Yomi-mate

読み

よみ ⋅ yomi

(noun)

1. reading
2. reading (of a kanji, esp. kun reading)​

Mate

/meɪt/

1. (colloquial, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, sometimes elsewhere in the Commonwealth) A friend

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An Optical Character Recognition driven dictionary. Inpired by the pop-up dictionary browser extension Yomichan (https://github.com/FooSoft/yomichan)

Created as an entry for the UQ Computing Society Hackathon 2022

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How It Works

Choose an image for Yomi-mate to scan through and it'll show you any Japanese text it detects. Then, you can highlight a particular word or character and it'll show you a dictionary entry for it.

Features

Word Definitions

Kanji Breakdown

Shows you details like the JLPT grade (if any), radicals, readings, as well as its meanings. It also checks if the selection contains a name, and shows its variations.

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Requirements

Linux / MacOS (untested): Python 3.10 or later
Windows: Untested

Setup

In the project's root folder:

# Create and activate virtual environment
python -m venv env
source env/bin/activate

# Install requirements
pip install -r requirements.txt

Then, to run the application:

# Activate virtual environment
source env/bin/activate
python ./frontend.py

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Project Limitations

1. Long & unfriendly installation process
2. Untested on Windows
3. Inaccurate readings
4. Unreliable GPU support
5. UI could be nicer

Frankly, this project is a bit of a mess. It's built on spaghetti hackathon code and is a hassle to get working for most users. I plan on reworking the entire thing to deal with these issues ~some~ time in the future.

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Acknowledgements

Inspirations

Yomichan

Tools used

EasyOCR (Optical Character Recognition)

JamDict (JMDict Parsing & Querying)

Pykakasi (Kana/Hiragana/Kanji to Romaji conversion)