How to translate a Thai image or document to English

Thai documents that usually need English

Thai papers usually need English for a visa, a marriage or a move to the US or UK. These are the ones that come up.

Marriage certificate

Needed for a spouse visa, a name change or a joint application. See the marriage certificate translation guide

House registration (tabien baan)

The household book that lists who lives at an address

Birth certificate

For a child's passport, school enrollment or an immigration petition

Name change certificate

When a Thai first name or surname changed and the old name still appears on earlier papers

ID card and police clearance

For identity checks and visa applications

Thai OCR: how the script is read

Thai is harder for OCR than most scripts. It writes words without spaces between them, stacks vowels and tone marks above and below the consonants, and official forms mix printed labels with handwritten entries. LoreAI reads all of it, the printed form and the officer's handwriting, and translates the page as one document.

Thai names come back in Latin letters. Thailand has several common ways to spell a Thai name in English, so the same surname can appear two ways on two documents. The Word file is editable, so match every name to the spelling in the person's passport.

How dates and numbers come through

Thai official documents give years in the Buddhist Era, marked พ.ศ. LoreAI keeps each date as written, so a year printed as 2569 stays 2569 in the English file. To find the Western year, subtract 543, so 2569 is 2026. Add the Western year in brackets next to any date the reader will rely on.

ID numbers, house numbers and registration numbers keep every digit in order, so the 13-digit national ID on a card matches the one on the certificate.

How to translate a Thai photo with LoreAI

1. Photograph or scan each page. For a house registration book, include the cover page and every page with a name on it. Put them into one PDF.
2. Enter your email at the top of this page. The 6-digit code we send opens LoreAI. Your first document is free, up to 3 pages and 3 MB.
3. Upload and keep English as the target. Thai is detected from the script, so you do not pick a source language.
4. Download the Word file. Each Thai label sits next to its value in a Word table, and seals and office stamps stay where they are on the original.

Free Thai picture translators

Google Translate's Images tab translates a picture in a computer browser and lets you copy the text or download the translated image[1]. Google's own help page notes that small, unclear or stylized text may lower accuracy and recommends clear images with common fonts[1]. That makes it a fair choice for a street sign or a menu.

A certificate is different. The reader needs every field, in order, in a file they can edit and hand to a translator. LoreAI is built for that.

Thai documents for USCIS

USCIS accepts a Thai document with a full English translation that the translator certifies as complete and accurate, plus a statement that the translator is competent in Thai and English[2]. LoreAI is not a certified translation service and signs nothing. A translator who reads Thai reviews the Word file and signs the certification. How to get a certified translation walks through it.

Questions people ask