[Ulrich Kinbote]

Can my Mac [PB G4 Superdrive] translate spoken word into text? I want to read a text out to my computer and have it turn my words into text.

Otherwise, what are my options for turning a physical text into a digital text, aside from typing it out manually? (I don't have a scanner).

[Ulrich Kinbote]

And, supposing I buy a scanner, how does that work? Are all scanners compatible with a Mac? It is easy? I'm guessing there is a piece of software out there that can recognize text in a digital scan and turn it into editable text.

[Mithras]

Nuance (formerly IBM) ViaVoice is one speech recognition option, though it requires some workarounds to work well in 10.4.6. MacSpeech's iListen is another one.

Adobe Acrobat Pro does very excellent OCR.

[TETENAL]

Mac OS X doesn not come with dictation software. There might be 3rd party software that does this. Try versiontracker.com or Google.

No, not all scanners are compatible with Mac OS X. They either need to be compatible with OS X' image capture or come with a driver. Some info can be found here:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/upgrade/scanners.html

You would want to get a scanner that is bundled with so called "Optical Character Recognition" ("OCR") software. The OCR-software turns the scanned "picture" of the page into editable text, so make sure the scanner comes with OCR-software that runs on OS X.

[headbirth]

I think iListen is another dictation software.