Version 2.0.7 • Open-Source Local-First Engine

Translate scientific papers with absolute geometric fidelity. Without ever breaking an equation, a column, or a figure.

RockTranslate deconstructs academic PDFs (Elsevier, Springer, Nature, arXiv) with pixel-level precision through a spatial DOM matrix, reinjecting translations without altering the original typography or layout. Operates 100% offline via local models (Ollama) or with your favorite cloud AI engines.

100% Local & Offline (Ollama)
Zero Geometric Drift (Matrix DOM)
Born from Academic Research (MIT)
Gemini 3.8 Flash, GPT-5.6 Terra & Claude 5 Sonnet
workspace://paper_workspace.html
Structural Fidelity: 99.8%
42 Pages Processed
18 / 18 Tables Aligned
62 Equations Intact
0.00% Overlap

Bridging the global academic inequality gap in scientific research.

The vast majority of high-impact research publications are published exclusively in English. For doctoral researchers, professors, and universities in developing countries — particularly across Sub-Saharan Africa and Cameroon — accessing, translating, and assimilating complex academic literature represents an immense hurdle.

Traditional automated translation workflows often struggle to maintain intricate multi-column layouts, displacing mathematical formulas, table boundaries, and figure alignments.

"Access to scientific knowledge should be universal and seamless. Researchers everywhere deserve tools that preserve the exact layout, equations, and typography of peer-reviewed literature without compromising formatting or accessibility. RockTranslate was built by students to empower global education without borders."

— Winter Tony (PerfectWin), Creator of RockTranslate
Standard Document Translators

Layout Disruption Challenges

  • Text expansion can cause unintentional overlap across figures and captions.
  • Mathematical formulas and LaTeX matrices frequently lose their structural alignment.
  • Usage quotas and recurring fees can constrain underfunded academic departments.
  • Cloud-only pipelines may not suit sensitive or pre-publication research data.
The RockTranslate Paradigm

Absolute Vectorial Fidelity

  • Spatial DOM matrix decomposition: precise preservation of columns and margins.
  • Intelligent isolation of equations, indices, tables, and vector curves.
  • 100% Free, open source (MIT license) with no page or volume caps.
  • 100% Offline execution via Ollama: your research never leaves your machine.

Real Demonstrations: Before & After

Compare original English scientific publications with their reinjected translations. Inspect the precise alignment of double columns, captions, tables, and typography.

English to French — Elsevier Earth-Sciences Multi-Column

Full stratigraphic diagram retention, precise geological nomenclature, and auto-scaled double columns without paragraph overlapping.

English → French Elsevier Double-Column +22% Word Expansion Managed
Scientific paper translated from English to French with its two-column layout kept
Click to inspect in high-resolution zoom

Adopted by Researchers & Universities Worldwide

Discover how doctoral candidates, professors, and laboratory researchers leverage RockTranslate daily for their critical literature reviews.

★★★★★

In Cameroon, our graduate students used to waste countless hours rewriting entire papers by hand because online translators ruined stratigraphic cross-sections and geological tables. RockTranslate translated 42 pages of an Elsevier sedimentary formation study without shifting a single margin. An invaluable asset for our faculty.

📄 Elsevier Journal of African Earth Sciences
Dr. Jean-Pierre Mvondo
Dr. Jean-Pierre Mvondo
Senior Lecturer in Structural Geology University of Yaoundé I 🇨🇲
★★★★★

Translating deep learning papers into Japanese is notoriously difficult due to vertical expansion and double-byte CJK glyph rendering. RockTranslate's proportional scaling algorithm rendered the equations in 'Attention Is All You Need' and vector figures with absolute perfection.

📄 arXiv:1706.03762 ("Attention Is All You Need")
Dr. Yuki Tanaka
Dr. Yuki Tanaka
Senior NLP Research Scientist RIKEN Center for AI Project, Tokyo 🇯🇵
★★★★★

In molecular pharmacology, shifting a single cell in a dosage table can invalidate an entire experimental trial. Every commercial tool broke our multi-column tables. With RockTranslate, Springer Nature studies are translated into Spanish while strictly honoring the original typographic grid.

📄 Springer Nature Therapeutics
Dr. Sofía Valenzuela
Dr. Sofía Valenzuela
Postdoctoral Fellow in Biomedicine IBYME / CONICET, Buenos Aires 🇦🇷
★★★★★

German translations typically expand text length by 25 to 30%. On dense Elsevier papers in materials physics, this invariably leads to catastrophic text overlaps. RockTranslate's dynamic micro-kerning and bounding box optimization solves this with surgical precision.

📄 Physical Review Letters & Elsevier Mechanics
Prof. Dr. Heinrich Becker
Prof. Dr. Heinrich Becker
Professor of Computational Physics Technical University of Munich (TUM) 🇩🇪
★★★★★

In university hospital environments in Nigeria, internet connectivity can be intermittent and research budgets cannot afford $30 per month per user. Being able to run RockTranslate completely offline with Ollama on our laptops without an external connection has transformed our clinical reviews.

📄 The Lancet Global Health Reports
Dr. Amara Okafor
Dr. Amara Okafor
Head of Epidemiological Research University of Nigeria, Nsukka 🇳🇬
★★★★★

I integrated the RockTranslate Python API into our automated arXiv preprint ingestion pipeline. It batch-processes papers, computes SHA-256 hashes to cache previously analyzed pages, and generates vector-printable PDFs with flawless clarity. Outstanding engineering.

📄 IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis (PAMI)
Dr. Elena Rostova
Dr. Elena Rostova
Postdoctoral Researcher in Computer Vision Mila & McGill University 🇨🇦

Engineered for Complex Scientific Layouts

A hybrid architecture combining matrix vector decomposition, dynamic typographic adaptation, and a universal AI inference gateway.

Spatial Vectorial DOM Matrix Decomposition

Unlike traditional text extractors that flatten multi-column documents into continuous unformatted streams, RockTranslate harnesses pdf2htmlEX's geometric engine. Every text segment, equation, and figure is mapped with its exact Cartesian matrix coordinates matrix(a, b, c, d, tx, ty).

<div class="t m0 x15 y48 ff1 fs2 fc0 sc0 ws0" style="transform: matrix(1, 0, 0, 1, 142.3, 89.1);">...</div>

100% Offline & Private (Ollama)

Your unpublished thesis manuscripts, pending patent applications, and confidential lab findings never leave your local workstation. Run Llama 4, Mistral, or Qwen directly on your local CPU or GPU.

Dynamic Typographic Kerning & Scaling

When a translated paragraph expands by +25%, RockTranslate dynamically recalibrates horizontal aspect ratios, font sizing, and tracking to ensure no word ever spills over neighboring borders or charts.

Universal AI Model Inference Gateway

Choose your engine based on cost and reasoning requirements: Google Gemini 3.8 Flash / Pro, OpenAI GPT-5.6 Terra, Anthropic Claude 5 Sonnet / Haiku 5, DeepSeek-V4, or any OpenAI-compatible server. Easily switchable with 2 clicks.

SUPPORTED_PROVIDERS = ['gemini', 'anthropic', 'openai', 'deepseek', 'ollama', 'custom_endpoint']

Read the original. Get help on the line you are reading.

Select four lines that resist you: their translation or a plain explanation streams into a bubble in about two seconds. Hover a citation or a figure to see it without losing your place. Ask the paper a question and land on the exact passage.

A selection translated in a bubble next to the paper
Select, translate, explain. First words in about a second; one click switches to a plain explanation, or what every symbol of a formula means.
Preview of a reference when hovering a citation
Hover a citation. [7], Figure 3, Table 2, Eq. (5): the target appears in place, with its DOI and “open & translate” for arXiv papers.
A question answered with the exact table cells highlighted
Ask the paper. The answer comes with verbatim quotes and their page; a click highlights the exact cells or sentence.
Contents panel with a section summary
Contents and summaries. Bookmarks, or headings detected when the PDF has none; ∑ summarizes a section in your language.
  • Clean copy without line breaks nor hyphens, or with its citation and DOI
  • Snapshot of an area or a page, original or translated, to the clipboard
  • Bilingual search in the original and its translation
  • Paper glossary: one translation per term, applied to the whole document
  • Notes and highlights, exported as Markdown
  • Continuous translation of the pages you read
  • Night reading that keeps figures intact, resume where you stopped
  • Tabs, command palette Ctrl+K, open with a double-click
  • Side-by-side PDF: original page | translated page, for print and study
CLI rocktranslate ask paper.pdf "Which dataset is used?" -l French
Python rocktranslate.translate("paper.pdf", "French", glossary=rocktranslate.glossary("paper.pdf", "French"), side_by_side="bilingual.pdf")

Your PDF, as data you can use

RockTranslate reads the page the way a person does: title, numbered sections, paragraphs, tables cell by cell, captions, formulas, footnotes. Every element keeps its page and its position in PDF points, and can carry its translation. Extraction runs on your machine, without an API key.

A 45-row table, rebuilt cell by cell

A table from an open-access scientific paper (geology). Every value lands in its column.

CLI rocktranslate extract paper.pdf -p 11 -f md,json
Python rocktranslate.extract("paper.pdf", pages="11").tables[0].table
Input · the PDF
Table 4 as printed in the PDF
Output
| 1 | 1.02 | 0.02 | 1.07 | 12.74 | 0.20 | 1.90 | 0.44 | 48.17 | 0.39 | 0.31 |
| 2 | 0.80 | 0.01 | 1.33 | 2.42  | 0.20 | 1.79 | 0.29 | −21.74 | 0.18 | 0.26 |
| 3 | 0.44 | 0.01 | 5.63 | 3.88  | 0.39 | 2.37 | 0.47 | 9.95  | 0.25 | 0.06 |
| 4 | 0.72 | 0.02 | 1.75 | 22.14 | 0.33 | 0.37 | 0.18 | 66.71 | 0.53 | 0.23 |
| 5 | 0.77 | 0.01 | 1.75 | 26.98 | 0.34 | 1.27 | 0.38 | 12.88 | 0.20 | 0.09 |
…  45 rows

Real headings, real depth

Attention Is All You Need, page 3: the same passage as Markdown, unedited. Headings keep their numbering and get their depth from it (3.1 → ###).

CLI rocktranslate extract attention.pdf -p 3 -f md
Python rocktranslate.extract("attention.pdf", pages="3").to_markdown()

Whole-paper outline: rocktranslate extract attention.pdf -f md

Input · the PDF, page 3
Page 3 of the paper with sections 3.1 and 3.2
Output
### 3.1 Encoder and Decoder Stacks

Encoder: The encoder is composed of a stack of N = 6 identical layers. Each layer has two sub-layers. The first is a multi-head self-attention mechanism, and the second is a simple, positionwise fully connected feed-forward network. We employ a residual connection [ 11] around each of the two sub-layers, followed by layer normalization [ 1]. That is, the output of each sub-layer is LayerNorm(x + Sublayer(x)), where Sublayer(x) is the function implemented by the sub-layer itself. To facilitate these residual connections, all sub-layers in the model, as well as the embedding layers, produce outputs of dimension d<sub>model</sub> = 512.

Decoder: The decoder is also composed of a stack of N = 6 identical layers. In addition to the two sub-layers in each encoder layer, the decoder inserts a third sub-layer, which performs multi-head attention over the output of the encoder stack. Similar to the encoder, we employ residual connections around each of the sub-layers, followed by layer normalization. We also modify the self-attention sub-layer in the decoder stack to prevent positions from attending to subsequent positions. This masking, combined with fact that the output embeddings are offset by one position, ensures that the predictions for position i can depend only on the known outputs at positions less than i.

### 3.2 Attention

An attention function can be described as mapping a query and a set of key-value pairs to an output, where the query, keys, values, and output are all vectors. The output is computed as a weighted sum

Bilingual, paragraph by paragraph

Each paragraph of the original, followed by its translation. Output below, unedited.

CLI rocktranslate attention.pdf -l French -p 1 -f md --bilingual
Python rocktranslate.translate("attention.pdf", lang="French", pages="1").to_markdown(bilingual=True)

Needs an API key (here DeepSeek: 3,315 tokens, $0.0019 for the page).

Input · the PDF, page 1
Abstract of the paper in English
Output
## Abstract

> Résumé

The dominant sequence transduction models are based on complex recurrent or convolutional neural networks that include an encoder and a decoder. The best performing models also connect the encoder and decoder through an attention mechanism. We propose a new simple network architecture, the Transformer, based solely on attention mechanisms, dispensing with recurrence and convolutions entirely. Experiments on two machine translation tasks show these models to be superior in quality while being more parallelizable and requiring significantly less time to train. Our model achieves 28.4 BLEU on the WMT 2014 English-to-German translation task, improving over the existing best results, including ensembles, by over 2 BLEU. On the WMT 2014 English-to-French translation task, our model establishes a new single-model state-of-the-art BLEU score of 41.8 after training for 3.5 days on eight GPUs, a small fraction of the training costs of the best models from the literature. We show that the Transformer generalizes well to other tasks by applying it successfully to English constituency parsing both with large and limited training data.

> Les modèles dominants de transduction de séquences reposent sur des réseaux neuronaux récurrents ou convolutifs complexes comprenant un encodeur et un décodeur. Les modèles les plus performants relient également l'encodeur et le décodeur par un mécanisme d'attention. Nous proposons une nouvelle architecture de réseau simple, le Transformer, fondée uniquement sur des mécanismes d'attention, se dispensant entièrement de récurrence et de convolutions. Des expériences sur deux tâches de traduction automatique montrent que ces modèles sont de qualité supérieure tout en étant plus parallélisables et en nécessitant significativement moins de temps d'entraînement. Notre modèle atteint 28,4 BLEU sur la tâche de traduction anglais-vers-allemand du WMT 2014, améliorant de plus de 2 BLEU les meilleurs résultats existants, y compris les ensembles. Sur la tâche de traduction anglais-vers-français du WMT 2014, notre modèle établit un nouveau score BLEU de pointe de 41,8 pour un modèle unique après un entraînement de 3,5 jours sur huit GPU, soit une faible fraction des coûts d'entraînement des meilleurs modèles de la littérature. Nous montrons que le Transformer se généralise bien à d'autres tâches en l'appliquant avec succès à l'analyse syntaxique de constituants en anglais, tant avec de grandes qu'avec de limitées données d'entraînement.

Find a passage, see it in the original PDF

Search the original and the translation, then frame the hits at their exact position in a copy of the source PDF. A chatbot answer can point to its source.

import rocktranslate

doc = rocktranslate.extract("attention.pdf")
hits = doc.search("multi-head attention")   # 10 elements
doc.highlight(hits, "attention.pdf",
              "attention_hits.pdf")
attention_hits.pdf, page 4
Search hit framed in the original PDF

Measured on the same PDFs

Unstructured 0.18 (fast)RockTranslate extract
Attention Is All You Need, 15 p.158 elements typed Title (every author block), arXiv stamp garbled, 0 tables1 title and 31 sections with depth, 4 tables, captions, formulas
Geology paper, 35 p., many tables3,482 elements, 2,898 of them UncategorizedText780 elements, 9 tables rebuilt row by row
Translation aligned to the structureNot availableEvery element, tables cell by cell

Unstructured's heavier hi_res mode (ML layout models) was not part of this test. Scanned PDFs without a text layer need OCR, which RockTranslate does not do yet.

Read the extraction guide

One engine, four ways in

Desktop app

Original on the left, translated layout on the right, synchronized. Windows installer with the pdf2htmlEX 0.18.8 engine built in.

RockTranslate_Setup_v2.0.7.exe

Command line

Translate a page range, write PDF, JSON and Markdown together. Only the requested pages are converted.

rocktranslate paper.pdf -l German -p 1-2

Python API

Get a Document back: elements, tables, chunks, translations, cost report.

rocktranslate.translate("paper.pdf", lang="de")

Extraction

Structure only, local and free. JSON compatible with Unstructured's element names.

rocktranslate extract paper.pdf -f json,md

pdf2htmlEX 0.18.8, native on Windows

pdf2htmlEX is the engine that rebuilds a PDF page as HTML. Its maintainers only publish Linux builds of 0.18.8; Windows users were left with 0.14.6, a 32-bit build from 2015. We compiled 0.18.8 as a native 64-bit Windows program, with Poppler 0.89 and FontForge 20200314, in an automated GitHub Actions build. We found no other public Windows build of this version.

It ships inside the RockTranslate installer. You can also use it on its own: unzip, then run bin\pdf2htmlEX.exe input.pdf output.html. It is free software under the GPL v3, with its build recipe and source patches published.

Conversion time on the same Windows machine

PDF0.14.6 (32-bit)0.18.8 (64-bit)
Test document, 3 pages0.5 s0.2 s
Attention Is All You Need, 15 pages5.8 s4.0 s
ResNet paper, 12 pages with images12.0 s8.3 s

GitHub Actions windows-latest runner, same options for both versions. The 64-bit build also lifts the 2 GB memory limit of the 32-bit one, which matters for large, image-heavy papers.

Built for Developers & Research Laboratories

Use the intuitive desktop GUI for daily interactive reviews, or embed the translation engine into your automated document ingestion pipelines via the CLI and native Python API.

  • >_
    Dedicated Command-Line Interface (CLI): Translate a page range in one command, and write the translated PDF, aligned JSON and bilingual Markdown at once.
  • Py
    5-Line Programmatic Python API: Import RockTranslator directly, configure your API keys or local Ollama host, and control your workflows programmatically.
  • ⚡
    Lazy Architecture & SHA-256 Caching: Only requested pages are converted. Re-opening papers executes instantly from local disk cache.
$ pip install rocktranslate
Installing beautifulsoup4, litellm, lxml...
Successfully installed rocktranslate-2.0.7
$ rocktranslate paper.pdf -l French -m gemini/gemini-3.5-flash-lite
[SUCCESS] Pixel-perfect PDF created: "paper_fr.pdf"

Everything You Need to Know

Clear answers for researchers and laboratories regarding document integrity, data security, and open-source licensing.

Through pdf2htmlEX spatial analysis, each text element is bound to its original geometric bounding box. When translations expand (such as in French or German, where word volume increases by 20–30%), our algorithm computes a proportional micro-adjustment on font size and CSS matrix transform: transform: scaleX(...). Text seamlessly conforms to its allocated spatial slot without colliding with figures or neighboring columns.
Yes, 100%. When operating in local mode with Ollama, the entire processing pipeline (geometric extraction, textual analysis, translation, and vector PDF compilation) runs entirely on your physical machine. Zero bytes, zero text, and zero telemetry leave your computer.
During HTML DOM instrumentation, matrix equations, Greek mathematical symbols, sub/superscripts, and vector graphics are isolated and tagged. They are excluded from linguistic translation to ensure they remain mathematically and spatially intact in their original positions.
RockTranslate was built by students and researchers who experienced the financial barriers of commercial translation tools firsthand. The project is licensed under the permissive MIT license to democratize scientific knowledge and empower researchers in underfunded universities worldwide.
The graphical desktop application is available as a standalone executable installer for Windows 10 and 11 (64-bit). The Python package and CLI run across Windows, Linux (via the official pdf2htmlEX AppImage), and macOS.

Ready to translate scientific papers without breaking their layout?

Download the standalone Windows desktop app or install our lightweight Python package into your research environment.