Interpreter

This app can translate text captured from any application running on your computer. You just need to specify which window you want to sample and that's it!

The app uses:

• Google Cloud Vision to extract the text on-screen
• Google Translate or DeepL to translate it

The translated text is then displayed as subtitles on a floating window that you can move anywhere.

It's typically used to translate Japanese retro games unreleased in the US, but you can use it for anything you wish to translate!

How to Use

Video Tutorial

Check out the video tutorial for a visual walkthrough of the setup process.

Prerequisites

Before you can use this app, you need the following:

• A Google Cloud account
• Alternatively, you can use DeepL instead of Google Translate for translation

Setting Up Your Google Cloud Account

• Get a free Google Cloud account here or use your existing account
• Create or select a project
• Enable billing
• Enable Cloud Vision API
• Enable Cloud Translation (You can skip this step if you're using the DeepL API)
• Create service accounts and keys
• Use the service account key file in your environment
• Update the configuration file accordingly:

translator:
  api: "google"
  to: "en" # Target language

Note: The list of Google Translate supported languages is available here.

(Optional) Setting Up Your DeepL Account

As an alternative to Google Translate, you can use DeepL for translation:

• Get a free DeepL account here or use your existing account
• Update the configuration file accordingly:

translator:
  api: "deepl"
  to: "en" # Target language
  authentication-key: "your-deepl-authentication-key"

Note: The list of DeepL supported languages is available here.

Creating the Default Configuration File

If you run interpreter and no configuration file is found, interpreter will create the default configuration file in the current folder and then exit.

You can make the required changes to the configuration file after that.

Once you are done, you can run interpreter again to start translating an application.

Configure Interpreter

Update the config.yml configuration file:

window-title: "change me"               # Title of the window you want to capture. It can be any part of the window title, for instance "Tales" for "Tales of Phantasia".
refresh-rate: "5s"                      # How often a screenshot is taken
confidence-threshold: 0.9               # Between 0 and 1. Filters out any OCR character with a confidence score below the threshold.
translator:
  api: "google"                         # "google" or "deepl"
  to: "en"                              # Target language. For Google translate, please check here: https://cloud.google.com/translate/docs/languages. For deepL, please check here: https://www.deepl.com/en/docs-api/translating-text
  authentication-key: "deepl-auth-key"  # required only for deepL
subs:
  font:
    color: "#FFFFFF"                      # RGB color code
    size: 48                              # Font size
  background:
    color: "#404040"                      # RGB color code
    opacity: 0xD0                         # Between 0x00 (transparent) and 0xFF (opaque)

Troubleshooting

Why does my virus-scanning software think interpreter is infected?

This is a common occurrence, especially on Windows machines, and is always a false positive. Commercial virus scanning programs are often confused by the structure of Go binaries, which they don't see as often as those compiled from other languages.

Read more about it here.