Forum Discussion

Kamden's avatar
Kamden
Tin Contributor
Jul 06, 2026

How do I translate text in a picture to English on Windows 10?

Dealing with a bunch of pictures that have text in another language printed directly onto them. Can't select or highlight the text since it's part of the image, so standard copy-paste translation isn...
Delargy's avatar
Delargy
Tin Contributor
Jul 06, 2026

Do you know about Pot-App? It's one of those hidden gems that more people should know about. It's a completely free, open-source translation tool that's been around for a while, and it handles picture translation like a champ.

How to translate picture to English:

You set up a keyboard shortcut—something like Ctrl + Shift + O—and whenever you see an image with text you need to translate, you just press that shortcut. The screen freezes, you draw a rectangle around the text in the image, and boom—Pot extracts the text using OCR and translates it to English right there in a little popup window.

Why it's cool:

  • It's completely free and open-source (no hidden payments, no trial periods).
  • It works offline for the OCR part, so you don't need to upload your images to the cloud.
  • You can choose from multiple translation engines depending on what you prefer.
  • It's lightweight and sits quietly in your system tray until you need it.

 

The interface is a bit no-nonsense, and you might need to tweak a setting or two to get it working perfectly with your setup. But once it's configured, it's honestly one of the fastest ways how to translate picture to English on a Windows PC.

If you're tired of clunky online converters or don't want to pay for subscription-based tools, Pot-App is definitely worth a shot. Just download it from GitHub, install it, set up your hotkeys, and you're ready to go—no account, no watermark, no fuss!