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Yomiwa - Japanese Translator?
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I remember having to made an in-app purchase to unlock all the functionality (honestly can't remember how much it was and for what exactly, sorry, it's been a couple of years), but I find Yomiwa all right for an occasional kanji here and there: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.yomiwa.yomiwa&hl=en
It's not perfect and sometimes you have to reposition the phone a couple of times, but it works. Also comes with handwriting input, so if it doesn't catch something with the camera, you can always just write it and it should get it.
It can be finicky with complex characters, you need a pretty decent grasp of stroke order in these cases. If the stroke order is causing issues the multi radical look up is best.
There are yomitori (camera) apps available too like Yomiwa.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.yomiwa.yomiwa
Useful tip for translating:
Since you'll be playing on a console, there's no way you'll be able to use an actual text hooker. So I found out that you could use Kanji recognition apps instead. I use Yomiwa, it works alright.
If you don't have a phone or can't use the app, well, there's always the online Kanji drawing stuff.
Maybe Yomiwa ? There are some extra paid features, but the free version should be enough for what you want (and it does work offline).
Yomiwa has been released recently on Android and is very helpful to understand and read full Kanji words, followed or not by hiraganas and conjugations of verbs. With it you can do real-time translation using your smartphone camera, and the recognition of kanjis is usually pretty accurate. You can even adjust kanjis manually in case it recognises a wrong one. Additionally you can just practice drawing kanjis and use your own saved pictures/documents. Handwriting recognition works great. And it is free and offline. Check their website too http://www.yomiwa.net
I've been using an app called Yomiwa for this. It also has example sentences for each word/compound.
There's Yomiwa for Android. Don't know if they're related in any way besides a similar name.
Try the following:
yomiwa where you can take a picture on your phone.
yomichan if you are on desktop Firefox or chrome. With this you can hold shift and hover over any Japanese text to get the romaji (Latin text), furigana (kana over kanji showing pronunciation), definitions, and stroke orders.
Learn your radicals. Kanji is largely composed of smaller forms called radicals. You'll start to notice these quite often and you can look them up way easier if you can recognise them within the shape. They aren't really consistent but they're a good guide. WaniKani (referenced in the link) has a good approach to memorisation. It isn't really standard but it's honestly more consistent than the standard radical categorisation system and nowadays a lot of English-Japanese tools are adopting their system instead.
Learn your stroke order. Like the previous, this is also hard but it's important. Each kanji has a very specific stroke order and the number of strokes it takes can be used to look it up in the dictionary. Stroke order is generally a standard thing but just like apparently fucking everything else in this language there's a bunch of exceptions you'll have to learn over time and it'll eventually just become intuition.
Guess. Eventually intuition will kick in and you'll be able to guess based on context clues but even then be ready to get things aggressively wrong. I've seen native Japanese speakers read painfully simple kanji wrong on occasion because very few people (basically only proper academics) actually know what they're doing and the rest rely on intuition and experience.
I've been using Yomiwa.
It not only has the JMDict info, but also Japanese definitions from WordNet (except not for all words).
If you don't mind using your phone while reading, Yomiwa is an option:
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.yomiwa.yomiwa&hl=en
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/yomiwa-japanese-dictionary/id670931120
I'm trying to indicate the heading each of these belong under, but the organization is a little confusing.
It's unclear why "Japanese-English Dictionaries" and "Dictionaries" are physically distant separate categories, instead of next to each other, or JE/JJ being subcategories of the dictionaries heading.
I've only indicated dead links that I already knew about, there are probably many more.
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Physical Resources:
References:
✖ "A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar" and its companions are incorrectly titled "Dictionary of ..."
Physical Resources, textbooks
- https://www.bookdepository.com/Japanese-Spoken-Language-Eleanor-Harz-Jorden/9780300038347?ref=grid-view&qid=1588048663911&sr=1-1 Japanese: The Spoken Language (only meant for people who intend to remain illiterate, but want to speak).
- https://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%81%BF%E3%82%93%E3%81%AA%E3%81%AE%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E8%AA%9E-%E5%88%9D%E7%B4%9AI-%E6%9C%AC%E5%86%8A-%E3%82%B9%E3%83%AA%E3%83%BC%E3%82%A8%E3%83%BC%E3%83%8D%E3%83%83%E3%83%88%E3%83%AF%E3%83%BC%E3%82%AF/dp/4883191028 Minna no Nihongo (For people who's first language is not English, or who prefer their instruction to be mostly in the target language).
Online resources:
Japanese-English Dictionaries
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- weblio's J-E dictionary link is listed under 'dictionaries' but not under 'japanese-english' dictionaries.
- https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/en/ Goo J/E (Shogakukan Progressive)
- ✖ yahoo is no longer operating a dictionary.
- ✖ websaru.org is no longer operating.
Online Courses:
- https://www.imabi.net/ - Imabi online grammar
- https://oer.hawaii.edu/project/musubi-a-new-approach-to-japanese-language-and-culture/ U of Hawaii textbook as a downloadable PDF
- https://www.nhk.or.jp/lesson/english/ (NHK lessons - online audio-visual course)
- https://www.erin.ne.jp/en/ (online audio-visual course, many skits)
Video Series:
- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0ujXryUUwILURRKt9Eh7Nw (三本塾 : Lessons and conversations about Japanese, in Japanese)
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Android apps:
- https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.yomiwa.yomiwa&hl=en Yomiwa - JE Dictionary (JMDict based)
- https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.takoboto&hl=en Takoboto - JE dictionary (JMDict based)
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Blogs/Forums
✖ koohii is no longer operating a forum.
- https://jref.com/forums/ JRef Forums (Japanese REFerence)
- https://www.japonin.com/free-learning-tools/teachers-blog.html (Essay style blogs from Japanese teachers)
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Reading material:
- https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/80636366 (Crystal Hunters Manga "自然な日本語版")
- https://www.aozora.gr.jp/ (青空文庫 - public domain works)
- https://syosetu.com/ (小説家になろう！ - Web Novel site for aspiring authors)
Podcast (in Japanese, for learners)
- http://nihongoconteppei.com/ (Easier Podcast from a Japanese teacher)
- http://teppeisensei.com/ (Harder Podcast from a Japanse teacher)
For Android: Yomiwa. Tons of features like OCR, word lists, and analyzing of a text fragment copied from elsewhere.
Use Yomiwa if you can't bother remembering all those hiragana characters.
Yomiwa ? Not sure if better than gogol but works well in photo mode.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.yomiwa.yomiwa&hl=en