Img translator / Privacy
Privacy policy
This site translates the text inside pictures. To do that, part of your picture has to be read by a machine somewhere else — so this page says exactly which part, where it goes, who sees it, and what is left behind. Last updated 25 August 2026.
The short version
- A downscaled copy of your image is uploaded. Not the original: a shrunken JPEG made in your browser, sent once per image so an OCR service can find where the text sits.
- The text it reads is uploaded too. The lines OCR found — a few dozen short strings — are sent to a machine-translation service.
- Nothing else is. The full-resolution file, the boxes you adjust, and the PNG or ZIP you export are made inside the browser tab and never uploaded.
- There is no account and no database of your work. We do not store the uploaded copy or the text after a request is answered. What your browser remembers, it remembers locally.
Who is responsible
imgtranslator.com is an independently run free tool. For questions about this policy, or to make a request about your data, write to privacy@imgtranslator.com.
What is uploaded, and when
Everything the tool sends goes to this site's own API, and only two of the things it sends carry anything of yours:
| What | Carries | When |
|---|---|---|
| A downscaled copy of your image | Your picture, re-encoded in your browser as a JPEG whose long side is at most 1536 pixels, plus its dimensions. Sent so the text in it can be located. | Once per image, when it is dropped in. |
| The lines of text found in it | The recognised lines, de-duplicated, and the language codes you asked for. No image. | After reading, and again when you add a language or edit a line and re-translate. |
| A bot check | A token from the bot check, proving a browser is present, exchanged for a short-lived pass. No image, no text. | Before the first request that costs anything. |
| A settings lookup | Nothing of yours — which features are switched on. | On page load. |
Never uploaded: the full-resolution file you chose, its filename, the boxes you move or draw, the colours sampled from it, and the finished PNG or ZIP. Those are produced by your own browser and handed straight to your downloads folder.
You can check this rather than believe it. Open DevTools, watch the Network tab, and drop an image in: exactly two requests carry anything of yours — one with the shrunken copy, one with the text found in it — and exporting produces none at all. Adding a language later produces exactly one more, carrying the same strings and nothing else.
Who processes it
Our own API does not do the reading or the translating itself. It passes each request to a specialised provider and hands the answer back. These are the categories of recipient:
- Hosting and network. The pages and the API run on a commercial cloud platform. The API holds no database and writes neither your image copy nor your text to storage; the platform processes the traffic as our infrastructure provider and keeps its own standard network-level logs (such as IP addresses and timestamps).
- Text detection (OCR) — a third-party OCR provider. The downscaled copy of your image is submitted there as a short-lived job, and the recognised lines and their coordinates are read back.
- Translation — a third-party machine-translation provider. The lines OCR found are sent there for translation into the languages you picked.
- Bot protection. A challenge provider checks that a human is present. It carries no part of your image or text.
- Audience measurement — Google Analytics 4. Page views only. There are no custom events, so no filename, OCR result, translation or language choice is ever sent to it.
Where this happens matters more than who does it, so to be plain about it: these providers are outside the European Economic Area, and the text detection and translation are operated in mainland China. If that matters for the pictures you work with, please do not upload them here — and note that the tool still works end to end if you bring your own translations: the text you paste or upload as CSV, Excel or JSON is never sent anywhere.
Providers can change. If you need the current list by name — for a vendor assessment, a DPA or a security review — ask at privacy@imgtranslator.com and you will get it.
What we keep
Nothing about your file. The uploaded copy and the text exist for the length of the request that carries them; the gateway is stateless and stores neither. We hold no account, no upload history and no library of past jobs, so there is nothing filed under your name — there is no name.
Each provider named above applies its own retention rules to the request it receives, which are outside our control. Rate limiting counts requests against a pass and an IP address for a matter of minutes, and Google Analytics keeps its usual aggregate reports.
What your own browser keeps
Two things are stored in your browser's local storage for this site — that is, on your device only. Neither is readable by us:
- The work on an image you already opened: the boxes, the translations and the languages, filed under a fingerprint of the image. This is what makes re-opening the same picture cost no network request at all.
- The bot-check pass: a short-lived token so the check does not have to run again on every page load. It contains no personal data.
Clearing site data for imgtranslator.com in your browser removes both. We set no cookies of our own; Google Analytics sets its own cookies for counting visits, and the bot check may set one of its own.
Your rights
Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, export or erase personal data held about you, or to object to its processing. In practice there is very little to act on here — we hold no account and keep no copies of what you upload — but any request sent to privacy@imgtranslator.com will be answered. You can opt out of the anonymous page-view counting with any browser setting or extension that blocks Google Analytics; the tool works exactly the same with it blocked.
Children
This tool is not directed at children and does not knowingly collect anything from them.
Changes to this policy
If what leaves your browser ever changes, this page changes with it — along with the three lines under the drop area and the privacy answers in the FAQ, in all nine interface languages. The date at the top of this page says when it was last true.