Translation guide
The technology that converts images of text into machine-encoded text. In Japanese, the English abbreviation OCR is most common, but full translations exist.
optical character recognition
Most common term; used in both technical and everyday contexts.
Referring to the technology that recognizes text in images.
The standard term in Japanese, pronounced as the English letters. Used in software, documents, and conversation.
This software has an OCR function.
The full Japanese translation. Used in formal or technical writing, but less common in speech.
Optical character recognition technology has advanced greatly in recent years.
A variant with 的; slightly more formal or academic.
The accuracy of optical character recognition is improving.
Describing the process of converting an image to text.
Common phrase meaning 'to run OCR on something'.
Please run OCR on this image and extract the text.
Literally 'read with OCR'. Natural in instructions.
Technical phrase meaning 'to perform OCR processing'.
In everyday Japanese, simply say OCR (オーシーアール). The full term 光学文字認識 is understood but sounds overly technical. For example, when asking if a scanner has OCR, say 「OCR機能はありますか？」.
Scan business cards with OCR and register the contact information.
OCR-process the scanned documents to make them searchable.