Read a document in another language

A reader who doesn’t read the language your document is written in can read its text in theirs — without you producing a translated edition, and without them installing anything.

It’s off by default and you turn it on per document, so nothing is translated unless you choose it. Available on every paid plan.

Turning it on

Open the document, go to Access, and switch Readable in other languages on. The switch sits next to the password and email-gate controls, and it says Original language only while it’s off.

What a reader gets

The reader offers their own language when it differs from the document’s. Choosing it translates the text layer — the words we extracted from your file — and shows that instead.

The pages themselves don’t change. Your design, typography, photographs and any text baked into an image stay exactly as you made them. This translates what can be read as text, not the artwork.

Fifteen languages are available: English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, Korean and Chinese (Simplified). Arabic reads right-to-left.

Three reasons the switch won’t turn on

The document’s page tells you which one applies, because each needs a different fix.

“Available on paid plans”

Translation isn’t on Free. Any paid plan includes it — see Plans and pricing.

“Up to 500 pages — this one has …”

There’s a 500-page ceiling. A document longer than that can’t be translated; split it into parts if you need to.

“We could not detect this document’s language”

This is the common one, and it has a specific cause.

We work out a document’s language while we convert it, by reading the first few pages of text. A document converted before 25 October 2026 was never asked the question, so it has no language recorded — and without knowing what to translate from, we can’t offer anything.

The fix is to re-upload it, or use Replace PDF on the document you already have. Either runs the file through conversion again, which records the language. Replace keeps the document’s existing share link, embed code and analytics, so it’s usually the one you want — see Scheduling and replacing.

Two other things produce the same message, and re-uploading won’t help with either:

• A document with very little text. Scanned pages, or a design-led piece whose words are all part of the artwork, give us too few words to read. A few dozen words across the opening pages is roughly the minimum.
• A language we don’t translate. If the document isn’t in one of the fifteen above, there’s nothing to offer.

What it costs you

Nothing. It’s included in your plan, and readers don’t pay either.

Next

What readers can do — everything else in the reader.