Translate text in PDF files with Mate's Chrome extension

You can translate selected text in a PDF opened in Chrome. Because of how Chrome's PDF viewer works, only the context menu route is available.

1. Open the PDF in Chrome and select the text you want to translate.
2. Right-click the selection.
3. Choose the Mate item, for example English into German. You get one item per language pair you use.
4. The translation opens in a small Mate window. You can listen to it, copy it, or save it to the Phrasebook from there.

The floating Mate button, Shift+T and double-click translation don't work in PDFs. Chrome doesn't let extensions run inside its PDF viewer, so the context menu is the only hook we have.

Other browsers

Firefox, Edge and Opera don't expose their PDF viewers to extensions at all, so Mate can't translate selected text in PDFs there. Use Mate for Mac or Mate for iPhone and iPad instead.

Translating a whole PDF

Mate translates the text you select, not the whole document. For a full translation, copy the text into Mate's popup (click the Mate icon in the toolbar) in chunks, or use Mate for Mac, which handles long texts comfortably.