Interpreter

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

Requirements

• Python 3.11+ (Python 3.14 not yet supported)
• Windows 10 version 1903+, macOS, or Linux (X11/XWayland/Wayland)

Linux: Native Wayland Support (Optional)

For capturing native Wayland applications (not running through XWayland), install GStreamer with PipeWire support:

Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt-get install gstreamer1.0-pipewire gir1.2-gstreamer-1.0

Fedora:

sudo dnf install gstreamer1-plugin-pipewire

Arch Linux:

sudo pacman -S gst-plugin-pipewire

Without these packages, the application still works but can only capture X11/XWayland windows.

Known limitations:

• Global hotkeys (e.g., Space to toggle overlay) only work when an X11/XWayland window is focused. When a native Wayland window has focus, use the GUI button to toggle the overlay instead.
• Inplace overlay mode only works correctly with fullscreen native Wayland windows. For windowed mode, use Banner overlay or capture via X11/XWayland instead. (Wayland's security model prevents applications from knowing window positions.)

Tip: To capture a fullscreen Wayland window, put the game in fullscreen mode before starting the capture in Interpreter.

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 install script again:

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"

Usage

interpreter-v2

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

Hotkeys

Key	Action
Space	Toggle overlay on/off (configurable in GUI)

In banner mode, you can drag the overlay to reposition it.

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.

Configuration

All settings are configured through the GUI and saved to ~/.interpreter/config.yml.

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)
3. Translation - Sugoi V4 translates Japanese 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/.

What's New in v2

• Inplace overlay mode - Text appears directly over game text
• Translation caching - Fuzzy matching reduces redundant translations
• Improved OCR - Punctuation excluded from confidence calculation
• Better window capture - Excludes overlapping windows, auto-detects fullscreen
• Multi-display support - Overlay appears on the same display as the game