CatScribe Docs

#First Translation

This walkthrough takes you from an imported file to a reviewed, exported document using the exact screens and buttons in the app.

#Goal

Translate a small sample, review it, and export it successfully. Do not start with an entire book or a very large PDF until this flow works on your setup. The document upload limit is 50 MB, but for a first run a single chapter or a few pages is the right size.

#Step 0: Warm Up With Quick Translate

Before touching documents, confirm your engine works:

  1. Open Quick Translate in the sidebar.
  2. Pick a Provider — in Simple mode this is "Offline Translation" or "Google (Free)".
  3. Type a sentence into the Source pane ("Paste or type the text you want to translate...").
  4. Click "Translate now".

If a translation appears in the Target pane, your engine is ready. If you get an engine error instead, fix that first — see Troubleshooting.

#Step 1: Upload A Document

  1. Open File Translation in the sidebar.
  2. Use the "Upload Document" area — "Drag and drop a file here, or click to select". The accepted types are shown right there: "Supported formats: EPUB, DOCX, PDF".
  3. After the file is analyzed, a Document Advisor card may appear under it with a star rating and a recommended workflow (for example "OCR first" for scanned PDFs). For a first run with a normal text document, "Normal Translation" is what you want.

If you are translating a book, use one chapter for this first test. If you are translating a PDF, use a few pages and check whether text order comes out correct.

#Step 2: Choose Translation Settings

#The easy way: Auto Mode

  1. Switch the "Auto Mode" toggle from OFF to ON.
  2. The form collapses to four fields: "Quality", "Source Language", "Target Language", and "Output Format".
  3. Pick a quality level — "Fast", "Balanced", or "Maximum". Balanced is "Recommended for most translations." A "Recommended setup" line suggests the level that fits your hardware, and a pipeline badge shows what will run (for example "Validation + Rewrite" for Balanced).

Auto Mode selects the engine, chunk size, and AI refinement layers for you, using only engines and models that are actually installed. See Auto Mode.

#The manual way

With Auto Mode OFF you choose everything yourself:

  1. Pick a provider. In Simple mode that is "Offline Translation" (the selector shows "Currently using" with the engine it resolves to) or "Google (Free)". In Advanced mode you can pick "Argos (Local)", "LibreTranslate (Local)", "MarianMT (Local)", or "NLLB (Local)" directly. See Translation Engines.
  2. Set "Source Language" and "Target Language".
  3. Set "Output Format": "Same as input", "Plain Text (.txt)", "Word Document (.doc/.docx)", or "EPUB (.epub)". Note there is no separate PDF option — to get a PDF out, translate a PDF with "Same as input".
  4. Optionally attach glossary groups under "Glossary" — the label shows how many groups and terms match your language pair. If it says "No groups selected — glossary will not be used", create terms first in Glossaries.
  5. Optionally adjust "Maximum part size" (chunk size) and the AI refinement options. For a first run, leave the defaults.

For a first run, prioritize a reliable draft over maximum quality. You can refine individual chunks after you see the output.

#Step 3: Start And Monitor

  1. Click "Start Translation".
  2. The "Translation Progress" panel shows the current chunk ("Current chunk #n/total"), the provider and model in use, and elapsed time. Large EPUBs first show "Extracting EPUB contents and building translation parts. Large books may take a few minutes."
  3. You can leave the screen — the job keeps running. The Translations screen in the sidebar tracks every job with a live progress bar, and its sidebar icon shows a dot when a job is processing, errored, or ready.

From the Translations screen you can also "Pause" and "Resume" a job, and after completion use "Retry Failed" if some chunks did not translate. Failed chunks are also retried automatically up to 3 times.

#Step 4: Review In The CAT Editor

  1. When the job finishes, open it from the Translations screen (or from Home's recent translations) with "Open CAT editor".
  2. The editor shows the chunk list on the left and the Source / Target panes on the right. Every chunk starts as "Draft (Machine)".
  3. Read the target text against the source. Edit directly in the Target pane — any edit marks the chunk "Edited (Human)". Click "Save" to persist (there is no autosave).
  4. When a chunk is good, click "Approve & Next" (Ctrl+Enter) to mark it "Approved" and jump to the next unreviewed chunk. The "Review progress" block tracks how many chunks remain.
  5. For text that is accurate but awkward, use "Improve with AI" (requires Ollama or LM Studio running with a model loaded). See Improve With AI.
  6. For a chunk that came out wrong, use the "Chunk Override" panel and "Re-run chunk" to retranslate just that chunk with a different engine. See Chunk Overrides.
  7. Check the "QA Flags" panel for automatic warnings such as tag mismatches or untranslated glossary terms.

If you translated an EPUB, the editor runs in text-only mode and tells you so: "EPUB Translation Mode: only text edits are exported. Formatting changes are preserved from the original EPUB."

Do not rely on AI refinement as a substitute for review. Use it as an assistant for targeted improvements.

#Step 5: Export And Inspect

  1. The finished output file's path is shown on the job in the Translations screen, with an action to open its folder.
  2. If you edited chunks after the job completed, click "Generate Document" on the job to rebuild the output file with your edits.
  3. Open the exported file in its real reader — an EPUB reader, Word, or a PDF viewer.
  4. Check headings, paragraphs, emphasis, images, and links. If formatting breaks, review Editing Without Breaking Formatting.
  5. If the run felt slow, review Performance Guidelines.

#Step 6: Continue Safely

Once the sample looks good:

  • Add any new glossary terms you discovered, so later chapters stay consistent.
  • Translate the next chapter or section.
  • Review before expanding to larger batches.
  • Avoid full-project re-runs unless the source or glossary changed significantly — fixing individual chunks is faster and safer.

For subtitle projects, the flow is different (three-panel workstation, per-cue editing, CPS checks): see Translating Subtitles.