Translate Filipino PDFs & documents to English scanned or digital — without breaking the layout
Many Philippine civil documents are in English to begin with. The PSA birth certificate is printed on the Certificate of Live Birth form, whose fields are all in English, and documents like it usually need no translation. The ones that do are written in Filipino. Philippine law requires a settlement reached through barangay conciliation (the barangay is the smallest administrative unit) to be written in a language or dialect both parties understand, and a will must be written in a language the testator knows, so many settlements and wills (huling habilin) are in Filipino. Notarized affidavits (sinumpaang salaysay), deeds of sale for land and some letters from government agencies can be in Filipino too. Filipino families and lawyers abroad dealing with an estate, an immigration case or a lawsuit need to know what these papers say first. The English goes back into the original positions, with margin signatures, notarial numbers and page numbers left where they were.
English mid-sentence, and dates that start with ika-
Filipinos often mix Filipino and English when they speak and write, a habit called Taglish, and it turns up in formal documents too: one will reviewed by the Supreme Court of the Philippines was written in a mix of Filipino and English. Dates run day, month, year, with ika- before the day, so ika-9 ng Nobyembre 2026 is 9 November 2026. All-numeric dates work differently: in the Philippines they usually run month-day-year, so 11-09-2026 is 9 November, not 11 September. The Filipino alphabet has 28 letters, adding Ñ and NG to those of English. The tilde on the ñ in surnames such as Peña is small, and on an unclear scan it can be lost, turning the name into Pena.
Common scanned Filipino documents we translate
These are the Filipino-language documents people most often translate to English — each keeps its original layout, seals, and tables.
- Affidavits (sinumpaang salaysay)
- Settlement agreements reached through barangay conciliation (kasunduang pag-aayos)
- Wills (huling habilin)
- Deeds of sale of land (kasulatan ng bilihang tuluyan ng lupa)
- Lease agreements (kasunduan sa pagpapaupa)
- Letters from government agencies written in Filipino (liham)
How to translate a scanned Filipino document
Upload your PDF
Drop in a scanned Filipino PDF (one from your phone's scanner app works) or a digital PDF. Image-only PDFs are fine — no text layer needed.
We read & translate
OCR extracts the Filipino text, then it's translated to English while the original text is erased from the page.
Download, layout intact
Get a clean PDF where tables, figures, stamps, and numbers sit exactly where they were.
Filipino → English — frequently asked
My birth certificate was issued by the PSA. Does it need translating?
The PSA birth certificate form is itself in English, with field names such as ATTENDANT and INFORMANT. If the entries are in English too, it needs no translation. If only part of it is in Filipino, such as an annotation in the REMARKS/ANNOTATION box or an affidavit attached at the back, you can scan just those pages to PDF and upload them.
Can an older relative's will (huling habilin) be translated to English?
A printed or typed will can. For a notarial will, Philippine law requires the testator and the witnesses to sign every page except the last in the left margin, and every page to be numbered in sequence at the top. The English version follows the original, with the margin signatures, page numbers and notarial block left in place, so the two can be compared page by page. The other kind, a holographic will, must be written entirely in the testator's own hand. Handwriting is not read reliably, so have someone who reads Filipino go through that kind of will sentence by sentence. If the will is going to court for probate, prepare a certified translation as the court and your lawyer require.
I only have a phone photo of a barangay settlement agreement. What should I do?
Rescan it to PDF with your phone's scanner app, upload it in your phone's browser and download the translated PDF. Under Supreme Court of the Philippines case law, a settlement agreement reached at the barangay (kasunduang pag-aayos) has the same force as a final court judgment, so check the amounts, deadlines and names of both parties against the original item by item, and make sure the names are spelled as they are on ID documents.
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Simple, scan-friendly pricing. Pages are pages — no multiplier for scanned files.
Pay-as-you-go
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$0.30 a page, from 10 pages — you pay for exactly 10 pages.
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Most popularFor individuals with scans to translate every month.
- $0.09 / page
- 100 pages every month
- 5 bonus pages, refreshed daily
- Up to 300 pages and 100 MB per file
- Pages reset each month
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For high-volume users with scans to translate every week.
- $0.06 / page
- 500 pages every month
- 5 bonus pages, refreshed daily
- Unused pages roll over (up to 1,500)
- Up to 300 pages and 100 MB per file
Translate scanned PDFs in other languages
Guides on translating scanned documents
Can ChatGPT Translate a Scanned PDF? What Works and What Doesn't
Getting a scanned PDF into ChatGPT takes a workaround, and what comes back is text, or a rebuilt page you'll want to check. Here's how to do it and where it breaks.
Read guideTranslate a Scanned PDF on Your Phone (iPhone & Android)
Camera-translate apps are great for reading a page on the spot, but they don't give you a file — here's how to get an actual translated PDF from your phone.
Read guideWhy Does My Scanned PDF Translate to Gibberish? (And How to Fix It)
Random symbols, blank pages, or 'PDF tools are temporarily offline' — the cause is almost always the same one thing, and it's fixable.
Read guide