In the fast paced digital world that we live in and are easily connected to each other, pictures have turned to an extremely important way of interaction and communication. It doesn’t matter whether you are simply browsing through the internet, purchasing stuff from online stores or surfing on social media platforms, you are bound to come across images with text everywhere. Also, the images can travel across the span of the globe since the internet has no boundaries whatsoever. Theses images will certainly carry some text in a language that you do not read and understand. So, it becomes extremely necessary for you to translate the text in the image if you really want to communicate with people across the world. This assumes more significance if you are a brand that desires to expand its business across borders.
Fortunately, the technology of image translation has evolved a lot and turning better and better. There are several online Image Translation tools that can easily decode the text from the image by OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and convert the text into the languages that you choose.
In this article we will be exploring 4 Free Online Image Translators that can easily identify the text in an image and translate it into numerous other languages.
1. Yandex Translate
This is an extremely popular and widely used image translation tool that offers support for close to 100 languages. You can click on the link given below to navigate to Yandex Translate.
At the outset, select the source (original) and output (translated) language by clicking on the corresponding links at the top of the web page. Next, upload your image file (maximum 5 Mb) in any format such as JPG, PNG, GIF and more. After successful uploading, Yandex translate runs automatically, performs the OCR process to identify the text in the image, translates it into the language that you have chosen and generates the output image. Any other elements in the image such as graphics, drawings, photos etc are not altered or manipulated in any way.
If you wish to copy the translated contents as text, you can click on the button ‘Open as Text’ at the top right of the webpage. You can use the buttons ‘Translation’ and ‘Original’ to toggle between the original and translated images for comparison. The toolbar on the left of the webpage helps you to rotate the image and zoom in and out of it.
Click here to navigate to Yandex Translate.
2. Google Lens
Let’s move on to the next online Image Translation tool namely, Google Lens which is extremely popular among internet surfers. Tech savvy people describe it as a search engine meant for the real world. Google Lens uses powerful AI models to identify the text and objects in an image and then allows you to learn more about them. Further, you can also interact with them in all sorts of innovative ways like searching information about individual graphic elements inside a picture, translating the identified text and more.
To use Google Lens for image translation, navigate to google.com, click on the ‘Search by image’ icon at the end of the search and upload your picture from your local system or by way of an image link. Wait for a while for the image to be uploaded and processed and then click on the ‘Translate’ button in the toolbar at the bottom. The source (original) language will be identified automatically. To select the source and translated language, click on the corresponding buttons at the top of the image and the translated text will be visible in the panel towards the right as well as at the original location in the image. You can copy this text and use wherever you wish.
3. Baidu Translate
Baidu Translate is a popular online text as well as image translation service from China and supports more than 100 languages. You can click on the link below to access it. Make sure that your browser gets the page translated to English or a language known to you as it is a Chinese website.
Choose the image whose text you wish to translate, copy it onto the clipboard and paste it in the box on the webpage. You can also specify the URL of the image if it is available online. The source language in the image will be detected automatically. Select the target language and you will be able to view the translation towards the right of the page. Copy the translated text and use it wherever you require it.
Click here to navigate to Baidu Image Translate
4. DeepL Translator
DeepL Translator, based in Cologne in Germany was launched in 2017. It automatically detects the text in an image and translates to the selected language but the image will have to be converted to PDF format as DeepL translator does not support image file formats.
At the outset, get your image converted to the PDF format using online converters such as ILovePDF or SmallPDF. Next, click on the link below and drop your image onto the box on the left. After the image is successfully uploaded, select the target language from the left panel and click on the ‘Translate’ button.
It may take a while for the translation to be performed at the end of which the original text in the PDF will be replaced with the translated text, a new PDF will be generated with the changes and automatically downloaded to your system. The original graphics and photos in the image are not distorted.
Click here to navigate to DeepL Translator.
Closing Words:
You can try out the websites that we have explored above and test which one of them works best for you. My personal choice will be Yandex Translate for the simple reason that it generates a new image with the translated text without distorting other graphics, and in addition to this it also provides the translation in text format that you can use in any word processor.
People who travel extensively often find it difficult to read or understand signboards, flyers, packaging labels cards etc in a new country or region. The websites listed above can be of great help to them too.
