Jump to content

Good Machine translators?


Nagisa_Fawkes

Recommended Posts

There is a set of kanji called kyouiku (educational) that is a good first-order approximation of the most commonly used kanji in Japanese.  It is taught in grades 1-6 of Japanese schools.

Assuming for the moment that someone wants to study the core language (grammar and vocabulary) and the writing system concurrently (not in the same study sessions, but alternating days or whatever).  Your writing system study could begin with hiragana/katakana and then you could proceed to learn kyouiku kanji starting at grade 1.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Grisaia and MT will not work together. Especially all that military slang and makina-ben.

You could probably read simpler stuff with fine-tuned ATLAS, but if you want to enjoy jokes and serious stuff, you should actually learn Japanese. Its not as hard as some people make it sound, especially if you rely on text hookers and dictionary lookup like JParser.

Some games machine translate well.  Others do not.  "Simpler" language does not necessarily improve the machine translation.  Colloquial dialogue actually translates very poorly.  I find machine translation most helpful for narration, which tends to be more grammatically complex than dialogue.

 

I started off relying on text hooking (Interactive Text Hooker) + ATLAS, and found most games perfectly understandable.  I still use it when I'm feeling impatient and want to read through text at native language speeds.  JParser (ITH plugin) is a good backup when ATLAS spits out gibberish and you want to explore alternative translations, or if you want to actually try and learn some vocabulary as you go.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Some games machine translate well.

You should keep in mind that even if MTL output resembles proper English, it doesn't mean translation is correct. ATLAS quite often gets confused on whether statement is negative or not, for example.

"Simpler" language does not necessarily improve the machine translation.

Apparently "simpler" after "slang and makina-ben" means simpler as in breadth and rarity of grammar. MT will not work at all with Hiroshima-ben, for example, as its too different from mainstream Tokyo-ben. Even your usual Kansai-ben too often will turn out as pure gibberish.

and found most games perfectly understandable.

This works only with plot-driven games and only if you are hooked on plot. Which is not the case with like 99% VNs. Comedy isn't going to work, because significant amount of jokes relies on subtle nuances and slang, which MTs fail to translate. Prose itself (like Sakurai or Hino) isn't going to work. Sure you would probably understand what's going on in Hello Ladies for example, but best part of it is text itself, with all these grand dialogues with MC, and MT would totally ruin it. Same goes for Grisaia, its just not kind of game you would read with MT.

Edit: just checked how well ATLAS handles 狩摩 lines:

「ここまで来たァいうのは褒めちゃるわ。あんときの面じゃと使い物にならんかったろうが、ちィとはマシになっちょる」=>

Atlas: "It is praise [charuwa] to say the [a;] that came here. [Narankattarouga] in something useful in bean jam Nipponia nippon respect, [Chi] is [nina] Massey [choru]."

GT: "§ say you come up here so you Taro Naranka~tsu thing to use the 's surface of. Antoki Charuwa praise, but Chi~ito is Na~tsuchoru to better"

And there were only simplest words and quite simple grammar (just not Tokyo-ben).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 10 months later...

ok, if you are thinking about reading visual novels with a machine translator, there are a few things you should know:

 

1. Machine translators  are not super smart, so the translation from them is not going to be up to the standard of quality you are used to.

 

2. in order to use a machine translator, you must download a text hooker (e.g: ITH, AGTH, etc.)

 

Now for my personal recommendation.  I personally use sakuradite's Visual Novel Reader (VNR) for nontranslated visual novels. here are the benefits:

1. ATLAS integration* (so you can "teach" ATLAS how to read)

2. built-in text hooker as well as ITH

3. users are able to submit their own subtitles, thus creating a "community translation" setup

4. A very easy-to-use UI

5. This one is the best of all, IT'S TOTALLY FREE!!

 

*Note: the installer doesn't come with ATLAS, you have to download it separately. don't worry though, there is a cracked version out there (I can't remember where right now)

 

If you want to download it, go to sakuradite's page here: http://sakuradite.com/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

ok, if you are thinking about reading visual novels with a machine translator, there are a few things you should know:

 

1. Machine translators  are not super smart, so the translation from them is not going to be up to the standard of quality you are used to.

 

2. in order to use a machine translator, you must download a text hooker (e.g: ITH, AGTH, etc.)

 

Now for my personal recommendation.  I personally use sakuradite's Visual Novel Reader (VNR) for nontranslated visual novels. here are the benefits:

1. ATLAS integration* (so you can "teach" ATLAS how to read)

2. built-in text hooker as well as ITH

3. users are able to submit their own subtitles, thus creating a "community translation" setup

4. A very easy-to-use UI

5. This one is the best of all, IT'S TOTALLY FREE!!

 

*Note: the installer doesn't come with ATLAS, you have to download it separately. don't worry though, there is a cracked version out there (I can't remember where right now)

 

If you want to download it, go to sakuradite's page here: http://sakuradite.com/

Another thing you should know: This post is from almost a year ago.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you have time to read hours and hours of machine translation you probably have enough free time to learn japanese, don't ruin the experience for yourself.

Japanese :is: hard and you'll be frustrated, but its worth it.

Indeed, damn Machine translators. The amount of joy you get from learning jp is truck loads more.

 

though vnr "might" have some benefits compared to other programs, i absolutely dislike using it, cause vnr slows my pc down in a way it isn´t funny anymore.

Works well for minimal use in j-j and some j-eng. Also it displays furigana.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Haha, I forgot I made this thread a long time ago. Right now, I am capable of reading raw VNs (currently reading Akatsuki no Goei). What I did is learn (still learning actually, via http://www.imabi.net) japanese grammar, kanji, and N4 vocab as a minimum. Then, I use TL agreggator + Jparser to get the individual meanings of the words, so I can connect and estructure the sentece and its meaning in my head. I recommend it, 1000x better than struggling with Machine Translation.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Best option is to use dictionaries to look up words/phrases and piece together meaning by knowing grammar and particles. Simply trying to get a translation for an entire sentence is going to mess you up a lot and some sentences you'll get completely different meanings. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Imo you might as well use a dozen hours reading some grammar and practice particles. Then read start with JParser (TA) + ITH and ATLAS as a crutch. 

 

A dozen hours!!! You're making me feel dumb Bolverk. I initially read (skimmed) Tae Kim's basic grammar guide in around that much time, but honestly I didn't get that much from it that initial read through. I then reread it thoroughly (memorizing the given vocabulary, taking my time with each section, doing the practice problems) and while much slower, I'm understanding things much better this time. I'm also retaining more knowledge. However, I've never been linguistically talented so I suppose the extra effort is required for somebody like me... 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A dozen hours!!! You're making me feel dumb Bolverk. I initially read (skimmed) Tae Kim's basic grammar guide in around that much time, but honestly I didn't get that much from it that initial read through. I then reread it thoroughly (memorizing the given vocabulary, taking my time with each section, doing the practice problems) and while much slower, I'm understanding things much better this time. I'm also retaining more knowledge. However, I've never been linguistically talented so I suppose the extra effort is required for somebody like me... 

The size of his guide is like 300 pages or so. So it's totally manageable to read it in that time. Albeit, you should take a more formal textbook approach as you've done tbh. Dozen hours is kinda the minimal of the minimal of work perhaps.. If you've done less you can't understand anything even with TA. Either way, you will need to research and re-learn stuff as you read. I've never really thought about myself as highly talented in anything tbh. If you are interested in something, you'll learn it reasonably fast.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nah I'd say your experience is normal zalor. In some way it depends on how much you want to look at the tenses JParser picks up I'd say (not that it's flawless at that exactly), lol (then again if you forgot some basic concepts it's going to be pretty hard anyway).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...