Please help! - Trados 2022 - Can't get any type of OCR to work with PDFs. No options showing up Thread poster: Christopher Tabisz
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Hi, I have recently purchased Trados 2022 and cannot get any OCR to work on pdfs other than the new PDF assistant plugin which is pretty terrible.
It says IRIS is supported for this version but after multiple installs and uninstalls I cannot even see the "Use IRIS technology for optical character recognition" in my PDF File type converter options. In fact, there are no options at all in this window.
Has anyone managed to get Iris working in Trados 2022? It was one of my... See more Hi, I have recently purchased Trados 2022 and cannot get any OCR to work on pdfs other than the new PDF assistant plugin which is pretty terrible.
It says IRIS is supported for this version but after multiple installs and uninstalls I cannot even see the "Use IRIS technology for optical character recognition" in my PDF File type converter options. In fact, there are no options at all in this window.
Has anyone managed to get Iris working in Trados 2022? It was one of my main reasons for splashing out and buying it and now I can't even convert a simple gas bill into an editable file.
Any tips would be greatly appreciated.
Kinds regards,
Chris ▲ Collapse
| | | | Stepan Konev 
Russian Federation
Local time: 15:21
English to Russian
| Trados for translation, FineReader for OCR | Jun 11, 2023 |
Christopher Tabisz wrote:
It was one of my main reasons for splashing out and buying it and now I can't even convert a simple gas bill into an editable file. I think you mistake a CAT tool for an OCR tool. You don't need Trados for that. Trados is not designed for OCR. It is a translation tool in the first place. What you really need is called FineReader. Trados 2022 (CU6+) does not support bitmap/scanned pdf files. It only works with vector-based pdf files.
| | | | | Adobe Export PDF? | Jun 11, 2023 |
I don't have any help to offer for Trados, but I wanted to mention that I have a subscription for "Adobe Acrobat Export PDF", it costs USD 23.88/year and so far it worked very well for me to convert PDFs into Word and Excel that I can then process with a CAT-tool.
I am not sure whether Adobe offers a trial period for Export PDF. I know they have a 7-days free trial for Acrobat Pro, but that has more functionality and much more expensive tha... See more I don't have any help to offer for Trados, but I wanted to mention that I have a subscription for "Adobe Acrobat Export PDF", it costs USD 23.88/year and so far it worked very well for me to convert PDFs into Word and Excel that I can then process with a CAT-tool.
I am not sure whether Adobe offers a trial period for Export PDF. I know they have a 7-days free trial for Acrobat Pro, but that has more functionality and much more expensive than Export PDF.
See here:
https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/export-pdf-online-pricing.html ▲ Collapse
| | | | | I have now found the press release which announces Trados is dropping OCR support for PDFS | Jun 11, 2023 |
I am aware that Trados is not an OCR tool however for a very long time it simply functioned fantastically as such. It performed as well as Abby Reader and much better than Word. However, Trados have decided to drop support for a very useful feature that used to be part of their software suite and also made it extremely hard to find this announcement. I first had to try installing the Iris plugin multiple times to figure out it no longer works since April (even though it says it will in the relea... See more I am aware that Trados is not an OCR tool however for a very long time it simply functioned fantastically as such. It performed as well as Abby Reader and much better than Word. However, Trados have decided to drop support for a very useful feature that used to be part of their software suite and also made it extremely hard to find this announcement. I first had to try installing the Iris plugin multiple times to figure out it no longer works since April (even though it says it will in the release notes). The PDF assistant add-on is nice to have but its performance leaves much to be desired.
Trados has to be one of the worst pieces of software I have ever purchased. Extremely overpriced. Outdated interface and ugly UI. No basic customer support included. Constant crashes and terrible performance even on a watercooled pc with a high-end processor. Still amazes me that you can subscribe to the entire Adobe Creative Suite for less...
Is Abbyreader generally regarded as the industry standard for converting poorly scanned PDFs to editable text? Is there any other software that people would recommend?
Many thanks,
Chris
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Stepan Konev
Russian Federation
Local time: 15:21
English to Russian
| RWS Community for free basic support | Jun 11, 2023 |
Christopher Tabisz wrote:
Trados has to be one of the worst pieces of software I have ever purchased. Extremely overpriced. Outdated interface and ugly UI. No basic customer support included. Constant crashes and terrible performance Well... I don't know what to say. I see it in a different way. I don't need a beautiful UI actually. Functionality is what I need in the first place. Basic support is always available for free at RWS Community And I don't experience constant crashes. However your experience may be different indeed.
You can try and test Trados features for 30 days to understand if it fits your purposes before you buy it.
Did the PDF recognition feature work when you used the trial version of Trados 2022?
***
It was year 2013 when SDL admitted that the Trados Studio OCR feature was just a workaround/a last resort rather than a solution. They implemented it as a bonus, not as a core feature. Now that they removed their bonus, you blame Trados to be the worst software you have ever purchased.
On the other hand, Kilgray never bothered themselves to explain why memoQ never supported the scanned pdf files. Take it or leave they said: memoQ doesn't extract text from scanned PDF files, where the pages are saved as images and not as text. To translate these documents, run them through a page reader program such as Nuance OmniPage or ABBYY FineReader (PDF Reader).
And that was ok, users accepted that because they didn't have any choice.
[Edited at 2023-06-12 00:06 GMT]
| | | | Roy Oestensen
Denmark
Local time: 14:21
Member (2010)
English to Norwegian (Bokmal)
+ ...
| Abbyy Finereader is probably the best OCR tool there is, but Omnipage has been around much longer | Jun 12, 2023 |
Christopher Tabisz wrote:
I am aware that Trados is not an OCR tool however for a very long time it simply functioned fantastically as such. It performed as well as Abby Reader and much better than Word. However, Trados have decided to drop support for a very useful feature that used to be part of their software suite and also made it extremely hard to find this announcement. I first had to try installing the Iris plugin multiple times to figure out it no longer works since April (even though it says it will in the release notes). The PDF assistant add-on is nice to have but its performance leaves much to be desired.
I have never trusted automatic OCR tools, and therefore, not the OCR tool some CAT tools have incorporated. The reason is that they usually cannot deal very well with scanned images. In that case a manual setup of the different areas work much better in my experience. For that reason I prefer either Abby Finereader or Nuance Omnipage. Omnipage is much older than Finereader, but I prefer the UI in Finereader over Omnipage, and in the past it's been more affordable too. As it seems to be on a subscription basis while Omnipage has a one off price, I am no longer certain which is the most inexpensive any longer.
So if you work a lot with PDFs I would advice investing in either of these apps.
[quote]Trados has to be one of the worst pieces of software I have ever purchased. Extremely overpriced. Outdated interface and ugly UI. No basic customer support included. Constant crashes and terrible performance even on a watercooled pc with a high-end processor. Still amazes me that you can subscribe to the entire Adobe Creative Suite for less...[quote]
I cannot say I recognise your situation. It seems to me that Studio is as stable as other CAT tools. I suspect there must be some incompatibilities on your PC, I don't know. Regarding user interface, have you compared it with other CAT tools and found them to have a better UI? Comparing the UI in a CAT tool with for instance Word or Excel or some other non-CAT tool UI would be like comparing apples with bananas. Most CAT tools have basically the same UI, though memoQ and Phrase feel more user-friendly than Trados Studio. Though my favourite tool is Deja Vu, although it regrettably doesn't seem to be delevoped any longer so it is beginning to lag behind other CAT tools.
Roy
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