Reglyph - Scan-to-translate platform that preserves original document layout

Scanning a Scanned Document Shouldn't Mean Hours of Manual Formatting

You've just received an important international contract. It's a scanned PDF — someone printed it, signed it, scanned it, and emailed it over. You need it translated for your legal team by end of day.

You drag it into Google Translate. Nothing. You try DeepL. Nothing. You paste it into ChatGPT. It reads "I cannot process images in this document."

Why? Because none of these tools were built for scanned documents. Google Translate and DeepL can only read PDFs that already have a text layer — the kind generated by typing in Word or Google Docs. A scanned PDF is essentially a photo wrapped in a PDF container. There's no text for these tools to find.

So you take a different route. You run the PDF through an OCR tool, copy the extracted text, paste it into a translator, then spend the next 45 minutes manually rebuilding the original layout in Word — re-creating the two-column table, repositioning the header, matching the font sizes, and praying the page numbers don't shift. By the time you're done, the client's signature stamp looks like it was pasted in by a five-year-old.

This is the reality for anyone who works with scanned international documents. A task that should take minutes eats up 30 to 60 minutes of manual re-formatting per document. And the result? A document that looks nothing like the original — which defeats the entire purpose when you're dealing with contracts, certificates, or official records where layout matters.

Enter Reglyph — a scan-to-translate platform built specifically for scanned PDFs and image-based documents. Unlike every other translation tool on the market, Reglyph doesn't need a text layer. You don't need to OCR first. You don't need to copy and paste. You upload a scanned document — a photo of a contract, a certificate, a page from a book — and Reglyph handles everything: OCR recognition, translation, original text removal, and in-place re-typesetting of the translated text. The output is a fully translated document that looks like the original — same layout, same columns, same table structure, same stamp positions.

And you can try it for free. The first 5 pages are on the house, no credit card required.

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Core Features of Reglyph

Every feature in Reglyph exists to solve one thing: the headache of translating scanned documents without destroying their structure. Here's how each capability maps to a real problem you're facing.

1. Intelligent OCR for Scanned Images — No Pre-Processing Required

The pain: Standard translation tools can't read text from scanned images. You have to run a separate OCR tool, export the text, translate it, then manually rebuild the document. It's a multi-step workflow for what should be a single step.

How Reglyph solves it: Built-in OCR engine automatically detects and extracts text from any scanned image or picture-based PDF the moment you upload it. There's no separate OCR step, no "export to text" — the recognition happens transparently as part of the translation pipeline.

The result: Upload a scanned document → get a translated document. That's it. The OCR process is invisible to you.

2. In-Place Layout Preservation — Tables, Columns, and Headers Stay Put

The pain: Even if you manage to translate the text, the output is a wall of words that bears no resemblance to the original document. Tables collapse, columns merge, headers float in the middle of paragraphs. You spend 30–60 minutes dragging elements back into position.

How Reglyph solves it: The platform erases the original text from the image, then re-typesets the translated text in the exact same position — character by character, line by line. The table borders stay. The column structure stays. The page headers and footers stay.

The result: A translated document that reads and looks like the original. Your colleagues won't know it wasn't originally written in the target language.

3. Drag-to-Compare Translation View

The pain: You need to verify translation accuracy, but flipping between two files — the original and the translated version — is tedious. You end up printing both and holding them side by side.

How Reglyph solves it: An interactive split-view with a draggable handle lets you slide between the original and translated document in real time. See the source text on one side and the translated text on the other, exactly aligned by position.

The result: Instant visual verification. Spot-check translations in seconds instead of minutes.

4. Stamp, Signature, and Number Preservation

The pain: When you manually re-create a translated contract or certificate, the original stamps and signatures look out of place — or you lose them entirely and have to ask someone to re-stamp the document.

How Reglyph solves it: The system intelligently identifies non-text elements — stamps, signatures, numbers, logos, images — and leaves them untouched. Only the actual text content is replaced with the translation.

The result: Official documents retain their authentic appearance. The company seal, the notary stamp, the signed signature — they're all exactly where they should be.

5. Batch Processing for Multi-Page Scanned Documents

The pain: Translating a 50-page scanned book or a multi-page agreement means processing every single page manually. The repetition is exhausting and error-prone.

How Reglyph solves it: Page-by-page processing pipeline handles scanned PDFs of any length. Each page is individually OCR'd, translated, and re-typeset with consistent quality. The Pro plan supports up to 700 pages per month with rollover.

The result: A 100-page document processes consistently from page 1 to 100. No quality drop-off, no manual intervention per page.

6. Large File Support — Up to 300 MB

The pain: High-resolution scanned documents, particularly books or archival materials, produce massive files. Most online tools reject uploads above 10–20 MB.

How Reglyph solves it: Optimized file processing pipeline handles files up to 300 MB on the Pro plan. The Lite plan supports up to 100 MB.

The result: Upload your high-resolution scans without having to compress them first — which means no quality loss.

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Who Uses Reglyph?

Reglyph isn't a general-purpose translation tool — it's specifically built for people whose documents come in as scanned images. Here are the seven most common scenarios, ordered by how urgently each one needs a solution like this.

1. International Contract Translation

The person who needs this most: a legal or business professional who receives a scanned, signed contract from an overseas partner. The contract has the company's official stamp, the signatory's handwritten signature, and numeric values that must remain exact.

Traditional approach: The contract can't be fed into any standard translation tool. Manual translation means re-creating the entire document layout in Word — tables, clauses, signature blocks — which takes 30–60 minutes and introduces formatting errors.

Reglyph approach: Upload the scanned contract. Reglyph OCRs the text, translates it, and places the translated text back into the original layout. The stamp, signature, and numbers stay where they are.

The result: A fully translated, legally presentable contract in minutes. No re-stamping needed. No layout discrepancies.

2. Degree Certificates and Official Documents

The person who needs this: someone applying to a foreign university, immigrating to a new country, or having credentials verified by an international body. Their degree certificate, birth certificate, or marriage certificate is a scanned document with a government seal.

Traditional approach: Translating the text is easy — the hard part is making the translated version look official. Without the original seal in the right place, the document loses credibility.

Reglyph approach: Only the text is replaced. The government seal, the registrar's signature, the embossed stamp — all untouched.

The result: A translated certificate that looks as authentic as the original. Immigration officers and university admissions teams see a document they can trust.

3. Academic Paper Translation

The person who needs this: a researcher or student who needs to read or submit a paper originally published in another language. Academic papers typically use two-column layouts, embedded tables, and figures with captions.

Traditional approach: Copying text from a scanned paper destroys the column structure. Rebuilding two-column formatting with correctly positioned tables and figure references takes significant manual effort.

Reglyph approach: Two-column layout is preserved. Tables remain in their original positions. Figure captions are translated in place.

The result: A translated paper you can read naturally — left to right, top to bottom — just like the original. No mentally re-mapping text to figures.

4. Foreign Book and Scanned Book Translation

The person who needs this: a researcher, historian, or avid reader working with a physical book that's been scanned into PDF format. The document may run 200+ pages.

Traditional approach: Each page would need to be processed individually. Manual translation of a single chapter could take days.

Reglyph approach: The Pro plan's 700 pages per month, with unused pages rolling over (up to 2,100 pages), makes book-length projects feasible. Each page is processed with consistent layout preservation.

The result: A complete translated book where every page maintains the original's reading flow — margins, chapter headers, page numbers all intact.

5. Immigration and Visa Document Translation

The person who needs this: someone applying for a visa, permanent residency, or citizenship. They need to translate household registration documents, identity cards, driver's licenses — all scanned or photographed.

Traditional approach: These documents have strict formatting requirements from immigration authorities. An incorrectly formatted translation can be rejected outright.

Reglyph approach: Upload the scanned ID or registration document. The translation preserves the original's exact layout — a requirement that immigration officers specifically check for.

The result: Visa applications move forward without document-related delays. The translated format meets official requirements on the first try.

6. Technical Manual and Instruction Sheet Translation

The person who needs this: an engineer, technician, or product manager working with equipment documentation that includes diagrams, numbered steps, and technical specifications.

Traditional approach: Translating the text is straightforward — the danger is that numbers, part codes, and diagram callouts get misaligned during re-formatting, leading to real-world errors in assembly or operation.

Reglyph approach: Only language content is replaced. Part numbers, step numbers, diagram labels, and technical specifications remain in their original positions.

The result: A technician following the translated manual sees the same numbered steps in the same positions. No confusion. No misaligned callouts.

7. Legal Document Translation

The person who needs this: a lawyer, paralegal, or compliance officer handling affidavits, court filings, notarized documents, or regulatory filings where every line and margin has legal significance.

Traditional approach: Legal documents have notoriously strict formatting rules. Re-formatting a translated legal document introduces the risk of errors that could have legal consequences — a clause that shifts to the next page, a notary block that loses its position.

Reglyph approach: In-place layout preservation means the legal structure of the document — the positioning of clauses, signature blocks, notary stamps — remains identical to the original.

The result: Translated legal documents that maintain their legal formatting integrity. No page breaks in the wrong places. No missing signature blocks.

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Pricing Plans

Reglyph operates on a straightforward principle: you pay for what you use, and scanned pages aren't penalized with multipliers. Many translation services count scanned pages as 2x or 3x because they require OCR processing. Reglyph counts them as one page — because that's what they are.

Which Plan Fits Your Needs?

Free Trial — Start here. No commitment, no credit card. Translate your first 5 pages and see for yourself how the output compares to your current workflow.

Pay-as-you-go ($5) — Best for the occasional user. Maybe you get a scanned PDF once every few months — a contract, a certificate, a visa application. The 10 pages never expire, so you can stretch them across multiple projects over the course of a year.

Lite ($15/month) — Designed for individual professionals or light users. If you're translating around 1–2 average-length documents per month (say 50–60 pages each), this plan covers you. At $0.13 per page, you're paying a fraction of what manual re-formatting costs in time.

Pro ($39/month) — Built for power users and small teams. At $39 per month, you can process 700 pages — which translates to dozens of hours of manual formatting time saved. If your traditional workflow takes 30 minutes per document, processing 700 pages through Reglyph saves you roughly 35–40 hours of work. The file size limit of 300 MB also means you can upload high-resolution books and large document batches without constraints.

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Frequently Asked Questions