| #1 by j-paradaise 2018-10-05 at 15:06 | < report >first of all... hi everyone! been a site lurker for quite sometime and just posting for the first time. (i don't know whether this is the "site" or even the correct thread to where i should post this question.) what does anyone here uses to read untranslated VN to English? tool's,plugin's or "name" machine translators you currently use? tried searching for stuff but most of them are outdated/broken and fishy. so i am posting this to be more direct as i see many people visit the site and hoping for some chances that there might some people who can help. i had been using Chiitrans lite until few weeks ago but now its broken. as of now, currently using the ITHVNR+TA+google translate hook or whatever it is called setup. i kinda bummed out with the current setup, but had no choice but to carry on. seeking for help as is there anyway to improve it? or at least to be more understandable? name filtering and such? (because it ruins most the machine translation) offline solutions? (not that very important. but i want to keep myself away from the normie sites. maybe ATLAS translation improvers? ) any help or suggestions would be great! and i hope also this helps others with your replies. (sorry for my bad English.) |
| #2 by namiultedjapan 2018-10-05 at 16:00 | < report >There isn't really anything better than ITHVNR, firefox with clipboard inserter and Rikaichamp. Also an html page that everything gets auto pasted to. See here: link |
| #3 by ramaladni 2018-10-05 at 16:27 | < report >If you want substitutions, use TAHelper in addition to your current setup. #2's suggestion won't help you with MTL and he even recommends the new plugin that loses some of its predecessor's functionalities. You can install both ATLAS and LEC, or only one of them.Last modified on 2018-10-05 at 16:34 |
| #4 by lomachello 2018-10-05 at 16:35 | < report >Thanks for help, namiultedjapan! |
| #5 by bonarth 2018-10-05 at 17:36 | < report >>machine translation >read What did he mean by this... |
| #6 by tyr 2018-10-05 at 17:42 | < report > /r/visualnovels/wiki/vnhooking The absolute state of vnhooking. |
| #7 by j-paradaise 2018-10-05 at 20:26 | < report >thanks guys for your replies! somehow it had shed some light to the current situation. @ #2 thanks! i will try those and see if there is any better result happens. @ #3 yup. looks like TAHelper is the closest to what i am looking for. as of now, it now properly filters out the character names and does not broke the MTL |
| #8 by namiultedjapan 2018-10-05 at 20:48 | < report >If you have multiple monitors then its even better. You have the Firfox page open on one and the VN on the other. Also try to read from the actual VN itself first. Then look at the parsing and word definitions. It's easy to go on auto pilot just looking at the extracted text but trust me, its better in the long run to do it this way. |
| #9 by tomtheerogeman 2018-10-06 at 04:43 | < report >If you want to stick with the method in post #2, you should read my old thread at t10785 where I go into detail on what I did to improve it, and what my results were. The amount of work seems kind of tedious, but what I didn't mention is that I'm using the Android version of Anki. That means every time I ate meals, rode the bus, had breaks at work, etc. I studied flashcards, that way I learned a lot of Japanese without sacrificing any of my spare time at home. I almost wanted to give up at first cuz of the difficulty, but the kinds of VNs I like reading are unpopular (slice of life moeges, charages, loliges, etc). So I felt like I had no other choice, otherwise I would run out of VNs to read in 2-3 years if I just stuck to being an EOP. |
| #10 by sanahtlig 2018-10-06 at 04:50 | < report >Statistical machine translators are not recommended for long-term use. You want systematic grammar-based tools that give you a more consistent result (whether right or wrong). At least with ATLAS you can learn its quirks and eventually improve your understanding. With Google Translate you're less likely to sense when the translation is wrong; that meta-knowledge is very important. If you want to actually move forward, then try to rely on JParser and learn some Japanese as you go. That'll eventually give you better understanding than machine translation alone. |
| #11 by anonymous 2018-10-06 at 05:15 | < report >I'll throw in my hat as well; I'm pretty new to untranslated VN reading, but the better option is definitely ITH/ITHVNR along with either JParser or Rikaichan derivative. It's far easier to read than any of the online MTL programs and it's far more accessible than any of the commercial MTL software, with the benefit of being closer to reading actual Japanese. Besides, with a decent dictionary/parser, you shouldn't need more than a basic grasp of Japanese and a bit of free time to read almost any untranslated VN that isn't chuuni, historical, sci-fi, or borderline literary.Last modified on 2018-10-06 at 05:16 |
| #12 by Ileca 2018-10-06 at 05:31 | < report >Quof, are you here? :3 |
| #13 by MikuxDrift 2018-10-06 at 05:34 | < report >bumping up the thread. @J-paradaise just take the bullet and learn Japanese. not trying to be rude or anything but, learning the language is you best bet especially if you want to know more deeply whatever novels you had been reading. funny thing... i had been in the same boat as you few years back. reading novels and relying heavily on those MTL's. (even as of now but for furigana and kanji's) got tired of it and tried self-study and eventually earned some money to afford a bit language classes out of my student allowance. maybe you could still use your chiitrans as well along the other stuff you currently use. if you already know you can hover to words as you read. and being you had been quite used to it as well. (again not the best advice and i could be wrong. but i also learned stuff from it.) |
| #14 by j-paradaise 2018-10-08 at 01:25 | < report >again thanks for everyone's replies! as many had suggested looks like i really should now pursue more learning japanese. despite some difficulties of my current living (judgemental persons and virtually no time to study without someone picking out of me in home. ) #13 i was about to take a community japanese language classes last month. sadly i didn't make through the cut and had to wait for some quite time. and yeah i also a broke. so i am haggling the free stuffs just to learn. a total off-topic question: being some of here were also learning japanese. does anyone here had any tips prior to learning it? just to give a little info. i had trying to memorize the hiragana's and katakana's alongside writing and some vocab's. (i just simply don't know if i am doing a good start with this) |
| #15 by Mutsuki 2018-10-08 at 01:27 | < report >#14 top tip learn chinese and then you got the headstartLast modified on 2018-10-08 at 01:27 |
| #16 by tomtheerogeman 2018-10-08 at 02:39 | < report >#14 Hiragana and katakana comes first. As someone who's learning Japanese without a teacher, I can say that reading Japanese is the only other way to get a good understanding of things. When I first started, I only understood the topic of the conversation, but I didn't know exactly what the characters were saying. Nowadays I'm comfortable reading a lot of VNs without text hooking at all. Plus the difference between くれる、あげる、and もらう was something I could only grasp by seeing them dozens of times in the scripts, most textbooks and guides do a crappy job of explaining those three verbs. Basic particles also required a lot of reading before I eventually became comfortable with them. That's my tip; just don't give up, because you will eventually understand things if you are persistent. #15 Funny you mention learning Chinese, a part of me wishes I learned Chinese instead since that's a much more common language. There's a dictionary app called Zhongwen for firefox and chrome that's very similar to Rikaichan/Jparser. With the many Chinese fan patches out there, OP could probably learn Chinese with VNs if he wanted to. |
| #17 by anonymous 2018-10-08 at 03:37 | < report >#16 Chinese is probably more helpful in a professional setting, and you'd probably be able to read nearly any VN worth a damn if you knew it (Only 10 of the top 100 games on VNDB don't have a Chinese translation, of which seven have an English translation either released or in production. While it would suck to miss out on Sakuuta or Oretsuba, it's not the end of the world). However, if you're not looking for a professional career with your language of choice, Japanese is far better. Chinese translations are, as I understand it, generally better than English translations, but they're still going to be imperfect. Not to mention that there's some Chinese localization groups that put their releases behind a paywall. And if you have any interest in untranslated games, manga, or light novels, Japanese is also a far more suitable language. |
| #18 by PabloC 2018-10-08 at 15:15 | < report > i had trying to memorize the hiragana's and katakana's alongside writing and some vocab's. (i just simply don't know if i am doing a good start with this) Yeah, that's a good place to start. Once you memorize hiragana and katakana, go through Tae Kim's grammar guide - it provides very solid basics of Japanese grammar, it's rather easy to learn and it's free. That's probably the best place to start.Actually, if you learn kana and basic grammar from that guide, this already should be enough to read simple VNs relying only on tools like JParser or MeCab (to look up kanji and vocab). Even with only basic knowledge you'll get far better results than with the best machine translators out there, and it'll only be getting better and better with every VN you finish. ^^Last modified on 2018-10-08 at 15:17 |
| #19 by loli 2018-10-12 at 17:33 | < report >If you learn Chinese, you miss out on the Japanese voices, though. |
| #20 by tomtheerogeman 2018-10-12 at 17:47 | < report >#19 True, but then it'll be more like reading a book, since there's no voices. But it's very hard to find Japanese people to talk to outside(unless you're in Hawaii or Brazil maybe), meanwhile there's tons of Chinese people in the west. You could get listening practice irl. |
| #21 by namiultedjapan 2018-10-13 at 13:46 | < report >There are a lot of resources for finding Japanese people to talk to for free. Italki is a good example. |
| #22 by shadowdawn 2018-10-20 at 19:33 | < report >It were a lot easier if VNs just were written in kana like kids games like Doraemon and Hamtaro. Why they didn't? |
| #23 by Mutsuki 2018-10-20 at 19:39 | < report >#22 this may seem backwards but I find it much easier reading with kanji because you don't have to work out homonyms. also why isn't it written in kana? because japanese people know kanji and they're the only target market for VNs. |
| #24 by Ninigi 2018-10-20 at 19:53 | < report >#22 A lot of JVNs contains erotic materials, now imagine if your kids able to read all that hentai. |
| #25 by shadowdawn 2018-10-20 at 20:34 | < report >#24 I'm 21, but of course virgin... so I don't have kids. And as if a kid or a young teenager are interested in reading only games. As I was approximately 11-13 years I even skipped dialogues in Pokemon. That should explain a lot xD |