Translate Image to English

How to translate a picture to English

English is the language most people want when they land on a page they cannot read. It might be a product photo from an overseas shop, a message screenshot or a notice on a wall. The steps below work for all of them.

1. Choose the image. Drag it into the box above, click to browse, or paste a screenshot with Ctrl+V.
2. Tell us the source language. Pick the language written in the picture from the first menu. This matters because the reader looks for different letter shapes in different languages.
3. Keep English as the target. It is already set in the second menu, so just press Translate.
4. Read and copy. The original text appears on the left and the English version on the right.

What works best

A sharp, straight, well lit photo gives the cleanest result. If the text is small, move closer instead of zooming digitally, because a zoomed picture is often blurrier than it looks on screen. Crop away anything that is not text, such as borders, fingers or patterned backgrounds.

Common language pairs

People most often translate Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic and Russian into English. If you are not sure which language you are looking at, try the most likely one first. If the recognized text looks like nonsense, switch the source language and run it again.

When English is not enough

You can also go the other direction. Change the second menu to Spanish, French or any other listed language to translate English text on a picture into the language you need. For screenshots in particular, see our screenshot translator guide, and for restaurant photos try the menu translator.

A quick word on accuracy

Machine translation is good at meaning and weaker at nuance. Use it to understand what something says, then ask a professional to confirm anything important. Our disclaimer explains the limits in more detail.