How To "Make" A Gen 1 Workshop Manual In English

[Geralt]

FYI this is how I converted a Russian Gen 1 workshop manual into English. I’m not saying it’s perfect so feel free to constructively criticise.

Here's the Russian manual courtesy of @dugii.

Below is what to expect in the end result. On the left is the Russian original. On the right is an English, searchable PDF but with watermarks in the corners of every page from the free version of the PDF tools. If you can’t tolerate the watermarks they can be removed by purchasing the PDF tools for £70.

 

The first of two stages is optical character recognition (OCR).

 

• Install PDF X-Change Editor: https://www.pdf-xchange.com/product/pdf-xchange-editor
• Open the Russian workshop manual.
• On the 'Convert' tab, click 'OCR Page(s)'.
• Click 'Add/Update Languages...'.
• Click 'Russian' then 'Proceed'.
• It should be the default but make sure to select ‘Editable Text and Images’ as shown below. The other settings are optional. You might have to experiment with the accuracy if you find any problems.

• Select 'All' pages then 'OK' to process the whole document.
• Do something else for about half an hour depending on what’s under the bonnet of your PC/laptop.
• After completion, click 'Save' at which point the watermarks will be applied.

 

The second stage is translation. Google Translate document size limit is 10Mb so you need to split the PDF into four docs:

 

• On the ‘Organize’ tab, click ‘Split' -> 'Split Document' and set the splitting method as 'By size less than: 10Mb'.
• Upload each partial document to Google Translate and translate to any language. Each one takes about 5mins. https://translate.google.com/?sl=ru&tl=en&op=docs
• Download the translated documents when complete.
• Open all four documents and click the first document to make it active.
• On the ‘Organize’ tab, click ‘Insert' -> 'Insert Pages'.
• Click the down arrow in the File field to select the second document then 'OK'
• Repeat for documents three and four.
• Save the re-combined document.

 

Some of the pages, especially wiring diagrams, may be screwed up. For example:

 

In this case:

• Click the 'Home' tab -> 'Edit Text', click on the incorrect text and hit delete.
• Save the document.

Edited December 20, 2023 by Geralt