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CLUSTER FORMULAS-LAYOUT-ACADEMIC · 8 ENTRIES · EARLIEST ENTRY 2026-08-12

AI PDF translation tools

This cluster consists of desktop PDF/e-book readers and reference-manager plugins that translate academic papers while preserving original layout, images, formulas, and tables, often integrating AI assistants or multiple AI providers via user-supplied API keys. The dated history is too thin to read a shape from — only 2 dated entries exist before the index start, so the cluster predates the index or its members are undated. Traction is led by codex-bilingual-reader-for-zotero (19 stars), followed by BabelDOC-Studio (4 stars) and PolyglotPDF (0 stars).

Entry timeline

ENTRY TIMELINE

MAY 2025: 1APR 2026: 1AUG 2026: 2SEP 2026: 2OCT 2026: 2
MAY 2025OCT 2026

Each bar is the month a member carries, which is a creation date where the source published one and a crawl date otherwise. Nothing in the index was found before 11 August 2026, and coverage broadened sharply on 14–15 August, so a bar from then on reports how much we found that month, not how much was built; an earlier bar reports how far back a member's own source dated it — not how long we have been watching.

Members by activity

Activity signals, not revenue.

Build origin · 1 hand-coded · 7 unlabelled

Operator · 5 hobby · 2 open source · 1 unlabelled

Two labels per entry, never collapsed into one: how it was built, and who stands behind it. Counted over the 8 listed below. Unlabelled means nothing has decided yet — not that the answer is small.

  1. 01PDFMathReader4★12 daysliveopen sourceDesktop app that reads scientific PDFs in any language and translates them in real time while preserving formulas, tables, and layout.
  2. 02PDF_AI_BOOK-TRANSLATER_ING-TO-TR2★4 days—hobbyLocal application that translates academic PDF books from English to Turkish while preserving formulas, graphics, and layout.
  3. 03PolyglotPDF1★28 days—hand-codedhobbyDesktop reader and translator for PDFs and e-books that preserves layout and formulas, with an AI assistant for comprehension.
  4. 04codex-bilingual-reader-for-zotero21★2 mo—open sourceReference manager plugin that translates PDF academic papers between English and Chinese while preserving original layout, images, and formulas using AI translation APIs.
  5. 05paper-companion1★1 mo—hobbyA reading companion that turns academic PDFs into page-grounded two-column readers with expandable Q&A, figure guidance, and research directions.
  6. 06BabelDOC-Studio4★1 mo—hobbyDesktop PDF translator that preserves original layout, formulas, and tables for academic papers and uses user-provided API keys to support multiple AI providers.
  7. 07pdf-docat-frontend0★1 yrabandonedlivehobbyWeb app that translates PDF documents using AI, with support for custom API keys and multilingual interface.
  8. 08cleayo-ai0★6 mostaleliveTranslates scanned documents while preserving table formatting, using OCR and AI, supporting 50+ languages.

Ranked by traction, highest first, and paged 20 at a time — this is a window on the cluster, never the whole of it. Ties are broken by a stable id so a product cannot appear on two pages or fall between them. Browse every cluster.