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A desktop app that translates books, subtitles, and documents with AI - local or cloud. Drop a file, pick a language, get the result.
Formats: EPUB, SRT, DOCX, PDF, TXT, PGN
- No size limit. Process documents of any length - from a single page to thousand-page novels. The intelligent chunking system handles unlimited content while preserving context between segments.
- Perfect preservation. Your documents come out exactly as they went in: EPUB formatting, styles, and structure remain intact. SRT timecodes stay perfectly synchronized. Every tag, every timestamp, every formatting detail is preserved.
- Resume anytime. Interrupted translation? Pick up exactly where you left off. The checkpoint system saves progress automatically.
- Reusable writing styles. Extract a style preset from sample books (or write one by hand) and apply it to every chunk for a consistent register, rhythm, and imagery across the whole translation.
- Auto glossary & style. No glossary or preset ready? Pick Auto in the dropdown and the app derives both straight from the document being translated - one extra LLM call each before the job starts, nothing saved.
- PDF support. Text PDFs are translated into a new, reflowed PDF: headings, paragraphs, lists and images are kept, ruled tables are rebuilt as tables, and paragraph colours, background boxes and the font family (serif, sans-serif, monospace) are preserved, but the original page layout is not, and bold or colour inside a sentence is not. Scanned PDFs are not supported (no OCR), multi-column layouts are best effort, and the refinement pass is not available for PDF yet.
- Chess annotations (PGN). Only the comments of annotated games are translated; tags, moves, variations, NAGs and embedded commands such as
[%cal] arrows or ChessBase [#] diagrams are kept byte for byte. Moves quoted inside a comment ("after 12.Nf3 ...") must come back unchanged, otherwise that comment is retried and finally left in its original language. Moves keep their English piece letters (Nf3, not Cf3) so every chess program can read them. The output is UTF-8, and the refinement pass is not available for PGN yet.
Translation Quality Benchmarks - Find the best model for your target language.
Quick Start
- Download the release for your platform (buttons above), or grab it from the releases page.
- Extract the archive.
- Run
TranslateBook.exe (Windows) or ./TranslateBook (macOS).
- Open http://localhost:5000 in your browser.
That's it (就这么简单 · これだけ · 이게 다예요). On first launch, you choose a translation provider:
- Free & local - Install Ollama and pull a model (e.g.
ollama pull qwen3:14b). Nothing leaves your machine.
- Cloud (often free tier available) - Paste an API key from one of the providers below.
Note: First run creates a TranslateBook_Data folder with your settings.
macOS: On first launch, go to System Settings > Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.
Providers
See docs/PROVIDERS.md for detailed setup instructions.
Troubleshooting
| Problem | Solution |
|---|
| Ollama won't connect | Check Ollama is running, test curl http://localhost:11434/api/tags |
| Model not found | Run ollama list, then ollama pull model-name |
See docs/TROUBLESHOOTING.md for more solutions.
Advanced
Prerequisites: Python 3.8+, Ollama, Git
git clone https://github.com/hydropix/TranslateBooksWithLLMs.git
cd TranslateBookWithLLM
ollama pull qwen3:14b # Download a model
# Windows
start.bat
# Mac/Linux
chmod +x start.sh && ./start.sh
The web interface opens at http://localhost:5000.
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
