How to translate an EPUB and make a bilingual ebook
Updated 2026-11-01
Short answer
How do I translate a whole ebook and read it side by side with the original?
Upload the EPUB (or a Kindle MOBI or AZW3 without DRM) to DocWise.ai and choose a language. The book is translated chapter by chapter and comes back as an ebook in the same format, with chapters and the table of contents intact. Add the bilingual edition to get the original and the translation together, paragraph by paragraph. Books are counted at 2,000 characters a page, so a 400,000-character book is 200 pages.
Step by step
Upload the book
EPUB, or a Kindle MOBI or AZW3 file without DRM. The page count and price appear before anything starts.
Choose outputs
Keep the translated ebook, and add the bilingual edition and a PDF if you want them.
Try the opening first
“Try 3 pages first” translates the start of the book, so you can judge the style before paying for the rest.
Read side by side, then download
Check the translation next to the original in the review, then download the books.
What the bilingual edition is good for
Language learners read the translation and glance at the original when a sentence is interesting; translators and editors use it to review a whole book quickly. The bilingual edition keeps both in the same ebook, paragraph by paragraph, and works in ordinary ebook readers.
Which plan a book needs
- Free accounts and page packs take files up to 50 pages, which fits short books and single chapters.
- Most full books need Pro or Ultra (up to 1,000 pages and 200 MB per file). Pro is $12 a month for 500 credits.
- A 200-page book costs 200 credits at Fast, 400 at Balanced or 1000 at Best.
Kindle books
MOBI and AZW3 files without DRM are converted, translated and returned in their own format, with an EPUB copy as well. Books protected by DRM can’t be opened by anyone but the reader app, so they can’t be translated.
See it side by side
A sample as our parser reads it, next to the translation. The line below says where the text comes from.
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice “without pictures or conversations?”
Alicia empezaba a cansarse mucho de estar sentada con su hermana a la orilla del río y de no tener nada que hacer: una o dos veces se había asomado al libro que leía su hermana, pero no tenía dibujos ni conversaciones, «¿y de qué sirve un libro —pensó Alicia— sin dibujos ni conversaciones?».
So she was considering in her own mind (as well as she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.
Así pues, estaba considerando en su mente (lo mejor que podía, pues el día caluroso la hacía sentirse muy soñolienta y atontada), si el placer de hacer una cadena de margaritas valdría la pena la molestia de levantarse y recogerlas, cuando de pronto un Conejo Blanco de ojos rosados pasó corriendo cerca de ella.
There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!” (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but…
No había nada de muy extraordinario en ello; ni a Alicia le pareció tan fuera de lo común oír al Conejo decirse: «¡Dios mío! ¡Dios mío! ¡Voy a llegar tarde!» (cuando lo pensó después, se le ocurrió que debería haberse extrañado de esto, pero en aquel momento todo le pareció de lo más natural); pero…
Source: Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Project Gutenberg #11, public domain)
Questions
Are images and the cover kept?
Yes. The book comes back in its own format with its images, chapters and table of contents; only the text is translated.
Can I translate a book into Chinese?
Yes, into Simplified or Traditional Chinese or any of the other target languages, with a bilingual edition if you want one.
Can I translate Kindle books?
DRM-free MOBI and AZW3 files, yes. Books with DRM can’t be opened outside the Kindle apps.
DocWise.ai at a glance
- What it is
- DocWise.ai is a web app that translates whole documents with AI and gives them back in the same format with the layout kept, after you check the translation side by side.
- Formats
- 18 formats: PDF (including scanned PDFs), Word (DOCX, DOC), RTF, OpenDocument (ODT), PowerPoint (PPTX), Excel (XLSX), EPUB, Kindle without DRM (MOBI, AZW3), subtitles (SRT, VTT, ASS), Markdown, plain text and images (PNG, JPEG, WebP).
- Languages
- 78 target languages, including Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Japanese, Korean and right-to-left scripts such as Arabic, Hebrew and Persian. The source language is detected automatically.
- What you get back
- The same format with the layout kept, a bilingual version (side-by-side PDF or a bilingual file of the same type), and for most formats a clean reading PDF.
- Price
- 30 free credits on signup. Page packs from $5 for 100 credits, valid a year. Pro $12 a month for 500 credits. Ultra $39 a month for 2,000 credits. No minimum charge per file.
- Credits per page
- Fast 1, Balanced 2, Best 5, Expert 10. A page is one PDF page or slide, or 2,000 characters of text.
- File limits
- Free and page packs: 20 MB and 50 pages per file. Pro and Ultra: 200 MB and 1,000 pages per file.
- Privacy
- Zero data retention with the AI model providers and no training on your documents. Files are deleted after 7 days (Free, page packs), 30 days (Pro) or 90 days (Ultra), or whenever you delete them.
- Try first
- Translate the first 3 pages of any file before paying for the rest; failed pages are refunded automatically.
Facts checked against the live product on 2026-11-01.
Try it on your own file
30 free credits when you sign up, and the first 3 pages of any file as a trial.