How to translate a scanned document

A scan or a photo of a page contains a picture of text, not text. Before anything can translate it, the words have to be recognised. This used to mean uploading the file to an OCR service and cleaning up the result. On a modern Mac and iPhone, both steps now happen on the device and take a few seconds.

The short version

1. Get the text recognised: Mate's camera on iPhone, or Live Text in Preview on the Mac.
2. Select the text.
3. Translate it where it is.

On iPhone or iPad: point the camera at it

This is the fastest route for anything on paper — a contract, a form, a menu, a page from a book.

1. Open Mate and switch from Text to Camera at the top of the screen.
2. Set the source language to the language on the page. "Detect automatically" is fine while you are online.
3. Fill the frame with the text and tap the shutter. Tap the flashlight button first if the light is poor.
4. Mate recognises each block of text and translates it.

You can read the result two ways: drawn over the original text on the photo, which is useful for forms and signs, or as a plain list of blocks with their translations, which is easier for continuous prose. Switch between them with the button in the corner.

If the document is already in your photo library, or you have a screenshot of something you could not select, tap Pick a photo instead of the shutter. Camera translation is part of Mate Pro, and works offline for the scripts your device can recognise on its own. Full instructions are in Translate with the camera on iPhone and iPad.

On a Mac: Live Text plus Mate

Since macOS 13, the Mac recognises text in images and scanned PDFs by itself, in Preview, Photos and Quick Look. You do not need separate OCR software any more.

1. Open the scan or the photo in Preview.
2. Move the pointer over the text. When it turns into a text cursor, the words are selectable. Select the passage you need.
3. Right-click and choose Services > Translate with Mate Translate.

If the app you are in hides the Services menu, use the other route: turn on Auto-translate clipboard in Mate for Mac's Settings under General, then press Cmd+C followed by Option+Shift+T. Mate opens with the copied text already translated. See Translate a scanned document or a photo of text.

Option+Shift+T opens Mate from any app on the Mac. You can change the shortcut in Settings under Shortcuts.

Mate takes up to 20,000 characters at a time on the Mac, which is comfortably a whole page. For a multi-page scan, work a page at a time.

Scanned PDFs

A PDF that is really a scan behaves the same way: the text cannot be selected because it is an image. Preview handles those with Live Text too, so you can select and translate as above.

PDFs opened in Safari, Firefox, Edge and Opera are a different matter — those browsers do not let extensions into their PDF viewers, so selection translation does not work there. Open the file in Preview instead, or in Chrome, where you can right-click a selection and pick the Mate item. The details are in Can I translate PDF files?

Getting a better recognition result

• Even lighting and a straight angle matter more than resolution. Hold the phone parallel to the page and fill the frame.
• Dark text on a light background recognises best.
• "No text found in image" usually means the text is too small. Move closer and take it again.
• If Live Text on the Mac picks the wrong language, the words come out garbled. Add the document's language under System Settings > General > Language & Region > Preferred Languages.

What this will not do

Mate translates the text you select or photograph. It does not take a file and hand back a translated file with the original layout. If you need a translated document to send on, that is a document translation service, and Mate is not one.

For long documents the practical approach is to translate the sections you actually need, and to use the Advanced or AI style for anything you will pass on to someone else. Both are part of Mate Pro; the Basic style is free and covers all 248 languages.

If something is not working, the help pages cover most of it, and you can write to [email protected].