/BabelDOC

Yet Another Document Translator

Primary LanguagePythonGNU Affero General Public License v3.0AGPL-3.0

YADT

BabelDOC

PDF scientific paper translation and bilingual comparison library.

  • Provides a simple command line interface.
  • Provides a Python API.
  • Mainly designed to be embedded into other programs, but can also be used directly for simple translation tasks.

Preview

Getting Started

Install from PyPI

We recommend using the Tool feature of uv to install yadt.

  1. First, you need to refer to uv installation to install uv and set up the PATH environment variable as prompted.

  2. Use the following command to install yadt:

uv tool install --python 3.12 BabelDOC

babeldoc --help
  1. Use the babeldoc command. For example:
babeldoc --bing  --files example.pdf

# multiple files
babeldoc --bing  --files example1.pdf --files example2.pdf

Install from Source

We still recommend using uv to manage virtual environments.

  1. First, you need to refer to uv installation to install uv and set up the PATH environment variable as prompted.

  2. Use the following command to install yadt:

# clone the project
git clone https://github.com/funstory-ai/BabelDOC

# enter the project directory
cd BabelDOC

# install dependencies and run babeldoc
uv run babeldoc --help
  1. Use the uv run babeldoc command. For example:
uv run babeldoc --bing --files example.pdf

# multiple files
uv run babeldoc --bing --files example.pdf --files example2.pdf

Tip

The absolute path is recommended.

Advanced Options

Language Options

  • --lang-in, -li: Source language code (default: en)
  • --lang-out, -lo: Target language code (default: zh)

Tip

Currently, this project mainly focuses on English-to-Chinese translation, and other scenarios have not been tested yet.

PDF Processing Options

  • --files: One or more file paths to input PDF documents.
  • --pages, -p: Specify pages to translate (e.g., "1,2,1-,-3,3-5"). If not set, translate all pages
  • --split-short-lines: Force split short lines into different paragraphs (may cause poor typesetting & bugs)
  • --short-line-split-factor: Split threshold factor (default: 0.8). The actual threshold is the median length of all lines on the current page * this factor
  • --skip-clean: Skip PDF cleaning step
  • --dual-translate-first: Put translated pages first in dual PDF mode (default: original pages first)
  • --disable-rich-text-translate: Disable rich text translation (may help improve compatibility with some PDFs)
  • --enhance-compatibility: Enable all compatibility enhancement options (equivalent to --skip-clean --dual-translate-first --disable-rich-text-translate)

Tip

  • Both --skip-clean and --dual-translate-first may help improve compatibility with some PDF readers
  • --disable-rich-text-translate can also help with compatibility by simplifying translation input
  • However, using --skip-clean will result in larger file sizes
  • If you encounter any compatibility issues, try using --enhance-compatibility first

Translation Service Options

  • --qps: QPS (Queries Per Second) limit for translation service (default: 4)
  • --ignore-cache: Ignore translation cache and force retranslation
  • --no-dual: Do not output bilingual PDF files
  • --no-mono: Do not output monolingual PDF files
  • --openai: Use OpenAI for translation (default: False)
  • --bing: Use Bing for translation (default: False)
  • --google: Use Google Translate for translation (default: False)

Tip

  1. You must specify one translation service among --openai, --bing, --google.
  2. It is recommended to use models with strong compatibility with OpenAI, such as: glm-4-flash, deepseek-chat, etc.
  3. Currently, it has not been optimized for traditional translation engines like Bing/Google, it is recommended to use LLMs.

OpenAI Specific Options

  • --openai-model: OpenAI model to use (default: gpt-4o-mini)
  • --openai-base-url: Base URL for OpenAI API
  • --openai-api-key: API key for OpenAI service

Tip

  1. This tool supports any OpenAI-compatible API endpoints. Just set the correct base URL and API key. (e.g. https://xxx.custom.xxx/v1)
  2. For local models like Ollama, you can use any value as the API key (e.g. --openai-api-key a).

Output Control

  • --output, -o: Output directory for translated files. If not set, use current working directory.
  • --debug, -d: Enable debug logging level and export detailed intermediate results in ~/.cache/yadt/working.

Configuration File

  • --config, -c: Configuration file path. Use the TOML format.

Example Configuration:

[babeldoc]
debug = true
lang-in = "en-US"
lang-out = "zh-CN"
qps = 20
# this is a comment
# pages = 4
openai = true
openai-model = "SOME_ALSOME_MODEL"
openai-base-url = "https://example.example/v1"
openai-api-key = "[KEY]"
# All other options can also be set in the configuration file.

Python API

You can refer to the example in main.py to use BabelDOC's Python API.

Please note:

  1. Make sure call babeldoc.high_level.init() before using the API

  2. The current TranslationConfig does not fully validate input parameters, so you need to ensure the validity of input parameters

Background

There are a lot projects and teams working on to make document editing and translating easier like:

There are also some solutions to solve specific parts of the problem like:

  • layoutreader: the read order of the text block in a pdf
  • Surya: the structure of the pdf

This project hopes to promote a standard pipeline and interface to solve the problem.

In fact, there are two main stages of a PDF parser or translator:

  • Parsing: A stage of parsing means to get the structure of the pdf such as text blocks, images, tables, etc.
  • Rendering: A stage of rendering means to render the structure into a new pdf or other format.

For a service like mathpix, it will parse the pdf into a structure may be in a XML format, and then render them using a single column reader order as layoutreader does. The bad news is that the original structure lost.

Some people will use Adobe PDF Parser because it will generate a Word document and it keeps the original structure. But it is somewhat expensive. And you know, a pdf or word document is not a good format for reading in mobile devices.

We offer an intermediate representation of the results from parser and can be rendered into a new pdf or other format. The pipeline is also a plugin-based system which everybody can add their new model, ocr, renderer, etc.

Roadmap

  • Add line support
  • Add table support
  • Add cross-page/cross-column paragraph support
  • More advanced typesetting features
  • Outline support
  • ...

Our first 1.0 version goal is to finish a translation from PDF Reference, Version 1.7 to the following language version:

  • Simplified Chinese
  • Traditional Chinese
  • Japanese
  • Spanish

And meet the following requirements:

  • layout error less than 1%
  • content loss less than 1%

Known Issues

  1. Parsing errors in the author and reference sections; they get merged into one paragraph after translation.
  2. Lines are not supported.
  3. Does not support drop caps.

How to Contribute

We encourage you to contribute to YADT! Please check out the CONTRIBUTING guide.

Everyone interacting in YADT and its sub-projects' codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms, and mailing lists is expected to follow the YADT Code of Conduct.

Acknowledgements

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