OCR not working with Japanese and Chinese but OK with English and German

[Alicja260254448hlp]

I thought I could do OCR with Adobe Acrobat Standard so I bought the product.

But then it fails all the time with OCR into Japanese and Chinese. With the message of "unknown error" (translated into English from my GUI)

Now after countless time of trying -- uninstall and reinstall. It won't open up, so I can't read the version info.

I'm using Windows 10 with Adobe Acrobat Standard installed through Creative Cloud, so I guess it's the latest version. I also try adjusting my computer to using Unicode instead of default CP950. Won't work either.

[Amal.]

Hi @Alicja260254448hlp 

We are sorry for the delay in response.

Please go through the help page https://helpx.adobe.com/document-cloud/help/using-ocr-exportpdf.html and see if that works.

By default, OCR uses the language selected in the My Information dialog box. The OCR engine uses the selected language to interpret the scanned text. Selecting the correct language improves the accuracy of the conversion, as the OCR engine uses language-specific dictionaries for conversion. For non-Latin languages like Japanese, the OCR engine cannot interpret and convert the text unless you've selected the appropriate language.

Regards

Amal

[Jared31534873y6za]

If the wrong language was selected, Acrobat would not show an error, it would just interpret the characters incorrectly. Therefore, this obviously isn't the problem. I'm having the same "unkown error" problem when selecting any non-Latin language to use OCR on. Since this is the only reason I got my company to get me an Acrobat Pro License, I need a resolution to this problem and quickly, and I'm feeling like the victim of fraud since Adobe's advertising that Acrobat Pro is able to OCR Korean and Japanese is evidently false. 

[Amal.]

Hope you are doing well and thanks for reaching out.

You can find the option to OCR in Japanese under the Edit PDF tool at the right.

Open PDF in the Acrobat application and click on Edit PDF at right.

Then under 'Scanned Documents' click on "Settings".

In Scanned document editing settings, select the required language from the drop-down of "Recognize Text in".

Then click OK to save settings.

Check if this helps.

Let us know if you experience any issues.

~Amal

[pnzwAhde]

Hey, the top answer is the right way to go. Obviously, Acrobat lacks a prompt telling user to download opitional components for non-latin language OCR. The bug has been here for 3 years. You should fix this problem instead of guiding people to useless help page.

[Simon329441654u8n · Accepted solution]

Hi Alicja260254448hlp

I think I may have found a solution to your problem. Launch Acrobate. Under the Edit tab choose "Preferences." Under "categories" on the left pane of the Preference box choose "Updater." Check the box to install optional components. Close Acrobat, then relaunch. Go to "Help" and click "check for updates." Adobe should then update. Once this is done relaunch Adobe and you should be able to do Japanese OCR (I was able to). Hope this helps.

[Naifei238708422s4k]

Thank you man, this method fixed my problem on 2 Sep 2024!

[Simon329441654u8n]

Glad it worked for you! I seached everywhere for this solution!

[simone_8994]

I registreded to this Community only in order to thank you. It worked for me as well. Cheers, Simone

[simona64249123]

😊👍

[cheung0203]

Thank you, it works!

[pnzwAhde]

This answer is amazing, you are a genius. Obviously, Acrobat lacks a prompt telling user to download opitional components for non-latin language OCR. Adobe should fix this problem.