Guys,I just discovered by myself a new method that allows me to play and understand full kanji games even if I don't know 90% of those kanjis ;D
It's simple,really! Basically you need a japanese game on your PC,you can easily find them on the Steam store by using "advance filtering" with Language->Japanese as search parameter.
In this case I'm using The Last Remnant to show how this works,the steps are as follow:
1)you press Stamp key on your keyboard to take a screenshot of the japanese text you don't understand.
2)Open an image editing software like Paint or Photoshop,create a new image and with CTRL+V you paste the screenshot into it,then save it as JPEG,the image below is my screenshot.
[img]http://i.imgur.com/pmuxTXd.png[/img]
3)Go to [url=http://maggie.ocrgrid.org/nhocr/][b][color=blue][/color]this site[/b][/url] and under "Japanese character recognition - beta" upload your image,then click the button to process it,the resoult is that the kanji in that image are now text,check the image below
[img]http://i.imgur.com/X933Wdx.jpg[/img]
bigger image link ---> http://i.imgur.com/X933Wdx.jpg
4)Now using the right plugin for your browser (specified in the image above) you simply have to hover your mouse on the text to get the reading and meaning of all the unknown kanjis and vocabs!
Basically in 10 seconds of "procedure" you can obtain the translation to an entire conversation on your screen,or copy paste several pages of conversation and process it all in 1 go,while before I had to patiently spend 20 minutes just to search something like 10 kanjis by radical...so this is why I consider this the same as having furigana on every pc game! ;)
Let me know what do you think about this :)
Looks pretty cool. I do something kinda similar. I don't really play any games anymore, but I still like watching people play some older games on sites like niconico. Sometimes when there is a word I don't know in the dialogues in the game or if the person says some word I don't know, I'll look the definition up in nihongodict on the other side of my screen and then take a screenshot with the def + the paused video on the other side of my screen. For spoken stuff, you can also type out the sentence with the word you don't know in the comment box below the videos on niconico, assuming the word isn't already in the comments that go across the screen while you watch. Sometimes I'll go back and look over the words in slideshow mode, which is kinda nice. If you wanted though, you could also use anki or something and make flashcards with pictures like this or pictures from your games as well.
You are welcome! :)
If I only had the knowledge of a programmer... :(
I could easily create a software that process what's on my screen on realtime and basically give the same resoult of that site kanji recognition system,but without the need of taking screenshot and upload images... :(
If there is a programmer among you guys,you have to create it! ;D
Nice, but I think patiently looking up kanji by radical has a much better effect for studying than copying/pasting and getting a translation for the whole thing in English. I guess it would work very well for those who aren't trying to learn the language at all, but for those who are, it could end up being as much a crutch as romaji can be for beginners.
Agreed - the trick to things like games, manga, books, anime (but especially the first three) is that you need to balance the time you enjoy the medium and the time it takes for you to be able to understand it enough to make your way through it.
Many years ago, I gave up on a particular comic book because I wasn't enjoying it enough due to all the time I spent looking up terms (like you said). I switched back to studying, tackled it again a few years later - MUCH more enjoyable. Same with some rpgs I've played in the past.
However, if you are aiming to eventually be sufficient, your time would eventually be much better spent studying the terms than looking up every radical (and most likely forgetting it shortly thereafter). If you're looking up words, then it is a different matter, but if you are at the level where you don't know the kanji enough to look them up by a known reading (or a word that already has it), then I would strongly suspect that you are being exposed to too many levels of knowledge (the kanji itself, the kanji's reading, the compound term, and the English meaning), it's not going to stick.
It's obviously up to you, but more studying now would ultimately provide you a quicker path to natural understanding of the media/game/etc. You might even hit yourself with a negative association of the language because you spend xxxx amount of time scanning of kanji/translation (which is never going to be that accurate, anyways) and feeling upset that not much of it is sticking.
I agree マイコー when you say that " by being exposed to too many levels of knowledge it's not going to stick",that's why I am not relying on this method, yet :)
1 year ago I opened one or two topic where I played games wich then I dropped,and same as your comic book experience going back now it is already a lot easier,because I know more vocabs and especially more grammar.
I'm not yet where I want to be,but when I'll be able to understand let's say 60-75% of the text on screen I'll just rely on that method to quickly get the meaning of the few unknown words while still enjoying the game,then you see it one time,you see it 2,then 3 times and you start to recognize it,so in the end something will stick.
@[b][color=blue]lostinwakayama[/color][/b]: the fact that I go lazy in this way while playing a game in order to not spoil the fun of playing it,doesn't mean that I won't properly study kanji during the study time,since those are two separate things for me,same for watching anime,is only a thing I would do anyway even if I wasn't studying japanese (like 2-3 years ago),so I try to get the most out of that too :)
I understand what you're saying, just seems like wasted opportunities to get some study in, that's all. The exception, I would say, is stuff that is unique to the game/manga/whatever - you're not going to get a proper translation for a lot of very specific terms to a series in a dictionary, at any rate.
But by all means, continue that way, I just see it as if you studied that term once through playing by actually looking up the kanji, it would stick if it comes up often without having to look it up again. Of course, if you're having to look up something every minute that would be a drag, but if this is the case, I would definitely think you're playing above your level.
Hi guys,little update about this study method,wich has just became even more simple! ;D
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 :)
I also made a quick video for you guys to show you this method in action,so you can see how simple it is! ;)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_nIf7O6q_Y
I put my Pokemon game in hiragana once. Never again. It's actually less confusing to read the kanji for me XD even if I have to look them up, I know I'm looking up the right thing, whereas when it's just in hiragana, I always wonder if that は is a particle or start of another word, among other things.
For listening practice you can also use music games like Beathazard, audiosurf, and syphony to play dialogues. While the game is not nearly as fun as if you were playing Japanese music you do get more grammar based studying in haha :P
