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[merylsilverburg]

Alright, here's my question: does anyone here know if you are able to scan an image with text and convert the text into a text file which would allow me to translate that text?

Let me clarify that...I want to scan this article which is in Japanese (and also has images), I want to be able to convert the scan into a text file (because when you scan an image, the result is a graphic, right?), so that I could translate the text part. Is this process even possible? I hope this isn't too confusing...

I've tried a whole bunch of things. When I was scanning the article, I was able to select an option which allows the result to come out as text...but afterwards, I had no idea where to send the scan to (like Paintprogram, Microsoft Works, etc.) and if the text has even converted.

Hehe, I don't think I'll get much answers since this very bothersome and just plain confusing, but if anyone understands what I'm talking about, I'd appreciate the help! Thanks!

[Daniel Legge]

I fully understand what your talkin about but i cant think of any programs that would allow you to do that.

[merylsilverburg]

Originally Posted by Daniel Legge

I fully understand what your talkin about but i cant think of any programs that would allow you to do that.

Yeah, in a way, I didn't think it was possible either because otherwise, what's the point of language dictionaries and all that? I just hoped this was possible because it would make my life a whole lot easier (instead of finding each character one-by-one in the JP-ENG Dictionary, then typing it up in Japanese, then translating it online.

[kupoartist]

What an obscure and really interesting thing you're trying to do What you're trying to do is a process called OCR, Optical Character Recognition. Basically what happens, is you scan an image of a page of text, and a OCR program will look at the image and try to match symbols in the image with those of an alphabet. Then you get a page of text which can be copy / pasted into something like word.

Unfortuantly though, you need a special program. The one I use is called ABBYY FineReader. It came with my scanner. Unfortuantly x2 is that if you want it to recognise Japanese kana, you're going to need a VERY special program!

With enough research, you could perhaps find something. I tried searching for "Japanese OCR Program" in google, and it came up with this page, which seemed somewhat relevant. Did you plan to the translate the text yourself, or get a program to do that for you? The Babelfish translator (www.altavista.com) will translate from Japanese to English... badly but for free (though it may be a starting point - you'd probably have to actually put the text on the net to be able to feed it into babelfish... give me a shout if it ever comes to that and i could put it on my webspace). An actual software product for the job would probably cost money... and a lot of it i'd imagine (though your results would probably be a little more successful.)

[Redpyramidhead]

Wow... such oddly obscure things that you ppl are doing...hehehehe At least u don't have a million wave files you are desperately trying to record on your run of the mill computer that you try and arrange into songs without going mad every night

_RED_ stuff

[Daniel Legge]

Originally Posted by Redpyramidhead

Wow... such oddly obscure things that you ppl are doing...hehehehe At least u don't have a million wave files you are desperately trying to record on your run of the mill computer that you try and arrange into songs without going mad every night

_RED_ stuff

Now why do i get the impresion that you are in the process of doing that?