Erlendur has so far been a text-translation tool, where you type, dictate or paste in text, pick a target language, and get the translation side by side. It now translates whole documents in the same view: drop a Word, PowerPoint or OpenDocument file into Erlendur and download a translated copy with the document's structure preserved.

Translating a document

Drag a file into the Erlendur editor — or click the upload button below — and Erlendur switches into document mode, with support for the following formats:

• .docx — Word

• .odt — OpenDocument Text (LibreOffice / OpenOffice Writer)

• .pptx — PowerPoint

• .odp — OpenDocument Presentation (LibreOffice / OpenOffice Impress)

Once the file is read, Erlendur shows the character count and an estimated cost for the chosen target language. Glossaries work in document mode too, so any glossary you've enabled is applied automatically to both documents and regular text.

Press Þýða skjal to start; a progress bar will track the job. You can close the tab and come back later, since the job keeps running on the server. When the translation is done, the Sækja þýðingu button gives you the file — the target language code is appended to the filename, so report.docx becomes report-en.docx. Download links are valid for one hour.

How to translate Word documents with Málstaður

Færa í ritil

The input side of the interface has a Færa í ritil button (Word documents only) that copies the document's text into Erlendur's text editor. Use this if you'd rather translate the text inline, or edit it before translating. Most of the document's formatting will be lost in the process, since the editor can't represent everything that can appear in a document.

Á döfinni

Going forward, we're aiming to broaden document support across Málstaður, including:

• Document proofreading in Málfríður: upload a document to Málfríður and get a proofread copy back, with corrections and annotations applied.

• OCR for PDFs: extract text from scanned PDFs so they can be translated, proofread, or used with any other Málstaður tool.

• Tighter Google Drive integration: pick documents straight from Google Drive and save results back there.