this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2023
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Are there any FOSS phone apps/ private alternatives for Google Translate for translating text from images? Or maybe a privacy-friendly alternative front-end for GT? The ability to translate from images (such as product labels in a store) is the main feature I'm looking for. TIA for any and all tips.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Mozilla just launched their privacy focused translation plugin not long ago: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/features/translate/

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Thank you. I've tried it on desktop and I like it. I'm looking for a phone app for this use case (such as translating product labels when shopping).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Ah, well unfortunately you're going to hit a dead end there most likely. Google's live OCR is incredibly fast for what it does, and there are no open alternatives for most of what it can do (like vertical text recognition).

Is there a specific feature you need this for?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

You can use Tesseract for OCR and any engine for translation. That said, in my experience there are much better OCRs than tesseract, but you gotta surf Github/Huggingface for that.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for this. I'm looking for a phone app, sorry for not specifying that. I run stock Android so using GT might be the least of my privacy concerns, though... I can't make the switch to a de-googled phone (Pixel and GrapheneOS) yet because money. Technically I could try LineageOS, but I'm afraid of bricking my phone.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

You can use Termux... but yeah, it's a little rough

And in all my 7 years of flashing phones I've never bricked one, though of course YMMV