Practical webinar on handling PDF files - December 12th

The agency GxP Language Services, which specializes in projects related to the healthcare sector, is planning a webinar on December 12th, 2012 on converting PDF files to formats which are appropriate for translation or other use. The session will be taught by Siegfried Armbruster, the company's managing director and a frequent contributor on various online fora. I have no affiliation with GxP nor do I know the presenter except through his online contributions on technical and/or professional issues, which have generally made an impression of seriousness. I am announcing this particular event, because it is a topic that is relevant to a great number of people involved with translation processes, and too few really understand these issues well enough to work effectively with all types of PDF documents. Educating colleagues and clients on the sort of thing Siegfried will be teaching has been a personal crusade of mine since long before Peter Linton and I presented best practices at a Berlin conference in 2006. There are many different challenges in working with PDF files, and, as my past translation support of a leading PDF advocacy alliance has taught me, new types of PDF make "best practice" very much a moving target in some cases. Thus I welcome learning opportunities such as this and hope to see more in the future from professional organizations and colleagues as well.

I'll quote the webinar description here; the graphic at the start of this post will take you to a page for more information and registration.

Translators have to deal with various types of PDF files on a frequent basis. PDF files might be sent by an agency or end client for translation or the translators might want to use PDFs for alignment purposes, among others. In this webinar, I will explain and demonstrate the various tools and workflows we use in-house to convert PDF files into Word files that are usable in translation tools. After registration, you will be sent a zip file with the various types of PDF files we will be discussing during this webinar (standard PDF, complex PDFs with multiple columns, images and tables, scanned PDFs, scanned distorted PDFs, Fax-PDFs etc.). For questions on the webinar, please contact siegfried.armbruster [at] gxp-language-services [dot] com.

Mr. Armbruster, presenter of the
course on PDF conversion

The fee for webinar participation is USD 35, quite reasonable given the potential payoff in time saved, frustration reduced and potential added profit. I have no idea if he'll discussion the business aspects of correct PDF handling as I sometimes do, but before you can even think of improving your image and bottom line by the way you handle an order with PDF files you have to get the technical aspects right. With a comprehensive set of sample files provided to course participants, which they can use later to practice what they learn, it looks like this session might be a good first step for many people.