Yandex Browser update introduces Image Translate functionality

[harlan4096]

Yandex published an update of the company's Yandex Browser earlier this month that integrates Image Translate functionality natively in the browser.

Yandex Browser is based on Chromium, the same core that powers many other browsers including Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Brave, Edge or Vivaldi.

The update, introduced in version 21.3.1, improves the built-in translator, powered by Yandex Translate, which works similarly to Google Translate in Chrome. When Yandex users visit foreign language sites, they get the option to translate the content into another language.

With Image Translate landing in Yandex Browser stable, users of the web browser may now do the same for any image they encounter.

All it takes is a right-click on any image that is displayed in the browser and the selection of "translate image" from the context menu to get the translation on the image itself after a brief moment. Yandex notes that on some images, you may also get a small button in the upper right corner to invoke the translate functionality.The browser submits the image to Yandex Translate when the "translate image" menu option is selected by the user. The translated text, if detected correctly, is then returned to the page and displayed instead of the original image.

Image translate works on most images, but not on all; or to be more precise, it may not work in the following cases:

• when Yandex Translate fails to identify the text correctly.
  
• when a website prevents this from happening.
  
• if the detected page language is identified as the "to translate" language.
  
• when the image has a lower size than 200x200 pixels
  

A quick test confirmed that the feature works well most of the time, but that you may run into issues with some images and sites, especially the errors "couldn't recognize text" and "text already matches page language" are common issues.

Yandex Browser prompts users to translate page images if page translate is being activated on a webpage; this is handy as it will result in the translation of all images on the page as well, something that did not happen in previous versions of the browser.

The company plans to improve the image translate functionality in future builds; this includes improved detection to only translate images with text and context recognition.

Now You: do you use translate functionality on your browser?
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