Preserving ebook formatting while translating the text?

TheMeta · 05-12-2021, 10:24 PM

Greetings! I apologize if this has been answered before but I didn't see anything like this so here I go! I recently acquired some foreign language ebooks that with the help of the program DeepL I have been translating into English. My current method is to use Calibre to convert the ebook (html and mobi) into word docs which I then run through DeepL to get the English translated text. This method has been amazingly effective but the only issue I've run into is trying to preserve or restore the ebook formatting into the translated work. I know how to run the translated Word Docs through Calibre to get a mobi or epub file, but the usual ebook features like table of contents and footnotes don't transfer over. Is there anyway to fix this issue? Thank you!

kovidgoyal · 05-13-2021, 12:11 AM

No not relly, the DOCX format doesnt really support a ToC/footnotes in the same way as ebook formats do, so those get lost in round tripping. I suggest you instead open the epub file in the calibre edit book tool directly an dcopy past the HTML from it into your translation service (am fairly sure it will translate html files if it can translate word documents) and then copy/paste it back.

05-12-2021, 10:24 PM	#1
TheMeta Junior Member Posts: 1 Karma: 10 Join Date: May 2021 Device: samsung galaxy 8	Preserving ebook formatting while translating the text? Greetings! I apologize if this has been answered before but I didn't see anything like this so here I go! I recently acquired some foreign language ebooks that with the help of the program DeepL I have been translating into English. My current method is to use Calibre to convert the ebook (html and mobi) into word docs which I then run through DeepL to get the English translated text. This method has been amazingly effective but the only issue I've run into is trying to preserve or restore the ebook formatting into the translated work. I know how to run the translated Word Docs through Calibre to get a mobi or epub file, but the usual ebook features like table of contents and footnotes don't transfer over. Is there anyway to fix this issue? Thank you!

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05-13-2021, 12:11 AM	#2
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 45,356 Karma: 27182818 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	No not relly, the DOCX format doesnt really support a ToC/footnotes in the same way as ebook formats do, so those get lost in round tripping. I suggest you instead open the epub file in the calibre edit book tool directly an dcopy past the HTML from it into your translation service (am fairly sure it will translate html files if it can translate word documents) and then copy/paste it back.

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