So, I’m trying to degoogle from at least the services that have good competitors and I thought Translate -> DeepL would be a no-brainer with how much it’s recommended, but apparently when translating Japanese it doesn’t give you the Romaji like Translate does, and considering it’s one of my most frequent use cases I can’t really use it as a replacement.
Just in case if I didn’t explain it correctly, I’m looking for an alternative that does something like this, but DeepL doesn’t give you the little “Uriba” text under your Japanese input. Does any other app do?
I think Microsoft’s Bing Translate matches the features the OP is looking for. Like Google, it’s part of “Big Tech,” but at least there’s a competitor to the oligopoly.
Aside from Chinese-based services, other well-known translation services that support Japanese include DeepL, TexTra, and Plamo; however, I couldn’t find any of them that offer the feature to display Romanized spellings alongside the Japanese text.
https://www.bing.com/translator/
Additionally, an Android application called “Offline Translator,” released by DavidVentura, is capable of performing this kind of Romanization while offline.
Being able to read kana is the most basic thing when you’re dealing with Japanese regularly so there’s really very little demand for romaji. How about you invest a few days and memorise at least the hiragana?
Could be useful for kanji though, specially when context changes the pronunciation.
To @[email protected], closest I can think of is Yomiwa. Technically from Google Play and has a premium version as MTX (meaning that can’t be backed up), but the app without the upgrade works on degoogled phones without any forms of GAPPs, and it has a Text Analyser option in the 3-bars menu which gives you the reading form of each element and their individual meanings if tapped (though no whole text translations).
With my current Japanese knowledge I don’t think something with no whole text translation is fit for my use cases, but I’ll keep it in mind if I eventually need something similar, thanks!
Also if using Yomiwa, maybe it’s a good idea to make an install on an Android VM or Waydroid, and back that up for offline use. The additional files (dictionaries for other languages, example sentences and names), I have yet to find a way to move between systems offline, and they have a tendency of getting deleted if left unmarked after download for too long.
I know it shouldn’t be that hard to learn just hiragana, it’s just that I don’t know if I currently have enough free time to invest in something that is relatively time-consuming and will still not make translating unnecessary because I’ll still need them for katakana, kanji and more specific Japanese expressions (my Japanese knowledge isn’t that deep in general so while I can understand most common spoken/romaji stuff there’s still a lot of phrases you can’t get through context alone).
By the way, whenever I do find the time (even if I find a translator it’s still something I want to do sooner or later), do you have any particular app/site to suggest to at least memorize them?
Maybe the Learn Japanese to Survive trilogy of games? Iirc all 3 are powered by RPG Maker MV, meaning they can run on Joiplay, Maldives Player, a Python server through Termux or the sort, etc. First is for memorizing hiragana, second for katakana, and third for kanji.
Those… do look interesting actually, considering the time I have I was looking more for something I can do in small sessions like Duolingo (not Duolingo itself though, I heard it enshittified hard in recent years), but if I do find myself in a situation where I have enough free time to dedicate to a pc game I could try those out, thanks.
Dunno since when it’d been going to shit, but I tried Duolinguo during the pandemic and it was bad already then. It is a means to passive-aggressively pressuring you into paying to not get timeouts for mistakes first, and a learning app second. And on the learning part, no grammar at least to the point I had the patience to try. And back then they had already removed the forum area from what I remember.
Regarding the games, since you sounded like you wanted something for phones, that’s why I mentioned the tools I did. Joiplay, Maldives Player and Termux are all on Android, iirc only Maldives not being shared as an APK.
Oh sorry, I didn’t know these and somehow thought they were Linux emulators of some sort, I’m gonna look a bit more into them then
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