-pasting text out of it.

Can I use the translation for a visa or USCIS application?

Use it to read and prepare, not to file. USCIS, IRCC, and the UK Home Office require certified translations — a signed statement of accuracy from the translator — which a machine translation alone does not satisfy. Translate your hukou, birth certificate, or notarial documents here to know exactly what they say and to check the version a certification service sends back, then have that final version certified.

Mandarin Chinese PDF & Document Translator — English ↔ Mandarin Chinese

Translate English to Mandarin Chinese or Mandarin Chinese to English while preserving your document’s layout. Upload your file, choose the target language, and get a natural translation that keeps the meaning of the original.

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See “Keep formatting” in action

Real examples of the “Keep formatting” option: original on the left, translated document on the right. Click either page to enlarge.

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A civil complaint filed in Mexico City, Spanish to English. Caption block, numbered pleadings, the evidence table and the signature block all keep their places. — Original — A civil complaint filed in Mexico City, Spanish to English. Caption block, numbered pleadings, the evidence table and the signature block all keep their places.

An Italian birth certificate, photographed rather than scanned. The framed masthead, the field grid, the marginal annotations and the round seal all hold their positions. — Original — An Italian birth certificate, photographed rather than scanned. The framed masthead, the field grid, the marginal annotations and the round seal all hold their positions.

A handwritten archaeological field notebook from 1974. The engine reads the hand and keeps the ruled inventory table intact. — Original — A handwritten archaeological field notebook from 1974. The engine reads the hand and keeps the ruled inventory table intact.

A handwritten archaeological field notebook from 1974. The engine reads the hand and keeps the ruled inventory table intact. — Translation — A handwritten archaeological field notebook from 1974. The engine reads the hand and keeps the ruled inventory table intact.

A German hospital discharge summary. Diagnoses with ICD codes, lab values and the medication table survive the translation unchanged. — Original — A German hospital discharge summary. Diagnoses with ICD codes, lab values and the medication table survive the translation unchanged.

A German hospital discharge summary. Diagnoses with ICD codes, lab values and the medication table survive the translation unchanged. — Translation — A German hospital discharge summary. Diagnoses with ICD codes, lab values and the medication table survive the translation unchanged.

A 1747 parish baptism register in Latin. Ruled columns, godparents and marginal notes stay aligned, so the genealogy still reads as a register. — Original — A 1747 parish baptism register in Latin. Ruled columns, godparents and marginal notes stay aligned, so the genealogy still reads as a register.

A 1747 parish baptism register in Latin. Ruled columns, godparents and marginal notes stay aligned, so the genealogy still reads as a register. — Translation — A 1747 parish baptism register in Latin. Ruled columns, godparents and marginal notes stay aligned, so the genealogy still reads as a register.

A scanned 17th-century Italian index of sermons. Two columns of dense small print, translated in place. — Original — A scanned 17th-century Italian index of sermons. Two columns of dense small print, translated in place.

A scanned 17th-century Italian index of sermons. Two columns of dense small print, translated in place. — Translation — A scanned 17th-century Italian index of sermons. Two columns of dense small print, translated in place.

How Mandarin Chinese documents come out

Upload a PDF, Word (DOCX), PowerPoint, Excel, or EPUB file — or a photo of a paper document — and translate it between English and Simplified Chinese (简体中文). Works in both directions, so a hukou booklet, supplier contract, or 成绩单 transcript comes back as readable English, and an English report comes back as proper written Chinese. Choose clean translated text to read, or the same file back with its layout preserved — you decide before translating.

Simplified Chinese is the standard script of mainland China and Singapore, written left to right in horizontal lines — the layout mainland documents have used officially since the mid-1950s, though certificates, seals, and older or decorative material still use vertical right-to-left columns. Chinese text has no spaces between words, uses its own full-width punctuation (the 。 full stop, the 、 enumeration comma), and is much denser than English: a translated document typically comes out 20–30% shorter on the page, so pagination shifts and page counts drop. PDFs must embed a CJK font (Noto Sans SC, SimSun, Source Han Sans) or every character renders as an empty box — the classic failure when Chinese text lands in a Western template; our PDF output embeds the fonts for you. Formal documents add conventions of their own: dates written 2026年7月20日, family name before given name, addresses running from largest unit to smallest, and on invoices and contracts, anti-fraud "capital" numerals (壹、贰、叁) spelled out alongside the figures.

Translate your document and keep its structure

The translator keeps your file’s structure while translating the text in context. The downloaded format depends on the source file.

PDFs and scanned pages: The translated PDF follows the page visually, with translated pages rendered as images. Selectable PDF text and identical fonts are not guaranteed.
Word documents and PowerPoint presentations: Start with DOCX or PPTX when you have it. Native paragraphs, table text and slide text can stay editable in the corresponding file format. Translated text inside pictures remains image content; review text wrapping and font changes in your editor.
Excel workbooks and EPUB books: Use the original XLSX or unprotected EPUB for a translated workbook or ebook. Review formulas, numbers and text cells in a workbook; check chapter order, navigation and text flow in your ebook reader.

What people translate to and from Mandarin Chinese

Supplier contracts and trade paperwork

Importers and e-commerce sellers working with Chinese factories translate supplier quotes, purchase contracts, QC inspection reports (质检报告), business licenses (营业执照), fapiao invoices, and customs forms every week. Upload the file the supplier actually sent — usually a PDF or a photographed stamp-covered page — and use the Advanced tier for anything with legal weight, since formal contract Chinese reads very differently from everyday Mandarin.

Immigration and civil documents

Visa and green-card files run on Chinese civil documents: hukou household registers (户口本), birth certificates (出生证明), marriage certificates, notarial certificates (公证书), and bank statements. These almost always arrive as scans or phone photos, which we read directly. Translate them here to know exactly what each page says and what a certification service should return — see the FAQ below on certified translations before you file.

Transcripts, degrees, and academic material

Students from China studying abroad translate 成绩单 transcripts and degree certificates for admissions offices; researchers and engineers go the other way, reading Chinese-language journal articles, patents (China files more than any other country), and GB 国标 technical standards that never get official English versions.

Manuals, spec sheets, and family papers

Products bought through Taobao, Alibaba, or AliExpress often ship with Chinese-only manuals and datasheets — photograph the pages and translate them instead of guessing at diagrams. Diaspora families use the same tool on letters, property deeds, and genealogy books (族谱) that younger generations can no longer read.

What to watch for in Mandarin Chinese document translation

Chinese and English disagree about almost everything a translator must commit to, so document translation between them fails in characteristic ways. Chinese marks neither tense nor plural and freely drops subjects, which means Chinese → English requires inferring who did what, and when, from context — weak translations guess wrong or hedge. Formal Chinese chains clauses together with commas into long run-on sentences (流水句) that have to be split and restructured in English, not mirrored. Numbers group by ten-thousands: 万 is 10,000 and 亿 is 100,000,000, so 15万 is 150,000 — misreading these is the classic order-of-magnitude error in financial and contract work. Going English → Chinese, the trap is translationese (翻译腔): official documents expect fixed formulas — 兹证明 for 'this is to certify', 特此证明 to close a certification — and a literal rendering of the English reads as obviously foreign. Personal names need one deliberate convention, either transliterated (约翰·史密斯) or left in Latin script, because mixing the two mid-document looks careless; Chinese names put the family name first, which mechanical translation regularly flips. Add OCR confusion between look-alike characters on poor scans, and a translation that is mostly right can still be wrong exactly where the document matters — which is what the Advanced tier is for.

Mandarin Chinese document translation FAQ

Is this Chinese document translator free?: You can try it free, with no account needed, and signing in gives you a larger daily allowance. Pro and Scholar are there for longer documents and regular use. The upload limits without an account and on Free or Pro are 20MB and 100,000 extracted characters per file; Scholar allows 50MB and 1,000,000 characters.
Can it translate a scanned document or a photo of a page?: Yes. Upload a JPG, PNG, or HEIC photo — or a scanned PDF — and we read the characters straight from the image before translating. That is how most hukou booklets, notarial certificates, and stamped paper contracts arrive. Photograph the page flat and in even light: printed Simplified Chinese reads reliably, but low-resolution images can confuse look-alike characters (未/末, 己/已), so a sharp photo matters more than a fancy scanner.
How accurate is the translation?: You choose between two quality tiers. Fast is fine for getting the substance of manuals, emails, and routine paperwork. Advanced runs a frontier model and is the right choice for contracts, certificates, and anything in formal written Chinese (书面语) — it handles set legal formulas like 兹证明, keeps 万/亿 number magnitudes straight, and renders names in the right order. For a document you will act on, use Advanced.
Will the translation keep my document's original layout?: The translator produces a translated PDF, Word, PowerPoint, Excel or EPUB file that aims to preserve the original layout, including tables, columns and headers. Text size, fonts and line breaks may change, so review the result against the original. Chinese text runs 20–30% shorter than English, so the formatted output adjusts type size and line breaks to fit.
Do I get Simplified or Traditional Chinese?: This page translates to Simplified Chinese (简体中文), the script used in mainland China and Singapore. If your document is for Taiwan or Hong Kong, use our Traditional Chinese translator instead — the difference is more than character shapes: vocabulary diverges by region (软件 vs 軟體 for 'software'), and one simplified character often maps to several traditional ones (发 → 發 or 髮), so mechanical conversion mangles text. Going Chinese to English, upload either script and it will translate.
What file types can I upload?: PDF, Word (DOCX), PowerPoint (PPTX), Excel (XLSX), and EPUB, plus JPG, PNG, and HEIC photos of paper documents. Spreadsheets with mixed English and Chinese cells, pitch decks, and scanned multi-page PDFs all work — upload the file as-is rather than copy-pasting text out of it.
Can I use the translation for a visa or USCIS application?: Use it to read and prepare, not to file. USCIS, IRCC, and the UK Home Office require certified translations — a signed statement of accuracy from the translator — which a machine translation alone does not satisfy. Translate your hukou, birth certificate, or notarial documents here to know exactly what they say and to check the version a certification service sends back, then have that final version certified.

See “Keep formatting” in action

Real examples of the “Keep formatting” option: original on the left, translated document on the right. Click either page to enlarge.

1 / 6

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