How To: Study Japanese while playing PC games (the secret method noone tell you)…an important title,right?
“Why this method is secret?!” probably that’s the question on your mind,and the answer is actually really simple: because I came up with it!:D (since I didn’t found anything remotely good enough for me online,to mix togheter fun with study)
Here how it works in short: We will use an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software to easily capture the Japanese text on your screen and convert it into character you can actually copy and paste around. Then we paste it on our browser,where we will translate it using an extension like “Rikaichan” or “Rikaikun”.
Thinks it’s complex?
Then watch this video I made (less than 1 minute),where I translate a sentence from the game in an instant,without the need of knowing the kanji or understanding the sentence!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_nIf7O6q_Y
Now for the required setup to use this method and in-depth explanation:
1) Download “Capture2Text”
2) Run it and from the preference set the “Start or End Capture” to some shortkey you like (in my case it is the backslash key,the one on top of TAB.) Go to OCR tab and switch the “Current OCR language” to “Japanese(NHocr)” the “Text Direction” to “Horizontal” (unless you want to use it on some manga wich has vertical text,in that case you can set it to “Auto”) and check “Enable preview box” and “remove capture box before preview”.
Also,in the bottom right corner of Windows,rightclick on the program icon and check “Show pop-up window”.
The setting is done!
Now simply launch your game with japanese text in it, press the “Start or End Capture” hotkey you set before and a selection rectangle will appear,you simply have to move it until the text is inside the rectangle and then click the “Start or End Capture” hotkey again.
A window will pop up with the recognized text in it,wich was also saved on your clipboard,so you simply have to switch to Google Translator and press “CTRL+V” to paste the japanese text from your game into the translator.
From there,you simply need to have installed on your browser “rikaichan” or “peraperakun” (for firefox) or “rikaikun”(for Chrome) and then you hover your mouse on the text you pasted to read the meaning of each word
Of course for this to work in the best way possible you have to play in windowed mode instead of fullscreen,so you can easily switch between the game and the browser.
Also,before you can select the area of the screen that should be converted into text you need to be able to see your mouse cursor,to make it appear press twice the “windows” button on your keyboard
Now you know the secret method. Up until now,you would have never knew of this,not even using google,but now your world has changed!
So, remember me and spread the word around,you have my blessing ;D