> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://helpdocs.getthread.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Screenshot OCR Translate

> Extract the text from a pasted screenshot — an error dialog, email, or app screen — translate it to English if needed, and summarize what it actually says.

<Info>
  **Category:** Communication · [View source ↗](https://github.com/bryan-getthread/skills/blob/main/skills/communication/screenshot-ocr-translate/SKILL.md)
</Info>

**Connectors:** none — works with Thread out of the box

**Role:** [Technician](/start-here/roles/technician)

**Outcome:** Time & Cost Savings (Capacity), Faster Resolution & Response

**When to use:** A client or tech pastes a screenshot of an error message, dialog, or email — "what does this say?" — or a foreign-language screenshot needs translating before anyone can troubleshoot it.

**Run it:** on one screenshot · or as a Flow (triggered when an image is attached).

## Prompt

```
Turn a screenshot into working text: exact transcription, English translation when needed, and
a one-line read of what it means.

1. Extract the text from the image, structured to mirror the screenshot: window/dialog titles,
   body text, button labels, and any codes or paths — each transcribed EXACTLY, including error
   codes, hex values, filenames, and URLs character-for-character.

2. If the extracted text is not in English, provide the English translation below the
   transcription, section by section, keeping error codes and technical identifiers
   untranslated.

3. Summarize in 1-3 sentences: what kind of message this is (error, warning, phishing email,
   license prompt), what it's saying, and — only when the text itself makes it unambiguous —
   what it implies ("a disk-full warning from Windows, saying drive C: has less than 200 MB
   free").

4. Mark anything unreadable honestly: [illegible] for text you can't make out, [cut off] for
   truncated content. Never reconstruct blurred text into a guess presented as transcription.

5. If working a ticket, offer to store the transcription (and translation) as a plain-text
   internal note so the image's content becomes searchable in the record.

Transcription is verbatim or flagged — an OCR'd error code with one wrong character sends
troubleshooting down the wrong path; when uncertain about a character, show [?] rather than
choosing. Keep the summary descriptive, not diagnostic — say what the message says, don't leap
to a root cause or fix. If the screenshot contains credentials, one-time codes, or personal
data, transcribe around them ("[password visible in screenshot — not transcribed]") and warn
the tech. If it looks like a phishing email, say so as a possibility and stop at description.
If running unattended as a Flow: output only the note content; if the image has no legible
text, output nothing.
```


## Related topics

- [Technical to Plain English](/skill-library/communication/technical-to-plain-english.md)
- [Share Super Magic chats with teammates](/super-magic/share-super-magic-chats-with-teammates.md)
- [Datto BCDR Verification](/skill-library/vendor-runbooks/datto-bcdr-verification.md)