1. An image reading apparatus comprising: a reading unit that reads out a document and generates image data; a display unit that displays information; a setting unit that sets a language used for the display on the display unit; a character recognition unit that recognizes a character in the image data; and an image-orientation changing unit that changes the image data upright based on the orientation of the recognized character, in response to the set language being recognizable by the character recognition unit, and that specifies information, which is displayed by the display unit and is about an orientation of the character in the document with respect to the reading unit, in response to the set language being unrecognizable by the character recognition unit.