2016-01-28 04:36:53 (edited by Ian Reed 2020-02-08 03:05:46)

February 2020 update:
I have released a new version of JGT.
It fixes issues in the version for NVDA 2019.3 and later where certain text and menus would not be spoken in Morakuma's text games.
It also supports 5 new target languages, bringing the total to 9.
The new languages are Portuguese, Russian, Polish, Korean, and Turkish.
You can read the user manual here.
You can download the latest version of the addon for NVDA 2019.2 and prior here.
You can download the latest version of the addon for NVDA 2019.3 and later here.

January 2020 update:
JGT 2.1 now has 2 versions, one for NVDA 2019.2 and prior, and one for the upcoming NVDA 2019.3.
I have also updated the cache files with everything currently in the database, making translations ultra fast, and letting you play most games without even logging in.
Plus I fixed a few difficult to find bugs that were causing the addon to not find certain translations in the offline cache, so now offline play works much better.
Thanks to my contributors I have also added German as a target language, in addition to English, Spanish, and French.
Thanks to Tyler Spivey for providing me with an updated version of the Pro Talker addon, which makes debugging JGT much nicer.
I've added a download link to his updated version of pro talker in the JGT manual, for those who want to use it for things like the slot machine in Alternative Magic. It works for NVDA 2019.2 and prior.

January 2018 update:
Thanks to some kind contributors, I am releasing JGT version 2.0.
This version resets the English translation cache in order to take advantage of Google Translate's neural machine translation.
Google touts that: Using a human side-by-side evaluation on a set of isolated simple sentences, it reduces translation errors by an average of 60% compared to Google's phrase-based production system.
I have noticed an improvement myself when playing ShadowRine.
JGT 2.0 also adds Spanish and French as supported target languages.
Unfortunately Google currently only supports neural machine translation between English and other languages, so the other target languages use the phrase based machine translation.
When Google adds neural machine translation support between Japanese and non English languages, I will reset those language caches to take advantage of the improved translations.
I also fixed the old issue where Google Translate would sometimes mess up the number substitutions I used under the hood, which caused numbers and dates to sometimes be lost in translation.
Please uninstall the old JGT addon before installing the new one.

Thanks again to the people who signed up as monthly contributors!
If you'd like to see more target languages supported in JGT, or would just like to contribute to my ongoing efforts to improve the quality and quantity of games available to the blind, please consider signing up as a contributor at https://BlindGamers.com.

You can download the latest version of the addon here, and read the user guide here.
Remember that you need to enable the auto translate feature by pressing NVDA control shift Y.

Edit:
The latest version of JGT now supports Brave of Cloudia, Cave of Marvels, and Morokuma's text games, as well as others.
The new games it supports still require the Japanese keyboard and AppLocale (or possibly Locale Emulator for Windows 10).
I've added step by step instructions to the user manual for getting setup with the Japanese keyboard and AppLocale.
The user manual also contains tips for getting the best experience when playing the text games.

Original post:
I've just released my Japanese Games Translator addon for NVDA.  JGT for short.

The JGT addon lets you translate text while playing Japanese audio games. It focuses on 2 things:

  • First, to give newcomers to Japanese games the simplest experience possible to get started playing and enjoying them. Meaning, it requires less software to install and things to configure than other solutions, and gives you step by step instructions to get started.

  • Second, to provide a more automatic and seamless translation experience than is currently supported by other sets of tools. For instance, when auto translate last spoken is enabled you can arrow through menus and immediately hear the English version of each menu item, without pressing an extra hot key.

At this point I support ShadowRine and Bokurano Daibouken 3. If you have other Japanese games you would like it to support, contact me at [email protected] with details about what the game is and how I can get started playing it.

I started writing this addon because the better known instant translate addon stopped working due to changes Google made to stop unauthorized use of its translation service. Since then QTranslate has become an alternative solution. I believe this addon provides a better experience for the games it supports. That said, if you're happy with the current QTranslate, ClipCopy, ClipReader, ProTalker, Japanese keyboard, and appLocale setup; then this addon may not be for you as the list of games it supports is more limited.

This addon contacts my own server which then uses the paid Google Translate service. I implement my own caching to limit the charges I receive. This caching also helps the translations to be very fast.
If you'd like to hear the addon in action, listen to this demo that shows me using it in ShadowRine.
You can read the full user guide and download the addon from here.

~ Ian Reed
Visit BlindGamers.com to rate blind accessible games and see how others have rated them.
Try my free JGT addon, the easy way to play Japanese games in English.
Or try the free games I've created.

2016-01-28 04:46:40

this is cool! this is just what I needed after problems with me not being able to install the japanese language pack in xp. thanks!

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dkm … DkWZ8/edit
-id software, 1995

2016-01-28 07:30:44

So I can't seem to figure out how to install it. Any tips?

2016-01-28 07:35:35

If you are using an installed version of NVDA, just press enter on the addon after you have downloaded it.
Alternatively you can open the NVDA menu with NVDA + N.
Then go to tools > manage add ons.
Then press the install button and choose the addon in the open file dialog.

~ Ian Reed
Visit BlindGamers.com to rate blind accessible games and see how others have rated them.
Try my free JGT addon, the easy way to play Japanese games in English.
Or try the free games I've created.

2016-01-28 07:46:35

Hi Ian! After installing the addon i got the error-sound of NVDA on startup. I cant find any new menus in the NVDA-options. I am using the newest NVDA-Snapshot. Maybe your addon is only working with the regular versions of NVDA?

2016-01-28 07:55:20

Hi firefly, that is possible.
To be honest I am still using version 2015.3.
I will ensure it works in at least 2015.4.
If you press NVDA + F1 it will bring up the NVDA log viewer.
You can start at the top and go down until you find some lines that say error at the front.
Then send me those lines and a few before and after them so I have a better idea of what the error is.

Thanks for your patience, bugs are inevitable in newly released software, and up till now I have been the only one testing this.

~ Ian Reed
Visit BlindGamers.com to rate blind accessible games and see how others have rated them.
Try my free JGT addon, the easy way to play Japanese games in English.
Or try the free games I've created.

2016-01-28 07:58:01

When I download the addon, I get a .zip file, and nothing seems to happen when I press enter on it besides the computer saying that it can't open it. I tried unzipping it and pressing enter on the files contained within the folder, but still nothing haha not sure what's up.

2016-01-28 08:05:20

That is a problem with internet explorer. you need to change the extention to be .nvda-addon.

Discord: clemchowder633

2016-01-28 08:06:06

moore2it, are you using NVDA or another screen reader?
The addon only works with NVDA.
The addon is supposed to download with the nvda-addon file extension.
The exact file name is: JGT.nvda-addon
NVDA addons are technically just zip files, perhaps your browser noticed that and put the .zip extension on the end.
You could change the extension back to .nvda-addon and try the instructions I posted earlier.
It is also possible to extract the files yourself and put them in the NVDA addons folder, but the first is probably easier.

~ Ian Reed
Visit BlindGamers.com to rate blind accessible games and see how others have rated them.
Try my free JGT addon, the easy way to play Japanese games in English.
Or try the free games I've created.

2016-01-28 08:06:52

OK Ian! Here are the lines: I hope this is what you need!

WARNING - core.main (07:01:37):
UIA not available
ERROR - globalPluginHandler.listPlugins (07:01:37):
Error importing global plugin Ian Reed's Japanese games translator
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "globalPluginHandler.pyc", line 22, in listPlugins
  File "C:\Dokumente und Einstellungen\Moritz\Anwendungsdaten\nvda\addons\Ian Reed's Japanese games translator\globalPlugins\Ian Reed's Japanese games translator\__init__.py", line 33, in <module>
  File "C:\Dokumente und Einstellungen\Moritz\Anwendungsdaten\nvda\addons\Ian Reed's Japanese games translator\globalPlugins\Ian Reed's Japanese games translator\translator.py", line 17, in <module>
ImportError: No module named ian_shared
INFO - core.main (07:01:37):
NVDA initialized

If i can help, simply ask!

2016-01-28 08:07:23

Ah, good call assault_freak.  I did not know Internet Explorer had that bug.
I am using Firefox.

~ Ian Reed
Visit BlindGamers.com to rate blind accessible games and see how others have rated them.
Try my free JGT addon, the easy way to play Japanese games in English.
Or try the free games I've created.

2016-01-28 08:29:51

OK, i tryed with 2015-4 and it works. So it could be a problem with the newest snapshot or it is a problem with the other addons. No problem. I will use a 2015 version.

2016-01-28 08:34:17

Just to be sure, does your cashing account for things like numbers and player names? (If so, how do you recognize names, what with it seeming unlikely those could be narrowed down to an obvious regular expression?)
Asking only because accounting for those no-need-to-translate variables would probably make it way more efficient (and cheaper).

看過來!
"If you want utopia but reality gives you Lovecraft, you don't give up, you carve your utopia out of the corpses of dead gods."
MaxAngor wrote:
    George... Don't do that.

2016-01-28 08:46:35

Hi.
wow, this sounds really great. Thanks for this awesome addon.

Best regards SLJ.
Feel free to contact me privately if you have something in mind. If you do so, then please send me a mail instead of using the private message on the forum, since I don't check those very often.
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2016-01-28 08:53:38

@Firefly, those are the correct lines, but off hand I am not sure why that is happening in the snapshot version.
I upgraded to NVDA 2015.4, so at least I'm up to date now.
Thanks for being willing to use the 2015 version for now.

@CAE_Jones, yes I account for numbers and at least English names.
Those all get replaced by number substitutions before I check for it in my database or send the text to google.
Then those number substitutions get replaced with their original English characters or numbers before they are sent back to the player.
So this means text like:
Ian has 5 rice balls.
Or:
CaeJones has 10 rice balls.
Where the obvious words are in Japanese, only get translated once.

The number substitutions occasionally cause problems because google gets over zealous and turns the number 1 into the word January when there are numbers that look like a date.
This has been a problem for the BK3 load game menu for instance.
In those cases I have been fixing them manually.
I had about 3000 translation records before sharing the addon publicly and this problem happened on very few records, so for now it is not a big deal.
I'm sure there will be other improvements as time goes on, fortunately I should be able to make them server side so I don't have to rely on people upgrading.

~ Ian Reed
Visit BlindGamers.com to rate blind accessible games and see how others have rated them.
Try my free JGT addon, the easy way to play Japanese games in English.
Or try the free games I've created.

2016-01-28 09:03:52

Ian all this sounds supel will check it out. could you do the fighting game that was announced as a new rerease in the new releases topic? i know it a lot of work but love beat em ups too smile. will check all this out later. can't wait start playing shadow line!

2016-01-28 10:05:05

Excellent job! Can you make the possibility to translate from japanese to italian or other languages than english? You can block only the starting Language, the japanese, so you can avoid any extra uses of your addon.

2016-01-28 10:26:11

Hello
good news.
in the Hispanic community we are developing a similar aplication.
everything is for play Japanese audiogames!
best regards.

sorry my english, is not my native language.

2016-01-28 10:33:44

Hello,
Interesting! It'll be cool for me to play Shadow Rine. For BK3 I've bought the translation, but it may help on untranslated parts.
Well I'm using NVDA dev snapshots, and I get the same error as mentioned above, so I will either wait for this to be fixed or I'll try to fix it in an addon code for myself.

2016-01-28 10:55:04

I just tried using this. Created account and tried to login the window just dessapperared and when I started SR the NVDA just reads the japanese text only.
Did I do something worng?

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2016-01-28 13:55:03

hi. ian you've made an excelent job, the addon is very nice i like it.
@seal: make sure that the auto translate feature is enabled by pressing control shift nvda y. it should work fine then.
I would also love to see gekiransen added to this addon, i like beat'em up as well hehe.

“Get busy living or get busy dying.”
Stephen King

2016-01-28 14:02:14

Yeach it works great, it is nice that I can translate text automatically, great job, it works for me pefectly.
@seal try to set the keyboard to japanese after running  this game, when autotranslation works set the keyboard to normal and restart the game, it also havent worked for me, but I have done that steps and it works.

2016-01-28 15:11:23

I have to change my previous opinion.
This doesnt translate a menus and another sentences after loading the game.
For example when I am in status menu after pressing tab I hear only blank blank every time if I am pressing arrow keys
Also when I am pressing enter on the place where I can save my game it says blank also.
Also load slot selection menu won't to be translated, only options menu is working well with this translation.

2016-01-28 18:24:32

Hello, it worked for me. Great job. I hope that you can prevent abuses as much as possible. My suggestion for you would be to show a dialog when you log into the server successfully. Because I enter the login information and it says nothing so I can't know if it's successful or not.

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2016-01-28 18:57:55

@mojsior, there is a bug.  When your session times out it is supposed to tell you, but instead it is just reporting blank as you move through uncached menu items.
So just login with the JGT login dialog again and it will start working again.
Sessions expire after an hour of not playing.
I'll try to get that fixed.

~ Ian Reed
Visit BlindGamers.com to rate blind accessible games and see how others have rated them.
Try my free JGT addon, the easy way to play Japanese games in English.
Or try the free games I've created.