Japanese – English Translator Assistant Tool

As a translator, I feel that I’m really in need of a tool to assist me, but well, something like that wasn’t easily found just anywhere.

So now, I decided to make one myself.

And I’m going to post some updates on the progress of how things go. Though it’s probably not that frequent, since I’m working on it quite slowly.
Well, this is probably going to end up more like bragging than updating.

In any case, once the tool is in a working condition, I intend to share it so everyone can play around with it.

Yes, only playing around with it.
I do not have the confidence that it will be useful for anyone but myself or be stable enough for serious work.

---

JPEN Prototype 02

This is the 2nd prototype that I’ve made. As of now, it’s only in the phase of proof-of-concept.
All I can say is that it’s probably not impossible to do.

Here’s a screenshot.

JPEN Prototype 02

A little explanation of how it supposes to work.

1. Separate the source into smaller sentences.
2. Keep track of the translation of each sentence individually. Each sentence will have its own translated text associated with it.
3. The original text of the currently selected sentence is displayed in the sidebar.
4. The original text is split into lexical tokens.
   You can lookup each token in the dictionary by clicking it in the sidebar.
   Alternatively, you can double click on them to copy to clipboard.
5. Support Markdown syntax highlighting.

Well, that’s the gist of it. That’s what I want from this app. But well, it’s not completed yet. See those buttons on the toolbar? When you click on them … nothing happens, they’re all but decorations. Also, it cannot even save or export its data. And there’s various other glitches as well. There’s a lot of work to be done.

Still though, I’m making this app in order to save time, but time has yet to be saved and a lot of it is actually wasted instead. What is this dilemma!

Let’s pray that it will help me translate faster when it’s completed. Though it’s best not to get our hope too high. After all, even if the tool is better, it’s useless if the user themself doesn’t improve.

I will probably only implement what I think I will need, as there’s a high chance I’m going to be the only actual user.
Even so, if you have any awesome idea, let me know in the comments or on Google+.

Thank you for your continued support of this blog. See you later!