We have already written about the best translation apps for iPhone, but now we will refine the search area and consider only photo translators - applications that allow you to translate what is captured on camera, that is, they can recognize text and more or less adequately reproduce it in your own language .
1. Google Translate
Yes, Google's proprietary translator learned to translate photographs last year. Supporting more than 50 languages, to work without an Internet connection you must additionally download language packs for each language.
2. Translator Lingvo Dictionaries
The Russian development of ABBYY offers more than 50 basic dictionaries for 30 languages. Not only does it have a Photo Translation function, but it also helps with memorization. foreign words, offers exercises, search for translated words on the Web and many other interesting functions. Works autonomously. But, at least, it’s paid.
3. Translator ABBYY TextGrabber + Translator
Another ABBYY application, designed specifically for photo translation. Take a photo of the fragment you are interested in, after which the recognized text can be immediately edited, translated, sent by e-mail or SMS. An Internet connection is not required for text recognition; recognition is performed directly on the mobile device, but an Internet connection is required for translation.
4. Translator app
Another proprietary application is Bing's Translator for Windows Phone. It allows you to translate voice, scan and translate text, download dictionaries to your smartphone and work without a connection to the Internet. The translator also offers the Word of the Day service, which shows one word to memorize on the start screen.
5. Photo translator iSignTranslate
The iSignTranslate photo translator allows you to see signs, plates, signs in your language. You don't need to press anything, select anything, take a photo, just point your phone's camera at the text and the application will translate it automatically. An internet connection is required for translation.
Often PC users are faced with a situation where they need to translate foreign text from a picture. Situations can be different: there is text on a photograph that needs to be extracted from the image and translated into another language, there is a photo important document, the text of which needs to be extracted, etc. Naturally, you can perform text recognition using the ABBYY FineReader program. However, this will require the program itself, a high-quality photo and the performance of not one operation, but several.
Step-by-step instructions for translating text from a picture online
These methods will be described exclusively for PCs. If you are using mobile phone, then the translation of the picture text can be done using other resources.
To translate text from a photo, you can use two resources: Yandex.Translator and Free Online OCR. We have already written about both the first and the latter. However, this time we offer you a solution on how to extract and translate text from a foreign language from a photo. We recommend that you pay attention to several points:
- The photo quality must be normal. If the picture is not clear, then the text will not be completely extracted;
- The image format must be JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP;
- The translation will be machine-based and therefore require manual correction.
The first example of translation from a photo is the use of Yandex.Translator.
- Open Yandex.Translator. Go to the “Picture” tab.
- Select the language of the source and final translation.
- Next, you need to select or drag the picture into the online translator window.
- Now select and copy the desired text from the translator.
- This is the simplest and convenient way translate text from pictures online. The finished text can be copied and pasted into a blank .doc file.
The second resource that can be used to translate text from a picture is Free Online OCR. The translation steps are as follows:
- Open Free Online OCR.
- Select “Select your file”. Click on the “Browse” button. Select a file on your computer.
- Then we select the source translation language and the final language.
- We indicate in what format the translation should be completed.
- The finished text will be displayed in a separate window.
- Now the text can be copied and translated using any translator.
It is important to note that the presented methods will be effective if the text in the image is clear and the file format matches the above.
Sometimes users need to translate a caption from a photo. Entering all the text into the translator manually is not always convenient, so you should resort to an alternative option. You can use specialized services that recognize inscriptions on images and translate them. Today we will talk about two such online resources.
Of course, if the quality of the photo is terrible, the text is out of focus, or it’s impossible to even make out some of the details yourself, no website will be able to translate it. However, if you have a high-quality photograph, translation will not be difficult.
Method 1: Yandex.Translator
The well-known company Yandex has long developed its own text translation service. There is a tool that allows you to identify and translate the inscriptions on it through a photo loaded into it. This task is completed in just a few clicks:
- Open the main page of the Yandex.Translator website and move to the section "Picture" by clicking on the corresponding button.
- Select the language you want to translate from. If it is unknown to you, leave a tick next to the item "Auto-detection".
- Next, using the same principle, indicate the language in which you want to receive information.
- Click on the link "Choose File" or drag the image to the specified area.
- You need to select the picture in the browser and click on the button "Open".
- Those areas of the picture that the service was able to translate will be marked in yellow.
- Click on one of them to see the result.
- If you want to continue working with this text, click on the link "Open in Translator".
- The inscription that Yandex.Translator was able to recognize will be displayed on the left, and the resulting result will be shown on the right. Now you can use all the available functions of this service - editing, dubbing, dictionaries and much more.
It took just a few minutes to translate the text from a photo using the online resource in question. As you can see, there is nothing complicated about this and even an inexperienced user can cope with the task.
Method 2: Free Online OCR
The English-language Free Online OCR site works in a similar way to the previous representative, however, its operating principle and some functions are different, so let’s look at it and the translation process in more detail:
- While on home page Free Online OCR, click the button "Choose File".
- In the browser that opens, select the required image and click on "Open".
- Now you need to select the languages from which recognition will be performed.
- If you cannot determine the correct option, simply select guesses from the menu that appears.
- After completing the settings, click on "Upload".
- If at the previous stage you did not determine the language, do it now, and also rotate the image to required amount degrees if required, then click on "OCR".
- The text will appear in the form below; you can translate it using one of the offered services.
This brings our article to its logical conclusion. Today we tried to talk in as much detail as possible about two popular free online services for translating text from pictures. We hope that the information provided was not only interesting, but also useful for you.
Users are faced with the need to translate text from photos online. Situations can be different: there is text in a photograph that needs to be extracted from the image and translated into another language, there is an image of a document in foreign language, you need to translate text from a picture, etc.
You can use text recognition programs that use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology to extract text from images. Then, the text extracted from their photo can be translated using a translator. If the original image good quality, then in most cases free online services for text recognition are suitable.
In this case, the entire operation takes place in two stages: first, text recognition occurs in a program or online service, and then the text is translated using an online translator or an application installed on the computer. You can, of course, copy text from a photo manually, but this is not always justified.
Is there a way to combine two technologies in one place: immediately recognize and transfer a test from a photograph online? Unlike mobile applications, there is little choice for desktop users. But, nevertheless, I found two options for how to translate text from an image online in one place, without the help of programs and other services.
An online photo translator will recognize the text in the image and then translate it into desired language.
When translating from images online, pay attention to some points:
- the quality of text recognition depends on the quality of the original image
- In order for the service to open the picture without problems, the image must be saved in a common format (JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, etc.)
- if possible, check the extracted text to eliminate recognition errors
- the text is translated using machine translation, so the translation may not be perfect
We will use Yandex Translator and the Free Online OCR online service, which has functionality for translation of text extracted from photographs. You can use these services to translate from English into Russian, or use other language pairs of supported languages.
Yandex Translator for translation from pictures
Yandex.Translator integrates OCR optical character recognition technology, with which text is extracted from photographs. Then, using Yandex Translator technologies, the extracted text is translated into the selected language.
Go through the following steps sequentially:
- Log in to Yandex Translator in the “Pictures” tab.
- Select the source language. To do this, click on the name of the language (displayed by default English language). If you don't know what language is in the image, the translator will start auto-detection of the language.
- Select the language to translate. By default, the Russian language is selected. To change the language, click on the language name and select another supported language.
- Select a file on your computer or drag a picture into the online translator window.
- After Yandex Translator recognizes the text from the photo, click “Open in Translator”.
Two fields will open in the translator window: one with text in a foreign language (in in this case in English), another with translation into Russian (or another supported language).
- If the photo was of poor quality, it makes sense to check the recognition quality. Compare the translated text with the original in the picture, correct any errors found.
- You can change the translation in Yandex Translator. To do this, turn on the switch " New technology translation." The translation is carried out simultaneously by a neural network and a statistical model. The algorithm automatically selects the best option translation.
- Copy the translated text into a text editor. If necessary, edit the machine translation and correct errors.
Translation from photos online to Free Online OCR
The free online service Free Online OCR is designed to recognize characters from files of supported formats. The service is suitable for translation, since it optionally has capabilities for translating recognized text.
Unlike Yandex Translator, Free Online OCR achieves acceptable recognition quality only on fairly simple images, without the presence of foreign elements in the picture.
Follow these steps:
- Login to .
- In the “Select your file” option, click on the “Browse” button, select a file on your computer.
- In the “Recognition language(s) (you can select multiple)” option, select the required language from which you want to translate (you can select multiple languages). Click on the field and add the desired language from the list.
- Click on the “Upload + OCR” button.
After recognition, the text from the image will be displayed in a special field. Check the recognized text for errors.
Copy the text into a text editor. If necessary, edit and correct errors.
Conclusion
Using Yandex Translator and the Free Online OCR online service, you can translate text into the desired language from photographs or pictures online. The text from the image will be extracted and translated into Russian or another supported language.
Greetings, dear readers of the blog site! Probably many of you have encountered the need recognize text from some scanned document, book, photograph, etc. As a rule, for a large volume of text recognition from documents, special and rather expensive programs (OCR) are used. But in order to recognize a small number of pages of text, it is not at all necessary to buy an expensive application. There is a well-known free text recognition program, which I already wrote about - CuneiForm. It is simple and convenient, but it must be installed on your computer.
And if the need for text recognition from documents does not arise so often, then it would probably be more logical to use a special online service that recognizes text for free or for a symbolic amount. You can find dozens of such services on the Internet. And, each service, as a rule, has its own pros and cons, which can only be determined by the user himself.
For readers of my blog, I decided to make a small selection of online services where you can recognize texts from documents different formats.
The choice was made based on the following criteria:
The text recognition service should be free.
The number of recognized pages of text should be unlimited, and if there are minor restrictions, then they are not related to demonstrating the quality of document recognition.
The service must support Russian text recognition.
What service recognizes texts better, and which is worse, it’s up to you, dear readers, to decide. After all, the result obtained after text recognition depends on many factors. This may depend on the size of the source document (page, photograph, drawing, scanned text, etc.), format and, of course, the quality of the document being recognized.
So, I got six services where you can engage in text recognition online without any special restrictions.
In first place I put the Google Drive service, where you can do online text recognition, only because this resource is in Russian. All other “bourgeois” services are in English.
Seven services where you can recognize text online for free.
Google Drive
Registration is required here if you do not have your own Google account. But if you ever decide create your blog on blogspot, then you already have an account. It can recognize PNG, JPG, and GIF images and PDF files up to 2 MB in size. In PDF files, only the first ten pages are recognized. Recognized documents can be saved in DOC, TXT, PDF, PRT and ODT formats.
OCR Convert.
Free online text recognition service that does not require registration. Supports PDF, GIF, BMP and JPEG formats. Having recognized the text, it saves links as URLs with the TXT extension, which can be copied and pasted into the file you need. Allows you to upload five documents up to 5 MB at the same time.
i2OCR.
Registration is required for this online service. Supports OCR documents in TIF, JPEG, PNG, BMP, GIF, PBM, PGM, PPM formats. You can upload a document up to 10 MB without any restrictions. The resulting recognition result can be downloaded to your computer in the DOC extension.
NewOCR.
In my opinion, the most serious and excellent online service that does not require registration. Without restrictions, you can recognize almost any graphic files for free. Upload several pages of text at once in TIFF, PDF and DjVu formats. Can recognize texts from images in DOC files, DOCX, RTF and ODT. Select and expand the required area of page text for recognition. Supports 58 languages and can do text translation using Google translator online. You can save the obtained recognition results in TXT, DOC, ODT, RTF, PDF, HTML formats.
OnlineOcr.
Allows you to perform text recognition from 15 images in one hour without registration and for free with a maximum size of 4 MB. You can extract text from JPG, JPEG, BMP, TIFF, GIF files and save the result to your computer in the form of documents with the MS Word (DOC), MS Excel (XLS) extension or in TXT text format. But to do this you will have to enter the captcha every time. Supports 32 languages for recognition.
FreeOcr.
Online service for free recognition text that does not require registration. But to get the result you will need to enter a captcha. Recognizes PDF files and JPG, GIF, TIFF or BMP images one page at a time. There are restrictions on recognizing no more than 10 documents per hour and the image size should not exceed 5000 pixels and a volume of 2 MB. The recognized text can be copied and pasted into a document of the desired format.
OCRonline.
When recognizing texts on this online service, it is recommended that the image files be High Quality in JPG format (although it accepts other formats for recognition). You can recognize only five pages of text per week, and save it on your computer in DOC, PDF, RTF and TXT formats. Additional pages are recognized only as “bourgeois piastres” and you must register.
I hope these online text recognition services someone will be able to ease the laborious process of typing texts by hand. One way or another, these services are useful. And which one is better or worse, everyone will determine for himself.
I will be waiting for your feedback. And if any of the readers liked this selection of text recognition services, I will be very grateful to those who share the link to this page with their friends. And you and your friends will have LUCK!
At the end of this article, I would like to wish everyone well-being and success.