help Settings up Translation Aggregator with Textractor

[hexilus]

Hello, I'm new to this forum and I did some research on how to setup TA with Textractor (based on what I mostly saw) but I haven't saw a tutorial how to make those two work (since I'm new to using this one). I already have Jparser and MeCab setup in TA. Since I'm trying to play love death series. Thank you in advance!

[Bredan]

There's two different reasons to use those tools :

 - to read raw Japanese text while being assisted : great help and it is useful for beginners as well as veterans (beside your own head if you know the kanji/word, nothing can beat those tools to seek information)

 - to MTL in real time.

If your need is MTL, I can't help you much as I'm not using translators : just know that Textractor itself can take care of some translation.

About reading raw Japanese, there's nothing much to say, but here is a few things :

 - use Textractor as a hooker (on this point, same as if you want MTL), but don't use it for 'presentation' of the text. Textractor itself proposes a few things to 'present' the text but I suggest you don't use them ;

 - use one of these for text presentation :

      * Translation Aggregator : the oldest of the tools I'll speak of. It has most of what you need for raw Japanese presentation and is still being (vaguely) updated, although I don't really know to what extent. Considered a very good tool by most people reading VN in Japanese.

       * JL (https://github.com/rampaa/JL) : I discovered it very recently and am using it for the first time with the VN I'm currently reading. It is still very young and I encountered a few bug/crashes but it is very promising (modern UI, presentation very customizable, possibility to add Yomichan/Nazeka compatible EPWING dicts, mining for Anki). I probably will continue to use this, especially since it seems development of new functions is still continuing.

       * Chiitranslite : the one I've used for years (even after its hooker function began to not work). Not updated, considered obsolete for a lot of people, a lot of customization missing... despite all of this, it gave what I wanted : a raw, not colored, no space added, not touched in any way raw Japanese text. But the reasons I used it for so many years : it has functions no other tool propose (to my knowledge at least).

              1 : you can select text and ask it to re-parse Japanese from the text you selected, extremely useful. The automated parsers will often fail you and this possibility is huge to me. Coupled to the opposite : select a 'parsed element' (word, expression or whatever) and 'break it', it's just wonderful. I can't get why other tools won't do this...

              2 : presentation of words definitions not in lists, but words separated in tabs (in the popup window that shows dictionary items). The result : for readings that correspond to a lot of words, you can browse those words by changing tabs, far clearer than a list that might or might not be scrollable. Most tools presenting in list will show you a maximum of entries and this problem does not concern Chiitrans : if you have 60 entries, you have 60 tabs (first the words more or less sorted by frequencies, then the names). You have as well the side advantage to benefit from Chiitrans memorizing the last tab you consulted for each reading : for readings that correspond 99% of the time to the same word, it is useful to have the most likely definition proposed from the second encounter (independently of frequencies dicts).

Textractor (the hooker) will send the raw JP text to the clipboard where all of the 3 'presentation' tools will get it. By the way : you could use any combination of the 3 tools at the same time (since all they do is catching text from the clipboard). Could help you choose your preferred tool. Your only limitation might be screen space ^^.

Edited January 27, 2023 by Bredan

[hexilus]

32 minutes ago, Bredan said:

There's two different reasons to use those tools :

 - to read raw Japanese text while being assisted : great help and it is useful for beginners as well as veterans (beside your own head if you know the kanji/word, nothing can beat those tools to seek information)

 - to MTL in real time.

If your need is MTL, I can't help you much as I'm not using translators : just know that Textractor itself can take care of some translation.

About reading raw Japanese, there's nothing much to say, but here is a few things :

 - use Textractor as a hooker (on this point, same as if you want MTL), but don't use it for 'presentation' of the text. Textractor itself proposes a few things to 'present' the text but I suggest you don't use them ;

 - use one of these for text presentation :

      * Translation Aggregator : the oldest of the tools I'll speak of. It has most of what you need for raw Japanese presentation and is still being (vaguely) updated, although I don't really know to what extent. Considered a very good tool by most people reading VN in Japanese.

       * JL (https://github.com/rampaa/JL) : I discovered it very recently and am using it for the first time with the VN I'm currently reading. It is still very young and I encountered a few bug/crashes but it is very promising (modern UI, presentation very customizable, possibility to add Yomichan/Nazeka compatible EPWING dicts, mining for Anki). I probably will continue to use this, especially since it seems development of new functions is still continuing.

       * Chiitranslite : the one I've used for years (even after its hooker function began to not work). Not updated, considered obsolete for a lot of people, a lot of customization missing... despite all of this, it gave what I wanted : a raw, not colored, no space added, not touched in any way raw Japanese text. But the reasons I used it for so many years : it has functions no other tool propose (to my knowledge at least).

              1 : you can select text and ask it to re-parse Japanese from the text you selected, extremely useful. The automated parsers will often fail you and this possibility is huge to me. Coupled to the opposite : select a 'parsed element' (word, expression or whatever) and 'break it', it's just wonderful. I can't get why other tools won't do this...

              2 : presentation of words definitions not in lists, but words separated in tabs (in the popup window that shows dictionary items). The result : for readings that correspond to a lot of words, you can browse those words by changing tabs, far clearer than a list that might or might not be scrollable. You have as well the side advantage to benefit from Chiitrans memorizing the last tab you consulted for each reading : for readings that correspond 99% of the time to the same word, it is useful to have the most likely definition proposed from the second encounter (independently of frequencies dicts).

Textractor (the hooker) will send the raw JP text to the clipboard where all of the 3 'presentation' tools will get it. By the way : you could use any combination of the 3 tools at the same time (since all they do is catching text from the clipboard). Could help you choose your preferred tool. Your only limitation might be screen space ^^.

thanks for the options chief, might try JL since I'm still trying to study japanese so it would be a great help but I'm currently looking for a MTL atm since I want catch up to my "to play" list. ^ ^

[rampaa]

Quote

I encountered a few bug/crashes

I'd really appreciate it if you would open issues for those bugs/crashes.

[Bredan]

11 hours ago, rampaa said:

I'd really appreciate it if you would open issues for those bugs/crashes.

Yeah you are right, will do. Thanks for this piece of software.

Edited January 31, 2023 by Bredan