Offline screen translator for Japanese retro games. Captures text from any window, performs OCR, translates to English, and displays subtitles in a floating overlay.

Features

Fully offline - No cloud APIs, no internet required after setup
Free - No API costs or subscriptions
Private - Text never leaves your machine
Optimized for retro games - Uses MeikiOCR, trained specifically on Japanese game 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).

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 text at OCR-detected positions. Click-through so you can interact with the game.

How It Works

Screen Capture - Captures the target window at the configured refresh rate
OCR - MeikiOCR extracts Japanese text (optimized for pixel fonts)
Translation - Sugoi V4 translates Japanese to English
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/.