Yakutori - Japanese screen capture translator

Yakutori is an offline, real-time screen translator for Japanese games, visual novels, and applications. It watches a window you choose, reads the Japanese on screen, translates it to English, and draws the translation right on top of the original - so you can play import titles and untranslated games as if they'd been localized.

Everything runs on your own machine. No cloud services, no accounts, no internet connection at runtime, and no telemetry. The OCR and translation models are bundled with the app and loaded locally — what you translate never leaves your PC.

What it does

• Real-time overlay : translations appear in place over the original text and update as the scene changes.

• Per-window capture : reads a single game window without disturbing the game: no injection, no borders, no focus stealing.

• Made for reading & learning : furigana readings, a built-in Japanese dictionary, and one-click flashcard export.

• Fully offline & private - 100% local, no network required.

How to use it

1. Choose how to capture

• Screen mode : translates the whole game window. Every block of Japanese is detected and its English is drawn in place, right over the original text.

• Area mode : when you only want one region translated (like the dialogue box). Click Configure Area, drag a box over the text once, and Yakutori translates only that region into a clean fixed box — perfect for busy screens or fixed-position text.

2. Start capturing

Pick your window (Screen mode) or area (Area mode) and press Start. The overlay appears over the game. Tune font, size, colors, background opacity, and position to taste and toggle the overlay on/off any time with a global hotkey, even while the game is focused.

3. Single or Duo subtitles

Show just the English (Single), or the original Japanese stacked above the English (Duo) — great if you're studying the language.

4. Create flashcards

See a line worth studying? Press the Create-card hotkey to snapshot the current frame together with its Japanese and translation. Snapshots stack up and survive restarts, so you can grab a batch while you play and build cards later. Open one from the stack, refine the word, reading, and meaning with help from the built-in JMdict dictionary and automatic furigana then export to Anki (.apkg) and review however you like.

Yakutori is a machine-translation tool: it makes Japanese games readable, but automatic OCR and translation aren't perfect and won't match a hand-crafted human localization.