About | Problems | Web Page Converter| Contact | About the System
November 2012 Updates
This was a major rewrite of much of the code (especially for the website translation) and will be the basis of future updates.
- New Spaced Rollover option. Get output in romaji, then rollover to get the English translation
- Copy pasting translations should now be working better
- Website option no longer uses frames - just a single page
- The options are now dropdowns below the form
- Your selected option is remembered from session to session
- Selecting the hiragana or katakana option should be better implemented
- Lots of tweaks regarding how the text appears. In future, there will be options for changing the size of the text
About
The site was built, programmed and designed by me, Gary Ross.
Problems
Really, I found a bug
First, make sure the problem isn't something obvious such as selecting the rollover option and not rolling over. Secondly, check that your browser is up to date or update to Chrome if you are Windows user. Then, redo what you did but try with various options: spaced, furigana, romaji etc. Then go to the support page, tell me the problem:
Be specific:
Operating system, browser, the kind of problem, the text you tried to parse plus the option you set. Also, click the 'demo' link, let me know if that works or not.
What's up with the bold N
This is so you can distinguish between the syllabic N = ん, and the N of na - ni - nu - ne - no (being unbolded).
Eh? Well, if you see Junichirou, you don't know whether it's
JU + NI + CHI or JU + N + I + CHI
But when you see: Junichirou, you'll correctly call Mr.Koizumi: JU N I CHI RO U
Which browser do you recommend?
Short Answer: Chrome or Safari
Long Answer: Any modern browser will work fine. Generally though I recommend Chrome or Safari (on a Mac). Chrome is simply a faster, better browser than Internet Explorer. It's optimized to work well on Google's own products such as Maps and Docs, and it has the same engine as Safari (Apple's Webkit) so is a similar experience to mobile etc. If you have a compelling reason to use Internet Explorer make sure it is up to date. The site doesn't officially support IE6 or IE7.
Why do I get garbage characters?
The short answer is that you have an old or poor browser. First you should panic. Next, you should check the main page first sentence. I have put the word 'kanji' in kanji (Escher eat your heart out). If that word doesn't appear correctly, it's likely that your browser is not encoding correctly. Should be easy to solve - all you need to do is go to the browser menu and change the encoding to Unicode(utf-8). That will hopefully correct your problems.
Still not working?
Sorry, but the only option is to update your browser. The latest version of Chrome has very good multilanguage support on Windows, but read the other faq before deciding the best one.
Web Page Converter
How does it work?
Just enter any text starting with http. It only does the rollover system (others coming soon). So you have to rollover the kanji with your mouse. You can follow links too. Just click and it will parse the next page
Kanji Flash Card System
I've finished developing a Kanji/Vocab flash card system that will automatically test you based on how well you know the kanji. Here.
About the System
How does the parsing work?
The main engine is based on Chasen from Naist in Nara, which is a command line Japanese analyser. Parsing English is a trivial issue (look for the spaces) but Japanese is a massive challenge.And the vocab?
This comes from Jim Breen's Edict Project - another excellent Japan related resource.
What did you use?
It was developed on a Mac Pro 8-core running an Apache 2 server on OSX (Mountain Lion), using mainly BBEdit. The server itself is a dedicated Linux Ubuntu monster. Music by House of Love & Supergrass. The location is Mojo Cafe. Kanazawa, which has the world's best scones and cakes. Thank-you Hisako, you're the best.
Contact me
Will you give me your code to use on my site?
Probably not.
Why not?
Hundreds of hours have gone into this spread over a number of years, and it helps finance the cost of running the server. If you really would like it on your site, you can still contact me though.
You can send me an email for questions/problems/requests/offers of via the support page.