I purchased a Canon printer in Thailand , print / copy / scan .

When I scan to my computer a document written in Thai script it comes out as symbols and gobbledegook

Does anybody know of a program that allows me to scan a letter that is written in Thai and make it readable on my computer so I can translate it.

i do get a doc scanned in tha,i not in gobbledegook Btw have you tried scanning to office word i do.and get a perfect thai document there.

What scanner / printer do you use ?

Surely if you scan a document it copies it as it is as a .jpg file. It effectively takes a photograph of the page and has no means of knowing what scipt is being used. Are you instead using OCR software? (Optical Character Recognition)

lungbing , I scan it as an image , open it in MS Word , then try to translate it with google translate .

The translator does not even attempt to translate it.....

Because it's a picture.

You can't translate a picture.

You can use an OCR package to try and turn the images into text characters.

Then you can try and translate the result.

There are several THai OCR programs you can get that should help you. There is even a free one. Try googling Thai ocr. I cannot tell you if they are any good.

You need to install the Thai language option on your computer.

My Canon printer-scanner has the option to scan to pdf file

then using Nitro Pdf I can, if required, convert it to a word document.

Also try installing the Thai language pack in Windows as Ksamuiguy suggested,

I think this is the root of your problem.

Have A Nice Day.

you can also riget click on the Thai text in a word document and have the document opened in Thai text.

it must be a word or text document, not a PDF or picture.

lungbing , I scan it as an image , open it in MS Word , then try to translate it with google translate .

The translator does not even attempt to translate it.....

Correct, it won't even attempt to translate it because it's just an image/picture; you need OCR software.

Many scanner come with OCR software like ABBYY, use that to see if it will create a word .doc, then it seems like you may need Thai Fonts on your computer

once installed , then highlight the gibberish, and change to the Thai Font

if you have $170. this would do the job it seems

http://finereader.abbyy.com/professional/tech_specs/#lang

There are several THai OCR programs you can get that should help you. There is even a free one. Try googling online Thai ocr. I cannot tell you if they are any good.

I agree, there are many free ocr tools in google search.

lungbing , I scan it as an image , open it in MS Word , then try to translate it with google translate .

The translator does not even attempt to translate it.....

You are going about this bum about face.

Google translate can only translate text not images of text. When you copy an image to a word file it`s still an image. Think you don`t get it?

You are going about this bum about face.

Google translate can only translate text not images of text. When you copy an image to a word file it`s still an image. Think you don`t get it?

You do realize that some 'first post' idiot resurrected a year+ old topic, right?

I doubt any of this is still an issue a year later.

You are going about this bum about face.

Google translate can only translate text not images of text. When you copy an image to a word file it`s still an image. Think you don`t get it?

You do realize that some 'first post' idiot resurrected a year+ old topic, right?

I doubt any of this is still an issue a year later.

No I didn`t. Thanks for pointing this out.

And so another 5 minutes of my life wasted.

Because it's a picture.

You can't translate a picture.

You can use an OCR package to try and turn the images into text characters.

Then you can try and translate the result.

I'm using Nitro 9 pro and I can convert images into any other file types. But to be honest, I haven't tried it yet.

BTW, you can get all owner manuals for printers in all languages.