Is this Traditional 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.

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

Yes. Upload a JPG, PNG or HEIC photo, or a PDF that is really a scan, and the characters are read from the image before translating. Photograph the page flat and in even light. Two things deserve a check afterwards: vertical text, where column order can be misread, and the red seals (印章) that Taiwanese and Hong Kong documents stamp over names, dates and page joins, which hide the characters underneath. Look-alike characters such as 己/已/巳 or 日/曰 can also be confused on low-resolution images. Printed pages generally come through well; handwriting varies with the hand.

How accurate is it? What is the difference between Fast and Advanced?

Fast is for volume and gist: skimming a report, a thesis chapter or a stack of routine letters. Advanced runs a frontier model and is the right choice for contracts, court papers, household registration transcripts and anything in formal written Chinese, where set formulas, classical-flavoured phrasing and regional vocabulary have to be read correctly rather than word by word. It is also the tier to use for old deeds and letters in semi-classical style. Whichever tier you choose, check converted 民國 years and the spelling of names against the source before relying on them.

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 is denser than English, so an English document translated into Chinese usually runs shorter, and vertical layouts are the ones to review most carefully.

Can I use this for a visa, court or university submission?

Not on its own. Immigration authorities such as USCIS, IRCC and the UK Home Office require a certified translation with a signed statement of accuracy, and Taiwanese documents going abroad usually pass through notarisation and authentication as well. Use this to read your documents, work out which pages a filing actually needs, and check the version a certification service sends back, then have only that final version certified.

Which Traditional Chinese do I get, Taiwan or Hong Kong? What about Simplified?

The output is standard written Chinese in Traditional characters, readable in Taipei, Hong Kong and Macau alike. Regional differences are real, though: vocabulary diverges (軟體 in Taiwan and 軟件 in Hong Kong for software, 計程車 and 的士 for taxi), and the two character standards differ on forms like 裡/裏 and 著/着, so for a document aimed at one place have a local reader check the handful of terms that vary. If the document is for mainland China, use the Simplified Chinese page instead; if you need text that reads as spoken Cantonese rather than formal written Chinese, use the Cantonese page. Going into English, upload either script.

What file types can I upload?

PDF, Word (DOCX), PowerPoint (PPTX), Excel (XLSX) and EPUB, plus JPG, PNG and HEIC photos of paper documents. Upload the original file rather than text copied out of it, especially for older Taiwanese and Hong Kong PDFs whose Big5 text layer turns to gibberish on copy. Free and Pro accept up to 20MB and 100,000 extracted characters per file; Scholar accepts up to 50MB and 1,000,000 characters.

Traditional Chinese PDF & Document Translator — English ↔ Traditional Chinese

Translate English to Traditional Chinese or Traditional 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 Traditional Chinese documents come out

Upload a PDF, Word file, presentation, spreadsheet or a photo of a paper document and translate it between English and Traditional Chinese (繁體中文), the script of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. A Taiwanese household registration transcript, a Hong Kong tenancy agreement or an old family land deed comes back as readable English; an English report or contract comes back as written Chinese in Traditional characters, with tables and headings kept in place. Documents in Simplified characters, from mainland China, have their own page.

Traditional characters are the everyday script of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau and of many older overseas Chinese communities, and the documents differ from mainland ones in more than character shapes. Taiwan and Hong Kong follow different character standards, so 裡 in a Taipei contract is 裏 in a Hong Kong one, and Hong Kong material uses characters from the HKSCS supplementary set for local names and Cantonese words that not every font can display. Modern official forms run horizontally left to right, but books, many Taiwanese newspapers, some certificates and diplomas, and older documents set text in vertical columns read from right to left; text pulled out of a vertical PDF often comes out in scrambled column order, so check that the translation follows the columns in sequence. Quotations use the corner brackets 「」 and 『』 rather than curly quotation marks. Taiwanese documents date by the Republic of China calendar: 民國115年 is 2026, because the count starts at 1912, so a year that is off by 1911 in a translation is a calendar slip rather than a typo. Older files from Taiwan and Hong Kong may still carry Big5-encoded text that turns to garbage when copied, and a translated Word file opened without a Chinese font shows empty boxes until one is installed.

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 Traditional Chinese

Taiwanese civil documents for visas, marriage and inheritance

The document at the centre of most Taiwanese paperwork is the 戶籍謄本, the household registration transcript issued by the local 戶政事務所. Its 記事 remarks column records marriages, divorces, adoptions, name changes and moves in dense official prose, and immigration officers, spouses' lawyers and family members abroad all need to know exactly what it says. Around it sit birth and marriage certificates, the 良民證 police clearance, diplomas and 成績單 transcripts, and notarised statements for spouse visas, citizenship by descent and inheritance. All of them carry 民國 dates. Use the Advanced tier for anything a lawyer or agency will read, and check every converted year against the original.

Hong Kong and Macau paperwork

Many Hong Kong documents are already bilingual, so translation is usually needed for the Chinese-only pieces: tenancy agreements and sale-and-purchase contracts between private parties, employer letters, school circulars, insurance and bank correspondence, court and tribunal papers, company documents and old land records, plus letters and newspaper clippings kept by families who have moved to Canada, the UK or Australia. Macau adds Portuguese to the mix, with official documents often issued in Chinese and Portuguese together. Names are romanised by Cantonese pronunciation in Hong Kong (Chan, Wong, Cheung) and often in Portuguese style in Macau (Leong, Vong), so a translation should keep the spelling on the person's identity card rather than inventing a pinyin form.

Academic papers, theses and Classical texts

Taiwan and Hong Kong publish a large body of scholarship in Traditional characters: journal articles, master's and doctoral theses, conference papers and university documents in history, literature, law, medicine and engineering, much of it never translated. Researchers abroad upload the PDF to read it; Taiwanese and Hong Kong students translate their own transcripts and recommendation letters the other way. Classical and literary Chinese works are printed in Traditional characters too, from the standard histories to Buddhist sutras issued by Taiwanese publishers, and those read better through the Classical Chinese translator than as modern prose.

Classical Chinese translator

Old family documents and overseas Chinese records

Genealogies (族譜), land deeds (地契), letters and ancestral-hall records are written in vertical columns, often without punctuation, in a classical or semi-classical style, and dated by reign era (光緒, 宣統) rather than by year. Taiwanese household registers from the Japanese period (1895 to 1945) are in Japanese, dated by Japanese era names. Overseas, the same script fills the records of clan associations, Chinatown newspapers and immigration case files that contain letters home. Clean print reads well; brush and pen handwriting varies a lot, so treat results on manuscript pages as an aid to deciphering. Family papers from mainland China written after the 1950s are usually in Simplified characters.

Simplified Chinese documents

What to watch for in Traditional Chinese document translation

The first trap is treating Traditional Chinese as Simplified with different glyphs. Simplified-to-Traditional conversion is one-to-many (发 is 發 or 髮, 后 is 后 or 後, 干 is 乾, 幹 or 干), so mechanically converted text carries visible errors like 皇後 for 皇后, and the regional vocabulary has to be right as well. Dates are the second: 民國90年 is 2001, and a translation that copies 90 as a year misdates a birth or a contract. Vertical columns read right to left, and tables set vertically are easy to transpose. Personal names go family name first and are romanised by region, with Taiwanese passports often following Wade-Giles-based spellings (Hsu, Chang, Hsieh), Hong Kong using Cantonese forms (Chan, Cheung, Leung) and Macau Portuguese ones, so a pinyin spelling invented by the translator will not match the passport. Older deeds and letters use classical formulas, from 立契人 (the party executing this deed) to the closing 恐口無憑，立此為據 (lest spoken words be no proof, this document is made as evidence), which need a rendering of the function rather than of the words. Add red seals covering the very characters that matter, HKSCS characters that older fonts drop, and Hong Kong legal terms that differ from Taiwan's, and a translation can be mostly right yet wrong exactly where the document counts, which is what the Advanced tier is for.

Traditional Chinese document translation FAQ

Is this Traditional 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.
Can it read a scanned document or a photo of a page?: Yes. Upload a JPG, PNG or HEIC photo, or a PDF that is really a scan, and the characters are read from the image before translating. Photograph the page flat and in even light. Two things deserve a check afterwards: vertical text, where column order can be misread, and the red seals (印章) that Taiwanese and Hong Kong documents stamp over names, dates and page joins, which hide the characters underneath. Look-alike characters such as 己/已/巳 or 日/曰 can also be confused on low-resolution images. Printed pages generally come through well; handwriting varies with the hand.
How accurate is it? What is the difference between Fast and Advanced?: Fast is for volume and gist: skimming a report, a thesis chapter or a stack of routine letters. Advanced runs a frontier model and is the right choice for contracts, court papers, household registration transcripts and anything in formal written Chinese, where set formulas, classical-flavoured phrasing and regional vocabulary have to be read correctly rather than word by word. It is also the tier to use for old deeds and letters in semi-classical style. Whichever tier you choose, check converted 民國 years and the spelling of names against the source before relying on them.
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 is denser than English, so an English document translated into Chinese usually runs shorter, and vertical layouts are the ones to review most carefully.
Can I use this for a visa, court or university submission?: Not on its own. Immigration authorities such as USCIS, IRCC and the UK Home Office require a certified translation with a signed statement of accuracy, and Taiwanese documents going abroad usually pass through notarisation and authentication as well. Use this to read your documents, work out which pages a filing actually needs, and check the version a certification service sends back, then have only that final version certified.
Which Traditional Chinese do I get, Taiwan or Hong Kong? What about Simplified?: The output is standard written Chinese in Traditional characters, readable in Taipei, Hong Kong and Macau alike. Regional differences are real, though: vocabulary diverges (軟體 in Taiwan and 軟件 in Hong Kong for software, 計程車 and 的士 for taxi), and the two character standards differ on forms like 裡/裏 and 著/着, so for a document aimed at one place have a local reader check the handful of terms that vary. If the document is for mainland China, use the Simplified Chinese page instead; if you need text that reads as spoken Cantonese rather than formal written Chinese, use the Cantonese page. Going into English, upload either script.
What file types can I upload?: PDF, Word (DOCX), PowerPoint (PPTX), Excel (XLSX) and EPUB, plus JPG, PNG and HEIC photos of paper documents. Upload the original file rather than text copied out of it, especially for older Taiwanese and Hong Kong PDFs whose Big5 text layer turns to gibberish on copy. Free and Pro accept up to 20MB and 100,000 extracted characters per file; Scholar accepts up to 50MB and 1,000,000 characters.

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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