Services and programs for quickly translating text from an image or photograph. We select a photo translator for iOS (iPhone and iPad) The translator takes photographs and translates

Well, hello, autumn. Hello, “long-awaited” school year. Until next summer, blissful idleness and sweet entertainment. The time has come to bite into the granite of science.

I dedicate today's review to schoolchildren, students and everyone who is receiving an education. For your attention – 6 free mobile applications to recognize and translate text from photos that users like most. These programs will protect your teeth from wearing down too quickly when learning foreign languages and more.

Translate.Ru

Translate.Ru- a product of one of the best developers of automated translation systems PROMT, will not only cope with the text on a photographed page of a textbook or PC monitor, but will also teach the correct pronunciation of foreign words, and will also help you understand what the teacher is talking about.

The application is a complex of three parts: a translator, a dictionary and a phrasebook. It supports 18 popular foreign languages, including Japanese, Finnish, Korean, Portuguese, Hebrew, Turkish, Catalan, Chinese, Arabic, Greek, Dutch and Hindi. Language packs are downloaded according to the user's choice.

To translate text from a picture, just point the camera at it or download it from the gallery. As the experiment showed, Translate.Ru copes with English, French and German inscriptions on photos with a bang, but things are not so good with oriental languages. Fragment on Chinese program I didn’t recognize it at all, but in Korean I translated some phrases.

Other functions of Translate.Ru

Possibility to select the subject of the translated text, which increases the accuracy of the result.
Read and translate texts from applications and clipboard.
Translation of words and phrases spoken into a microphone.
Dictionary and phrasebook with voice assistant(pronunciation of foreign words).
“Dialogue” mode – the ability to translate your speech and your interlocutor’s messages into required languages in real time.
Integration with iMessage messenger on iOS devices.
Storing the 50 most recently translated materials on your phone. Maintaining a list of favorites.

Yandex translate

Mobile Yandex translate uses its own, also very effective algorithms. The quality of translations into Russian from the three main European languages (English, German and French) can be assessed as “good with a plus”; from Asian and others – somewhat lower, but in comparison with many analog programs its level is more than acceptable.

Yandex supports over 90 national languages. Most of them are available online only, but the 3 main ones, as well as Turkish, Italian and Spanish, are loaded into the program natively and can be used offline. There are 12 languages available in photo translation mode. In addition to those listed above, these are Polish, Chinese, Portuguese, Czech and Ukrainian.

To translate text from an image using Yandex, just point the camera at the image and tap the shutter button. To transfer photos from the gallery, squint at the thumbnail located to the left of the camera shutter button.

The program requires registration. If you use a Yandex mail account on your device, you will be logged in automatically.

Other features of Yandex.Translator

Translation of web pages, applications (via context menu in Android 6.0 and later), the contents of the clipboard.
Saving the history of translated materials, adding to favorites.
Voice input of translated text.
Pronunciation of words and phrases in English, Turkish and Russian.
Automatic language detection.
Tips for speed dial foreign words.
Smart watch support Apple Watch and Android Wear: display on-screen translations of words and entire phrases spoken into the microphone.

Microsoft Translator

Microsoft Translator– a stylishly designed, convenient and functional application capable of accurate and fast translations from 60 national languages. Works online and offline. To use the program offline, the selected language packs will have to be downloaded to the device.

Unlike Yandex, the Microsoft product supports photo translations into all or almost all 60 languages (nothing is said about the limitation). It cannot be said that their quality is always high, but a passage of text in Korean was recognized and translated quite decently, in Chinese - a little worse.

The program can translate captions on images captured on camera and stored in the device’s gallery. To translate text from an external image, touch the camera button and point the lens at the area of interest.

The button for loading photos from the gallery into the program is located in the same section.

Other Microsoft Translator features and functionality

Simultaneous translation of spoken phrases in online conversations with up to 100 participants.
Built-in dictionary and phrasebook with transliteration and pronunciation of translated phrases.
Translation of texts in other programs via the context menu (supported starting from Android 6.0).
Saving history and maintaining a list of favorites.
Supports Android Wear and Apple Watch smartwatches - displaying translations of spoken words and phrases on the screen.

Google Translate

Google Translate, perhaps the most famous and popularly loved remedy automatic translations. And the record holder for the number of supported language packs– there are as many as 103 of them here and 59 of them are available in offline mode. Photo translation of texts from pictures is possible into 39 languages.

Translation quality Google service Translate is accepted as the standard by which competitors are measured. Many texts processed by him require almost no manual corrections, but, unfortunately, it is impossible to achieve an absolute ideal in this matter. By the way, test fragments in Chinese and Korean, photographed from a laptop screen, were recognized quite correctly.

To perform a photo transfer to Google app Translate, tap the camera icon and point it at the desired object. What to do next, I think, is clear without explanation.

Other Google Translate features

Conversational mode (simultaneous translation from 32 languages).
Handwritten mode (translation of handwritten text).
Translation of text data from applications and SMS messages.
Phrasebook (empty, to be filled in by the user).
Voice input and voicing of translated phrases.

Translator Foto – Voice, Text & File Scanner

Application Translator Foto – Voice, Text & File Scanner Although it has a smaller set of functions, it works no worse than its competitors. On the contrary, it is even better than many, since, like Google Translate, it supports more than 100 languages.

Translating text from photos is the main function of the program. To use it, touch the button with the image of the camera, select the source - gallery or new photo. Selecting the second option will launch the Camera app. After taking the photo, the photo of the text you want to translate will be loaded into the program. To launch the translator, tap the button in the lower right corner of the photo.

Translator Foto recognizes the languages of printed text in pictures quite well and translates them into Russian quite well. The accuracy of the results is almost at the same level as Microsoft products and Yandex.

Other features of Translator Foto – Voice, Text & File Scanner

Recognition and translation of spoken phrases.
Translation of copied or manually entered text.
Voiceover of translated phrases.
Saving in another program or sending to another user the typed (copied) text along with the translation.
Saving history and favorites list.

TextGrabber

TextGrabber came from the pen of the leading developer of software products in the field of linguistics - ABBYY. It may be inferior to Google Translate as a translator, but it probably has no equal in terms of accuracy in recognizing printed lines in images. When the program is connected to the Internet, more than 100 foreign languages are available for translations; in offline mode – 10. Text recognition is carried out in more than 60 languages.

The program recognizes and translates printed inscriptions on images in photo and video modes. The first mode is convenient when the picture is small and fits completely on the screen mobile device. The second is indispensable when recognizing texts on large surfaces, for example, on the pages of books or a computer monitor.

TextGrabber works quickly and clearly, but it is too intrusive in asking you to subscribe to paid version. Although this is his only noticed flaw.

Other features and functionality of TextGrabber

Recognition and translation of texts from pictures in the gallery (like competitors).
Built-in editor for manual corrections.
Taking notes (in free version only 3 notes available).
Clickability of links, addresses, phone numbers in recognized and translated text.
Transfer text data to other applications, automatically copy to the clipboard.

Happy translation!

Yandex has developed a service that can recognize text and translate it from photos and pictures. So far, only this feature is available for 12 languages, but the developers promise a larger number of supported languages in the future. And thanks to Yandex translator, you can translate from an image into 46 languages. Today the service recognizes Russian, English, Portuguese, Czech, Italian, Polish, Ukrainian, Chinese, Turkish, German, French, Spanish in images. As the developers say, this translation method will be appropriate when the user wants to translate a note in a magazine with his favorite actor or showman.

The service algorithm is able to detect text from an image even if it Bad quality, and also if the image is stretched or scanned, or photographed at an angle. Yandex developed this algorithm independently from scratch. The application translates words, sentences and can even translate an entire paragraph.

How to use Yandex photo translator

Now that the text is recognized by the Yandex.Translator service, you need to click on the “Open in Translator” link. It will open before you new page with a window divided into two parts, where the first will contain the language that was presented in the picture. And in the second part there will be a translation into the language that you indicated, into which the translation should have been made.

Yandex.Translator window with source text and translation

What to do if the translation quality is not acceptable?

If you receive a translated text where the quality is not acceptable, you cannot understand the text, you need to check it in another way or. For this purpose the developers this application provide additional settings to change the translation process. There is a special option for users “ New technology translation." If it is not activated, fix it.

New translation technology

The next translation will be done in two ways, using improved technology that uses a neural network for translation and using a static model. Then you can choose the best option yourself or let the program do it.

After this, copy the translated text onto your computer and analyze it, perhaps correct errors in places and bring the sentences into proper form. After all, the translation was carried out by machine, so the text will most likely need to be edited manually.

How does Yandex.Translator recognize text in pictures?

This search is based on optical character recognition technology. Yandex.Translator recognizes text using two technologies: image recognition and a text detection module. Neural network independently learns to identify text using millions of viewed texts in images. Such self-study allows you to achieve high quality translated texts. With each new job The algorithm performs an increasingly better job, because it identifies and remembers only lines of text that it is 100% sure of.

Next, the work of the recognition module is to separate the lines and determine the formed characters from them. Each character is defined carefully, the algorithm determines them based on what has already been learned. For example, in the Russian language there is a large letter “O”, a small “o” and a number “0” zero. They are very similar to each other. Therefore, the language model then takes over the baton and makes the final decision about which symbol to use in which situations. This model is based on language dictionaries; it remembers not only the correspondence of symbols with them (dictionaries), but also takes into account the context of application, that is, the proximity of symbols in certain uses.

Thus, if a word familiar to the algorithm is formed from the selected probable symbols, then it is able to decide that the word is composed correctly and again takes into account the available symbols from this word. This is how we get the result in Yandex.Translator when translating from a picture online.

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 by the required number of 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 on translating text from a picture. We hope that the information provided was not only interesting, but also useful for you.

A situation may arise in our lives when we need to translate text placed on a photo from a foreign language. Of course, we can type this text letter by letter into some online translator, and thus carry out the operation we need. But you can do it much easier by using the functionality of special services. Below we will look at which online photo translator can process the text and how to work with it.

Features of the functionality of online translators that recognize text from photographs

The work of services for recognizing text from photos is based on a set of OCR algorithms. (abbreviation “Optical Character Recognition” - “optical character recognition”). Such algorithms have been developed and refined for many years, but 100% recognition from the entire variety of images has not yet been achieved.

Services for text recognition from photos work in two main steps: first, the text in the picture is recognized using OCR, and then the resulting text is sent to an online translator (usually Google Translator or Bing). The output machine translation text is not always perfect, but you can form an opinion about the essence of the recognized text.

To perform a high-quality translation from a photograph online, please note that:

Let's look at the list of resources that allow you to translate from a photo online.

Translate.yandex.ru with OCR function from Yandex

Yandex is known for its high-quality solutions in various areas of digital content. The now popular Yandex translator appeared back in 2009, and in 2017 its framework was translated into neural machine basis, which increased the quality of his operations several times. In addition to the direct translation function, Yandex.Translator also has an OCR function, which allows you to perform text recognition on an image online, and then translate this text into the user’s desired language. The quality of recognition on the service is high.

Do the following:

Clicking on the inscription “” will open Yandex.Translator, where the recognized foreign text will be located in the window on the left, and its Russian translation will be in the window on the right.

Clicking on “Open in Translator” will open the recognized text in Yandex.Translator

Or you can use the cursor to mark the text you need, and you will immediately see its translation next to it.

Select the desired part of the text, and its translation will be immediately displayed

Newocr.com – translate text from images online

The newocr.com service is a free English-language service designed to search for text on an uploaded image, followed by editing or translating it. The service is very easy to use; Google Translator or the Bing translator (Bing Translator) are used for translation. The recognition quality on the service is average.

Do the following:

I2ocr.com – a free resource for recognizing words in photos

Service i2ocr.com its functionality is similar to the resource mentioned above newocr.com, allowing find and extract text from image, with the ability to edit, format, index, search and translate. The resource recognizes more than 60 languages, supports popular image formats, analyzes documents with multiple columns, and the number of downloads per resource is unlimited. The recognition quality here is average.

Do the following:

Onlineocr.net – online text translator

Unlike the resources listed above, the service performs only text recognition, without the function of translating it. The text obtained with its help can be simply transferred to any translator (for example, Google Translator), and translated into Russian there. The maximum file size uploaded to the resource is 15 megabytes.

Procedure:

Mobile applications

We also note a number of mobile applications that allow you to translate text from a captured image (or an image already on your phone).

Fast text recognition with Google Translate

Application	Possibilities
Google translator	In its functionality it has a “Camera” button, with which translation is carried out. After selecting two languages (basic and Russian), you need to tap on “Camera” and point the phone’s camera at the text required for translation. Application will immediately display its translation. You can also simply select the text you need to translate, click on “Select all" and click on the blue arrow to perform the translation
ABBYY Lingvo dictionaries (Android)	Allows you to perform both live translation (by pointing the camera) and translation of text from an image already on your phone
ABBYY Textgabber (Android, iOS)	Scans and translates any text found in an image

Conclusion

Above, we discussed which translator from a photograph or online image will help in translating text. Most high quality text recognition was shown by Yandex.Translator, which demonstrated a result close to optimal. Alternative English-language services showed rather average results, so we recommend Yandex.Translator for recognizing text from photos online.

In today's age of globalization, we can often find photographs with text in English. If you know the language of Shakespeare and Byron, great, but what about non-English users who want to know the meaning? English words on the picture? In this case, a number of tools that can perform recognition and quick translation can help us. Below we will look at which translators with in English into Russian using any photo are available to us absolutely free, and how to work with them.

How do translators from English into Russian recognize text from a photograph?

Text recognition from photos is performed using OCR technology (“Optical Character Recognition” - optical character recognition). This technology has not yet reached the level of ideal work, and continues to improve. Accurate recognition and translation is possible if there is a clear image in the photo, when the letters are separated from each other. They are also painted in a contrasting color, different from the surrounding background.

OCR technology allows you to recognize text in an image

At the same time, the primacy in translation and recognition technologies belongs to large companies such as Google, Microsoft, Yandex and a number of others that are able to invest significant financial resources in research. The quality of the tools they provide is at a high level and is not comparable to competing products from other developers.

When recognizing texts, Google uses the "Tesseract OCR" tool, previously purchased from HP

Let's look at which photo translators in different languages can be used for free.

Google Translator - a convenient application for reading from photos

Of course, Google translator (Android, iOS) is top class. In addition to the direct text translation function, it allows you to translate images, as they say, “on the go,” simply by pointing the camera of your smartphone at the inscription.

Google Translate lets you translate images on the go

To work with the translator, just launch it and click on the camera icon. You can either use your phone to translate on the go, or download the photo you need from your phone’s memory. And convert text from English to Russian using a photo for free.

Click on the camera icon

Microsoft Translator - instantly read and translate text in any language

“Microsoft Translator” (Android, iOS) is very similar to the Google translator we mentioned above, except that it does not have the function of instantly translating photos.

Main differences from Google Translator:

And make no mistake, this application is not just a photo translator from English to Russian or any other online language. It can translate voice and text, and supports more than 60 languages. You can even have bilingual conversations by having two people literally place a phone between them and take turns speaking. Great, isn't it?

iTranslate - professional picture translator

Although the developers highlight the voice and vocabulary elements of this program, the iTranslate app (Android, iOS) does have photo translator capabilities for its professional version, which we can't help but mention.

This feature is called "iTranslate Lens". This is the same point-and-translate option, but an important feature of the program is the ability to manipulate the size of the translation window and move it. You can expand or shrink it so that any text found inside your field will be converted. Unlike the first two apps, which place the work window at a dead center on the screen, in iTranslate you can drag it wherever you want. And, when your photo translation is done, you have the opportunity view results in full screen mode for unobstructed viewing. Very comfortably.

The professional version of iTranslate works well with photos

Online services for translation from English into Russian using a picture

Online services are handy tool to transform text from English into Russian using a photograph. They do not require installation on your PC (smartphone) additional programs, carry out fast translation. At the same time, the quality of their recognition is generally inferior to specialized mobile translator applications, which we will consider below.

To work with such services just upload the desired photo with English text to them. Further, if necessary, it is necessary select the inscription on the image for translation and start the recognition procedure. In just a second or two you will get the desired result.

We are considering online services for translation from photo

Yandex Translator - will help you convert text from a photo for free

Yandex is famous for the quality of the digital products it creates. So in our case, her service for translating text in a picture online is one of best options. Working with it is very simple, convenient, and the recognition results obtained are at a high level.

Do the following:

Go to translate.yandex.ru;
Tap on the words “Select file" and upload the picture to the resource;
Click on "Select file" to upload a photo to the resource
The inscriptions will be automatically colored yellow.
You need to tap on the inscription on the picture and it will be translated;
Recognized inscriptions will be marked in yellow
To make a translation, click on “ Open in Translator» on the top right and view the result.
View the result
NewOCR.com - convenient Translate online
NewOCR.com is a free OCR service that can recognize and translate photo captions in many languages. The service does not require registration, securely stores data uploaded to it, and runs on the " Tesseract OCR"and can recognize 122 languages. The service's tools allow you to select places in the photo that need to be recognized, which increases the efficiency of the service.