Translate a French PDF to English and keep the layout

A quote from a French supplier, a lease, a school report: the words need to be in English, but the page should still look like the original. Retyping it in Word loses the layout, and pasting paragraphs into a translator one at a time loses an afternoon. The Translate PDF tool writes the English back into the page itself, paragraph by paragraph, and shows you a draft before your document changes.

Below is a real recording: an invented French quote from a made-up design studio, translated into English in the editor. Only the wait for the AI is shortened.

What stays the same

• The fonts. Each paragraph is written in the font the PDF already uses, where that font has the letters. In the recording, the serif heading and the body text stay in their own typefaces.
• The place of each paragraph. A paragraph is reflowed inside its own space, so the letterhead, the heading, the table and the signature block stay where they were.
• The numbers. A paragraph whose numbers or amounts would change is not written. In the recording, 1 320,00 € is still 1 320,00 € in the English quote, and the quote number 2026-118 is untouched.

One thing to look at closely: words with w, k or y. French uses those letters rarely, and many PDFs carry only the letters their text uses. When the document's font lacks one, that letter comes from a close font instead, so check those words on the page.

What French to English changes

English usually needs fewer words than French, so most paragraphs fit their space with room to spare. That is the easier direction. What to watch is not the fit, it is the conventions.

• Number formats stay French. The space as thousands separator and the decimal comma are kept, because the amounts are not touched. Dates written in words are translated: "Lyon, le 14 octobre 2026" became "Lyon, October 14, 2026" in the recording. A date in digits such as 03/04/2026 still means 3 April, so tell your reader or change it by hand.
• Letter formulas. "Madame, Monsieur" became "Dear Madam, Dear Sir," in the recording. Many English letters would say "Dear Sir or Madam". Change it in the draft if your reader would notice.
• Business terms. "Devis" can be a quote or a quotation, and "HT" (hors taxes) means excluding VAT. The recording gave "Quote no." and "Amount excl. VAT". If your company always says quotation, put it in the glossary.

The glossary takes one term per line, French first:

devis = quotation
HT = excl. VAT
TTC = incl. VAT

Those terms are sent with the text, and the translation uses them wherever they occur.

How to translate a French PDF into English

1. Open the PDF

Open the French PDF on the Translate PDF page. It opens in the editor with the AI panel on Translate. If you are asked to sign in, a free account with a confirmed email address is enough.

2. Choose the pages and English

Choose the pages and English as the language, add any glossary terms, then choose Translate and agree to send the text. Before anything is sent, the panel says how many paragraphs it found and about how many credits the translation takes.

3. Review the draft

Read the draft before anything changes. Correct any line, then choose Apply to document. The panel counts the paragraphs it wrote and the ones it left as they were: in the recording, 15 written and 5 left. A paragraph that would not fit even at 70% of its size is left in French and marked, so you can shorten it yourself.

4. Check the page and download

Look over the page, open the Reading view if you want the text as flowing paragraphs, and download the PDF. The whole translation is one step in the history, so Undo brings the French back in one go.

What is sent, and what is not

Nothing is sent until you agree. Then only the text of the chosen pages goes, through GenPDF's server, to Anthropic, which runs the AI model. The PDF file, its pictures and its name are not sent, and GenPDF keeps neither the text nor the translation. Writing the English into the page and saving the PDF happen in your browser. For a confidential document, read the security page first.

When the page is a scan

A scanned page is a picture of words, so there is no text to replace. The translation leaves it as it is. If you only need the French text in a form you can copy, OCR or editing a scan explains the difference.

Check it yourself

• Compare every amount and date with the French original, line by line.
• Read the English draft aloud once: an odd sentence is easier to hear than to see.
• Search the saved PDF for an English word you expect, to confirm the text is real text and not a picture.
• Open the saved copy in a second PDF reader to see that the fonts look the same there.

Limits

• It is a machine translation to review, not a certified one.
• A scanned page is not translated in place.
• A paragraph that does not fit at 70% of its size stays in French and is marked.
• The translation goes into English, French, Arabic, German, Spanish or Portuguese.

To translate only part of a long report, see translating selected PDF pages. To change a word yourself afterwards in the same font, see editing PDF text in the same font.

Recorded on 27 October 2026 with GenPDF on an invented quote; the company and the names in it are made up. Written with AI assistance.