TR

OCR + Translate

Read the text in a snip in another language: the text is recognized on your computer, only that text goes to Google Translate with your consent, and the translation appears beside the snip.

On this page (8 sections)
  1. Opening the translate popup
  2. Consent on first use
  3. Anatomy of the popup
  4. Choosing the target language
  5. Favourites
  6. Copying the result
  7. Network note
  8. See also

OCR + Translate reads the text in a snip on your computer and translates it into the language you pick. It is made for the moment you have captured something you cannot read: a dialog in a foreign language, a menu, a code comment. You learn what it says without leaving Snipdeck.

Opening the translate popup

Right-click a floating snip or a gallery card and choose OCR + Translate (hint: translate). A small Translate popup opens.

On first use the popup asks for your consent before anything else (see below). Once you have agreed, two steps run in the background so the interface never freezes:

  1. OCR: the snip is read on your computer, with Windows.Media.Ocr on Windows and Tesseract on Linux; the same engine as OCR + Clipboard.
  2. Translation: the recognized text is sent to be translated into the target language and the result fills the popup. Meanwhile the popup shows translating….

On Windows the popup opens to the right of the snip, or to its left when there is no room, and always stays fully on screen. On Wayland the desktop decides where it appears.

The first time you use OCR + Translate, the popup asks before sending anything: Send the text to Google? Below the question it explains that the text in the snip is read on your computer, and that this text, not the image, goes to Google Translate (translate.googleapis.com).

  • Send: your answer is remembered and OCR and translation start. You are not asked again.
  • Cancel: the popup closes and nothing is sent. You are asked again next time.

Anatomy of the popup

From top to bottom, the popup has these parts:

PartWhat it shows
Title barThe Translate title and the auto-detected source language, for example German →. The close button is on the right. Drag the title bar to move the popup.
Target languageThe active target language and a More ▾ button that opens the full list.
Language pillsYour favourite languages as one-click buttons with short codes such as EN, TR, DE. The active target is highlighted in orange.
Source (OCR)The text OCR recognized, with its own copy button.
TranslationThe translated text, or an error. This area grows as you enlarge the popup.
Copy translationCopies the translated text to the clipboard.

Resize the popup from the grip in its bottom-right corner. The size you give it is reused for later popups while Snipdeck stays open.

Choosing the target language

Language pills

Click a pill to change the target. The popup re-translates the text it already recognized right away; it does not run OCR again. If you switch languages while the first translation is still running, Snipdeck redirects the result to your latest choice, so you never see a stale translation.

The More list

More ▾ opens the list of every target language. Each row shows the language name, its code (for example zh-CN) and a star.

  • Click a row to pick that language and close the list.
  • Click the star to add the language to the pill strip, or remove it, without picking it.

Target languages

CodeLanguageCodeLanguage
trTurkishjaJapanese
enEnglishkoKorean
deGermanzh-CNChinese (Simpl.)
frFrenchzh-TWChinese (Trad.)
esSpanishidIndonesian
itItalianthThai
ruRussianviVietnamese
arArabicbgBulgarian
ptPortuguesecsCzech
nlDutchhuHungarian
svSwedishazAzerbaijani
plPolishfaPersian
roRomanianheHebrew
elGreekhiHindi
ukUkrainian

You do not pick the source language: it is detected from the recognized text and shown in the title bar.

Favourites

The language pills are your favourites. Star a language in the More list to add it as a pill; unstar it to remove the pill. Snipdeck always keeps at least one favourite, so the pill strip is never empty.

The default favourites are:

["en", "es", "fr", "de", "it", "pt", "ru", "ar"]

The target language you picked last and your favourites are saved in settings automatically; you never need to edit the file by hand:

Setting keyDefaultMeaning
translate_target"en"The target language the popup opens with
translate_favs["en","es","fr","de","it","pt","ru","ar"]The pill languages, in order

The file is %APPDATA%\Snipdeck\settings.json on Windows and usually ~/.config/Snipdeck/settings.json on Linux.

Copying the result

The popup has two separate copy buttons:

  • copy next to Source (OCR) copies the recognized text.
  • Copy translation at the bottom copies the translated text.

Network note

In Snipdeck, the features that send anything from a snip over the network are this translation and image upload, and both ask before sending. So here is exactly what leaves your machine.

  • Only the OCR-recognized text goes over the network: the plain text the OCR engine read from the snip. The image itself never leaves your machine.
  • The text goes to Google’s keyless translate_a endpoint (translate.googleapis.com/translate_a/single). It travels in the request body, not the URL, so it does not show up in the address logs of a proxy along the way. Long text is sent in pieces, cut at line breaks.
  • Snipdeck uses the text for nothing but the translation and sends it nowhere else.

The endpoint is free but unofficial: it may rate-limit requests or change its response format. When that happens, the popup shows a red error message instead of a translation, and you can switch the language to try again. If OCR succeeded but translation failed, the recognized source text is still shown so you can copy it.

See also

Use the arrow keys to choose, Enter to go.