Patent ID: 8201084

Claim:
An image processing apparatus comprising: a region extracting unit extracts a rectangular character region on an image; a character recognizing unit that recognizes characters in the character region extracted by the region extracting unit; a translating unit that translates a recognition result obtained by the character recognizing unit; a changing unit that changes a constitution of the image with respect to the character region extracted by the region extracting unit according to a direction of the characters in the character region extracted by the region extracting unit, and according to a direction of the characters of the language translated by the translating unit, and an aspect-ratio changing unit that changes an aspect ratio of the character region, wherein if the direction of the characters in the character region extracted by the region extracting unit is different from the direction of the characters of the language translated by the translating unit, the changing unit performs rotation processing or inversion processing on the character region, and if the rotation processing is performed on the character region, the aspect-ratio changing unit changes the aspect ratio of the character region, and if the inversion processing is performed on the character region, the aspect ratio changing unit does not change the aspect ratio of the character region.