Interpreter

Play Japanese and Chinese games with live English translation.

Interpreter captures in-game text from any window, runs OCR locally, translates it offline, and overlays clean English subtitles so you can play import titles without ROM hacks or cloud APIs.

Caption: The original game screen stays intact while Interpreter reads the dialogue box and shows an English subtitle overlay in real time.

Why use it?

• Play untranslated retro RPGs without fan patches
• Keep your emulator setup and original game visuals unchanged
• Run fully offline after model download
• Switch between Japanese -> English and Chinese -> English in the GUI

Features

• Fully offline - No cloud APIs, no internet required after setup
• Free - No API costs or subscriptions
• Private - Text never leaves your machine
• Japanese and Chinese support - Select Japanese -> English or Chinese -> English
• Optimized for retro games - Uses MeikiOCR for Japanese game text and RapidOCR for Chinese text
• Two overlay modes - Banner (subtitle bar) or inplace (text over game)
• Translation caching - Fuzzy matching avoids re-translating similar text
• Multi-display support - Overlay appears on the same display as the game

Requirements

• Windows 10 version 1903+, macOS, or Linux (X11/XWayland/Wayland)

Linux Notes

• Global hotkeys require input group membership. The installer will show instructions.
• Native Wayland capture requires GStreamer PipeWire plugin. The installer will attempt to install it automatically.
• Inplace overlay on Wayland only works with fullscreen windows (Wayland's security model prevents knowing window positions).
• Qt platform plugin (xcb) requires libxcb-cursor0 (Debian/Ubuntu/Mint) or xcb-util-cursor (Fedora/Arch). Without it the GUI will abort with Could not load the Qt platform plugin "xcb".

Installation

One-liner Install

macOS/Linux:

curl -LsSf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bquenin/interpreter/main/install.sh | bash

Windows (PowerShell):

powershell -c "irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bquenin/interpreter/main/install.ps1 | iex"

Then run with interpreter-v2.

Upgrading

To update to the latest version, run the installer again (see Installation above).

Uninstalling

macOS/Linux:

curl -LsSf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bquenin/interpreter/main/uninstall.sh | bash

Windows (PowerShell):

powershell -c "irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bquenin/interpreter/main/uninstall.ps1 | iex"

This removes interpreter-v2, config files, and cached models.

Usage

interpreter-v2

This opens the GUI where you can select a window to capture and configure all settings.

Overlay Modes

Banner Mode (default)

A subtitle bar at the bottom of the screen displaying translated text. Draggable, opaque background, centered text.

Inplace Mode

Transparent overlay positioned over the game window. Translated text appears directly over the original Japanese or Chinese text at OCR-detected positions. Click-through so you can interact with the game.

How It Works

1. Screen Capture - Captures the target window at the configured refresh rate
2. OCR - MeikiOCR extracts Japanese text (optimized for pixel fonts), while RapidOCR handles Chinese text
3. Translation - Sugoi V4 translates Japanese to English, while OPUS-MT zh-en translates Chinese to English
4. Display - Shows translated text in the selected overlay mode

Troubleshooting

Poor OCR accuracy

Try adjusting the OCR confidence slider in the GUI. Lower values include more text (but may include garbage), higher values are stricter.

Slow performance

First run downloads models (~1.5GB). Subsequent runs use cached models from ~/.cache/huggingface/.

Language Support

• Japanese -> English: MeikiOCR + Sugoi V4
• Chinese -> English: RapidOCR + OPUS-MT zh-en

Chinese OCR quality may vary on low-resolution retro pixel fonts and may require OCR confidence tuning.