RetainPDF Guide: Layout-Preserving PDF Translation for Scientific Documents
Meet RetainPDF — the open-source MIT translator that keeps your PDF layout, formulas, tables, and code intact. Built for scientific and technical documents, including scanned PDFs.
🚀 Want to deploy RetainPDF yourself?
Docker configs, system requirements, and installation guides — all on one page.
View RetainPDF Tool Page →Translating a scientific PDF usually means losing the layout: formulas break, tables collapse, code gets mangled, and scanned pages come out as unusable text. RetainPDF is an open-source (MIT) tool built to solve exactly that — it translates PDFs while preserving the original typesetting, inline formulas, tables, and structure.
Why RetainPDF stands out
Most layout-preserving translators target copyable, editable PDFs with simple inline math. RetainPDF was designed from day one for the hard cases: scanned/image-based PDFs, complex inline formulas, and documents that mix code with prose.
| Capability | RetainPDF |
|---|---|
| Scanned / image PDFs | ✅ OCR built-in |
| Complex inline formulas | ✅ Correct rendering |
| Code untouched | ✅ No code mistranslation |
| Table control | ✅ Switchable rules |
| Custom translation strategies | ✅ Rule-configurable |
| PDF size optimization | ✅ Continuously improved |
Here is what a translated SCI paper looks like — the layout survives the translation:
Architecture that scales
RetainPDF is a full-stack, decoupled project: OCR, translation, typesetting, and delivery are separate modules. That means you can run it as a desktop app (Windows, macOS, Linux), deploy it with Docker for your team or LAN, or drive it through its API for fully automated pipelines.
🚀 Want to deploy RetainPDF yourself?
Docker configs, system requirements, and installation guides — all on one page.
View RetainPDF Tool Page →