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Old 19th Jul 2021, 8:24 am   #1
Chris55000
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Default Translating an old paper Cyrillic Manual?

Hi!

I've just been able to buy an original paper (not PDF) Technical Manual in Cyrillic for the Soviet C1–55 Oscilloscope I have, can anyone suggest something reliable that will scan it and OCR it – Will Vue Scan Professional handle Cyrillic? (I bought the full prof. licence)

I can redraw the circuit diagrams and board layout drawings, but typing all that Cyrillic into Google Translate one or two letters at a time is just too much for me!

Like most such Ancient Technical Papyrus, the pages have gone all yellowy–brown – what setting in Vue Scan do I need to get rid of the gash original Soviet paper colour?

I tried various things & settings on another old paper book I got and all I could get was a dark grey smudge that obliterated everything on the scan!


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Old 19th Jul 2021, 8:44 am   #2
Dave Moll
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Default Re: Translating an old paper Cyrillic Manual?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris55000 View Post
I've just been able to buy an original paper (not PDF) Technical Manual in Cyrillic for the Soviet C1–55 Oscilloscope I have, can anyone suggest something reliable that will scan it and OCR it – Will Vue Scan Professional handle Cyrillic? (I bought the full prof. licence)
If you already have the software, the best way to find out is to try it. If you need help checking the accuracy of any Cyrillic text produced, I would be happy to help out. I should warn, however, that my qualification level is a failed "O" level (long before the days of GCSEs).

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I can redraw the circuit diagrams and board layout drawings
Would it not be possible to scan them as line art for insertion into the translated document? N.B. comment below about settings also applies here.

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Like most such Ancient Technical Papyrus, the pages have gone all yellowy–brown
Success in scanning will probably be dependent upon having sufficient contrast between text and background and finding a suitable threshold (by trial and error) between what is deemed white and what is black.
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Old 19th Jul 2021, 9:00 am   #3
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Default Re: Translating an old paper Cyrillic Manual?

I have done this!

I used my old professional copy of Acrobat. It was a bit laborous (see result on my web site - the RPS manual).

First step - configure the OCR to the right language - essential!!
After OCRing the PDF of the scanned manual I extracted the text in paragraph chunks, pasted into notepad (it does Unicode so no problem).
Now edit the text to be perfect - this is essential too. (I used RedTitan's Autoclick for the keyboarding).
Remove line breaks - the paragraph needs to be one line.
Now go to Google translate, set the language and paste it in.
What I found is that if there are no errors in the OCR and no line breaks then it does a surprisingly good job.
Next step is to translate the technical words because auto translators are not expecting the technical meaning of words - but you soon get used to it.

It is quite tedious to do. Much easier to find someone who an do it directly!
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Old 19th Jul 2021, 10:43 am   #4
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Default Re: Translating an old paper Cyrillic Manual?

I do not use Vuescan, but many of the scans of old documents I have posted here have been on old and yellowed paper. Scanning using the line art option and adjusting the threshold as necessary generally produces crisp text. I use an Epson scanner and the Microsoft photoed.exe progam that used to be supplied with Windows until mid-way through the XP era, when running an update would replace it by the less versatile photo viewer. A tip I found on line for how to get it back without needing the original installation disks was to copy the photoed files from the programs folder of a machine that still had it installed, onto a usb drive, and then click the .exe file.

A colleague who had been taught Russian when he had worked at the MOD said that many of their technical terms were the English word written in Cryllic characters, so transliterating the characters using a concordance would usualy produce something recognisable. It should be borne in mind that there are (at least) two slightly different schemes for transliterating Russian text. One is based on English phonetics, the other on German. Thus you find journal references to the well-known electronic filter rendered as 'chebyshef' or 'tschebichev' depending on the language used by the author.

Last edited by emeritus; 19th Jul 2021 at 10:51 am. Reason: typos
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Old 19th Jul 2021, 12:53 pm   #5
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Default Re: Translating an old paper Cyrillic Manual?

If I have to scan anything that has yellowed with age, I usually first do it in Paint Shop Pro (10) as that has a built in setting to take out in most cases all the yellowing.

On the worst cases, a bit of judicious juggling of Brightness, Contrast and Gamma settings will take care of it.

A tip - don't scan to JPEG format if it is being converted to PDF afterwards, use either PNG or TIF.

Why? Because JPEG is an already compressed format and PDF conversion software can't do any further compression whereas it can on the other formats.
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Old 19th Jul 2021, 1:32 pm   #6
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Default Re: Translating an old paper Cyrillic Manual?

Won't Google do this for you?
 
Old 19th Jul 2021, 2:49 pm   #7
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Default Re: Translating an old paper Cyrillic Manual?

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Won't Google do this for you?
Google translate has a camera option. Set the translation options to Russian -> English, point the camera at the text and with luck it will translate it for you.
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Old 19th Jul 2021, 3:37 pm   #8
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Default Re: Translating an old paper Cyrillic Manual?

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Because JPEG is an already compressed format and PDF conversion software can't do any further compression whereas it can on the other formats.
The compression type used in your input to making PDF is not very relevent to the result. The problem with JPEG is that it is (almost always) a lossy scheme that only works well for real-world images. Anything with sharp edges, like text, is ruined - and this makes OCR work badly, and if the degree of compression is very large then it can be hard to read small detail.

It constantly pains me to see really interesting documents on the web that are unreadable because of using JPEG in a desperate bid to make the files small.

The reason why scans are often large is because they are often in full colour when this was not required. If you want OCR to work best then use software to threshold the image to pure monochrome black+white - and make sure the result is good. The thresholded image can be surprisingly small.
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Old 19th Jul 2021, 11:36 pm   #9
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Default Re: Translating an old paper Cyrillic Manual?

Hi!

I took a picture of a PCB I bought from the EPE Shop a couple of years ago to illustrate a point discussed in one Chapter of my book being written, and when I imported the picture into Word as "jpeg" the detail I wanted to highlight was unreadable, but reimporting it as "PNG" did the trick perfectly when distilled to PDF with MS's standard PDF printer – the fine PCB design no. came out perfect!

Can someone give me a quick summary of the method for removing background tints in PSP please?

(I bought a secondhand boxed copy not long back!)

I can persevere with PCB design and drawing software for hours to get what I desire, but image (and sound!) editors make my head go round!

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Old 20th Jul 2021, 4:20 am   #10
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Default Re: Translating an old paper Cyrillic Manual?

Which ver of PSP Chris?
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Old 20th Jul 2021, 11:09 am   #11
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Default Re: Translating an old paper Cyrillic Manual?

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Can someone give me a quick summary of the method for removing background tints in PSP please?
I don't know about PSP but GIMP (free software) has a useful tool to do that. If you select colours -> levels there are three "droppers" for selecting black, grey and white. Select the white dropper and click somewhere in the image where it should be white. It will remove whatever colour cast is at the point you click.

Or just turn the saturation down.
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