Translate Chinese image to English
Photograph or upload anything written in Chinese (restaurant menus, metro maps, product packaging, WeChat screenshots, street signs) and read it in English, line by line.
Point at the text
Snap a photo, upload a screenshot, or paste an image (Ctrl/⌘ + V).
Reading Chinese from a photo
Chinese is written in Simplified characters in mainland China and Singapore, Traditional in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. PointTranslate reads it with a vision model that sees the whole image at once, so it keeps lines and blocks together and translates them in context rather than character by character.
Tips for Chinese photos
- Both Simplified and Traditional characters are detected automatically; you do not need to choose.
- Dish names are often poetic rather than literal. Switch to the menu translator to get a plain description of what the dish actually is.
- Shop signs sometimes read right to left on older buildings. Mention it if a result looks reversed, and try a tighter crop.
Translating a restaurant menu? The menu translator explains each dish, not just its name. Got a Chinese PDF or Word file? Use the PDF or document translator.
Questions
How do I translate a Chinese image to English?
Take or upload a photo above. The source is preset to Chinese and the target to your browser's language (English by default). Every block of Chinese text is read, translated and pinned to where it appears on the image.
Can it read Chinese handwriting?
Neat handwriting usually works. Very cursive or stylised writing may come back partly empty, because the model skips text it cannot read reliably instead of guessing.
Does it work on Chinese screenshots?
Yes, and screenshots are the easiest case because the text is perfectly sharp. On a computer you can paste a screenshot straight into the page with Ctrl or Cmd + V.
Other languages: Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Thai, Russian, German, French, Spanish, Hindi.