Interpreter
An offline screen translator for Windows, macOS and Linux that reads Japanese game text and displays English overlays. Open source under MIT.
Interpreter reads Japanese text from game windows and displays English translations over your screen. It's built for people playing Japanese retro games, with MeikiOCR tuned for game text and pixel fonts. The default OCR and Sugoi V4 translation models run locally, so text stays on your computer and no internet connection is needed after setup. It's open source under the MIT license, with support for Windows, macOS and Linux.
Translations can appear in a draggable subtitle bar or directly over the original text in a transparent, click-through overlay. Multi-display support keeps the overlay on the game's screen. A fuzzy translation cache reuses results for similar text, reducing repeated translation work. Capture-card input also lets it translate console games, with subtitles on the computer screen while the console plays through to a TV.
For other translation models, it connects to Ollama or OpenAI-compatible servers such as LM Studio, llama.cpp and vLLM. The LLM backend includes preceding dialogue as context and can translate into languages the chosen model handles. CPU-only translation is possible, though larger models can take seconds per line; GPU acceleration makes them more practical for frequent text changes.
Alternative OCR comes through owocr, including OneOCR on Windows and Apple Live Text on macOS. Other source languages require a suitable OCR engine and translation model. Remote translation services send game text off your machine, and cloud OCR such as Google Lens sends captured frames to its provider.
