Asian, Cyrillic, and right-to-left text in PDFs

Asian, Cyrillic, and right-to-left text in PDFs

Asian language PDFs

You can use Acrobat to view, search, and print PDF documents that contain Asian text (Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Japanese, and Korean). You can also use these languages when you fill in forms, add comments, and apply digital signatures.

Almost all of the Acrobat features are supported for Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Japanese, and Korean text if you install the respective Asian language font packs.

In Acrobat in Windows, you must install the Asian language support files by using the custom installation and selecting the Asian Language Support options under Create Adobe PDF and View Adobe PDF.

PDFMaker and the Adobe PDF printer automatically embed most Asian fonts in your file when creating PDF files. You can control whether Asian fonts are embedded.

In Windows, you may be able to view and print files that contain Asian languages without having the necessary Asian language support installed on your system. If you try to open a PDF file for which language support is required, you are automatically prompted to install the required fonts.

Cyrillic, Central European, and Eastern European language PDFs

You can work with Adobe PDF files that contain Cyrillic text (including Bulgarian and Russian), Central European text, and Eastern European text (including Czech, Hungarian, and Polish) if the fonts are embedded in the PDF files. If the fonts are embedded, you can view and print the files on any system. Fonts do not need to be embedded to use the Search feature.

Note

If you open a PDF file in which form fields or text boxes contain these languages but the fonts are not embedded and are not installed on your system, choosing Help > Check For Updates Now automatically prompts you to download and install the necessary fonts.

Hebrew, Arabic, Thai, and Vietnamese language PDFs

Acrobat supports the entry and display of Thai and Vietnamese text. In Windows only, Arabic and Hebrew are also supported. By default, Right-To-Left Language Options is enabled under Arabic and Hebrew regional settings (in Windows).

Enable right-to-left languages

Enabling right-to-left language options displays the user interface elements for controlling paragraph direction, digit style, and ligature. When this option is selected, you can specify the writing direction (left-to-right or right-to-left) and type of digits (Western or Arabic-Indic) used for creating and filling out certain form fields, adding digital signatures, and creating text box markups.

Enable Right-To-Left Language Options is enabled by default under Arabic and Hebrew regional settings.

  1. In the Preferences dialog box under Categories, select Language.
  2. Select Enable Right-To-Left Language Options.

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