14. A computer-implemented method for generating a global image representation of a text image, the method comprising: a) extracting a plurality of image patch descriptors representative of a plurality of respective image patches representative of the text image, the plurality of image patches including a background area and a foreground area associated with the text image; b) computing a plurality of aggregated representations of the image patch descriptors, each aggregated representation associated with an image block including two or more image patches; c) determining character annotations associated with each image block by projecting each image block's aggregated representation computer in step b) into an intermediate subspace associated with training text images including one or more annotated character bounding boxes, the intermediate subspace mapping visual features to a semantic space; and d) associating the determined character annotation with each respective image block associated with the text image to generate the global image representation of the text image.
14. A computer-implemented method for generating a global image representation of a text image, the method comprising: a) extracting a plurality of image patch descriptors representative of a plurality of respective image patches representative of the text image, the plurality of image patches including a background area and a foreground area associated with the text image; b) computing a plurality of aggregated representations of the image patch descriptors, each aggregated representation associated with an image block including two or more image patches; c) determining character annotations associated with each image block by projecting each image block's aggregated representation computer in step b) into an intermediate subspace associated with training text images including one or more annotated character bounding boxes, the intermediate subspace mapping visual features to a semantic space; and d) associating the determined character annotation with each respective image block associated with the text image to generate the global image representation of the text image. 15. The computer-implemented method for generating a global image representation of a text image according to claim 14 , the intermediate subspace constructed with a plurality of training text images, each training text image including one or more annotated character bounding boxes, the method comprising: c1) extracting a plurality of image patch descriptors representative of a plurality of respective image patches representative of the training text images, the plurality of image patches including a background and a foreground area associated with the training text image; c2) computing a plurality of aggregated representations of the image patch descriptions, each aggregated representation associated with an image block including two or more image patches; c3) computing character annotations associated with each image block by measuring a proximate relationship of an image block with an annotated character bounding box; c4) generating the intermediate subspace by mapping the aggregated representations associated with the image blocks computed in step c2) to the character annotations associated with each image block computed in step c3).