Do you need an image translation? Smartcat AI image translator is a leading enterprise solution. Do you need to translate photo content for marketing purposes? Perhaps you're a designer who needs to translate text in image files.
Whatever your needs, we’ve prepared a quick guide on how to ai translate image content for a wide range of purposes.
Position | Purpose | Services to try out |
Marketer | High-quality translations embedded in images with formatting intact | |
Designer | Create multilingual designs |
Need to understand the text? Try out the apps
Say you’re browsing the web or looking at a foreign document and you come across an image you want to understand. This could be anything from a street sign in another language to a product label or chart.
That’s not the situation when you need complex translation software, is it? So, we’d go with a web or a lightweight mobile app that offers machine translation in this case.
Pros:
No or minimum installation efforts
Easy-peasy interface
Instant translation results
Cons:
Limited functionality: no editing options
Just one translation engine under the hood in most cases
Broken formatting: the text is not embedded in the image
If that’s enough for you, grab these four solutions from the top of Google. All absolutely free.
For desktop:
translateimages.site - an app that is so minimalistic that it doesn’t even have a name different from its URL. But still, it’s based on Microsoft Translator and Google Translate and detects the text quite well and can translate both files and images from the web via links
Translate Image - another super-simple app, that is a bit weaker than the one above since it only translates your text word-by-word.
For mobile:
Google Translate app is simple to use. Just open the app, point it at the image you want to translate, and it will do its best to recognize the text in the image and provide a translation. And it actually works both with iOS and Android. Just remember that the data is shared with Google.
Photo Translator is an Android only app, but iPhone owners shouldn’t feel left out as their integrated Photos app does the job really well. Coming back to Photo Translator it supports 100 languages and offers unlimited translation for all users.
Looking for more? Check out if a TMS can help
As a marketer, you may need to use an image text translator as part of your work. For example, if you’re working on a global campaign you need to create marketing materials for an international audience or analyze your competitors’ ones.
Though Google machine translation still works, it lacks security and it won't produce translations adapted to your company voice. You therefore need something more than what we've described above. Perhaps your requirements look like this:
Quality: Just machine translation isn’t enough, so ideally you need to be able to edit the translation, invite your colleagues for review, and possibly hire a professional editor or translator.
Functionality: Apart from various editing options it would be good to have the functionality for embedding the translated text back into the image without inviting a designer.
Flexibility: As you are looking for something more than a single-use solution you should consider such options like saving translated pieces for further use, creating a virtual space, where you can simultaneously work on translations with your team, and more.
Is this what you're looking for? Then you should consider a Translation Management System (TMS) like Smartcat.
TMSs are designed to help you complete complex translation and localization tasks. They are usually based on advanced technology featuring machine translation, editing, and various workflow and project management tools.
If you need to translate picture text or PDF files, Smartcat's built-in OCR feature makes extracting text really easy. But the key feature is that after the text is translated and edited, you can put it back into the image in a click. Just have a look how it works with a PDF.
And there’s more to it:
Convenient editing. Smartcat offers what we call a “Computer-Aided Translation” (CAT) Editor. It splits your text into sentences and displays it in a bilingual grid, allowing you to review and correct the translation sentence by sentence.
Assigning in-house or external translators to your tasks. You can share translations with your team or external collaborators right in Smartcat, and that’s absolutely free. You can also find a service provider right in Smartcat as it features a huge marketplace of 500,000 language professionals.
Providing for quality and consistency. Features such as glossaries, built-in spell checker and translation quality assurance system will help you ensure that your translations are high-quality and consistent.
Saving on translation costs. Smartcat features translation memories that remember and reuse previously translated text, which means the initial investments will quickly pay off and allow you to build an efficient workflow for translating as many images as you need.
OCR+Machine Translation+Image Editor
It may happen that you’re not ready for a TMS yet. Then we’ve got one more solution for you.
You might go with recognizing the text in the image (OCR) and translating it separately. It’s definitely less convenient, as you need at least three tools instead of one: a tool to extract the text from the image, another tool - to translate it, and one more to put the text back. Moreover, it’s not at all as cheap as it may seem at first glance as it can take hours of your time.
Though if you are still eager to consider a combination of Google Drive, a machine translation tool you like and a simple image editor like Photopea.
Google Drive has a pretty decent OCR feature built in. Just upload your image to Drive, right-click on it, and select Open with > Google Docs. Google will do its best to convert the image to text, and it does a pretty good job most of the time.
As for machine translation tools, try an online one. These work quite well if you just need to translate a few short and simple phrases. The specific tool to use will depend mostly on the languages you’re dealing with.
The most difficult part is adding the new text to the image.
Photopea is a powerful but simple image editor supporting both raster and vector graphics. It is designed for all kinds of tasks from resizing images to creating webpages and illustrations.
They have quite a nice tutorial on how to replace the text in the image. Feel free to study it, but remember: it would take seconds and no effort with Smartcat.
Creating multilingual designs? Find you integration
International projects are cool, but they require a lot of synchronization. Each time the layout changes in one language, you have to change all the rest. In most cases you have to manually export the text from your design, translate it using a TMS, machine translation, or other tool, and then import the translated text back into your design.
But why not look at an option where a TMS is integrated with your design tool. It will detect changes in your designs, and deliver new translations automatically.
If you use Figma for your design work, Smartcat has you covered with its Transator for Figma. The plugin connects to your Figma accounts, downloads the texts from the frame, sends them for translation and then pushes them back. It also allows to switch between languages with just a few clicks.
Bottom line
To sum up, here’s what you need to know about translating images:
If you’re just looking for a photo language translator for personal use, Google Translate or a similar app to do the job.
If you need to translate an image for marketing purposes, your best bet is to use a TMS. If you’re looking for a tool that can handle both OCR and translation, Smartcat is the way to go.
If you need to translate an image as part of a design project, your best bet is to use a TMS integrated with your design tool (e.g., Smartcat’s Figma plugin if you use Figma).
We hope you found the solution that best suits your needs in this article. If you have further questions or other formats to translate, check out our quick guides:
FAQ
Can you use AI to translate an image?
Yes, to use AI to translate an image, you need to use software that can read the text inside the image file. This text may be overlayed or embedded. Smartcat can extract all types of text from image files. It then uses artificial intelligence (AI) to translate the text extracted from the image ready for review.
Which is the best image translator?
Smartcat language AI platform can translate a wide range of image formats. Reasons why enterprises choose Smartcat include its high levels of security (Smartcat never uses your data), access to the Smartcat marketplace to work with vendors without onboarding, and the use of translation memories and glossaries to be able to train its AI to generate on-brand translations with +95% accuracy.
Why isn’t Google Translate recommended to translate text in images?
Google Translate uses your data to train its machine translation software. This means it’s unsuitable for confidential content. Not only that but Google Translate is generic machine translation software. This means that the translations it offers you aren’t adapted to your company voice or terminology preferences. It’s therefore unable to achieve comparable levels of accuracy to trained AI translation, which means your review costs will be much higher. If you’re an organization, you’ll also need a translation management system to be able to manage the translations Google produces.
What image files is Smartcat compatible with?
Smartcat uses advanced optical character recognition (OCR) to enable it to read embedded text in images. As a result, it’s compatible with a wide range of image formats. These include its JPG translator and its PNG translator. Smartcat is also compatible with Adobe Photoshop files via its PSD translator. See a full list of the +12 image formats that Smartcat supports as part of its range of +80 supported file formats.
How can you translate an image in Smartcat?
Just set up your free trial and upload the image file. Smartcat will automatically extract the text and identify the source language. Then, select the target language(s) that you want the image translated into. Smartcat AI will automatically translate the text. You can then review it and download the image files in the new language. If your images are held in your CMS or LMS, you may like to check out Smartcat’s integrations to enable you to avoid uploading and downloading files.
Does Smartcat change the design of the image?
Smartcat will try to keep the image design intact. Some languages differ in average sentence length. So, the sentences in your image might get a bit longer or shorter, which can affect design. In Smartcat Editor, you can preview what the final file will look like and make edits before finalizing the translation.
Is Smartcat image translation secure?
With Smartcat, your data stay yours. Smartcat never uses your content to train its AI translation engines. Learn more about Smartcat’s security protocols.
How can you optimize an image for translation?
Ways to optimize an image for translation include leaving extra space for text expansion and using icons for universal symbols. You can also make the process easier by using editable text layers (e.g., PSD format) and avoiding embedding text in images, though Smartcat can process embedded text.
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