Good AI Tools to translate magazines?

[amorri40]

AI is the hot topic right now and it is incredibly good at translating text, you can snap an image of one of the awesome japanese scans here and be able to read them, which is a game changer. However I am so far unable to find a good Ai-based translator that keeps the same page layout and images but just changes the text to English.

Ideally I want to find a tool where I can upload a pdf and then download an english version that looks the same but is well.. in English!

I am happy to pay for tools to do this, even subscription models (as long as the price is fair per page), but I have not seen one that has been good enough.

Does anyone know of any that are any good?

So far:
Slider.ai - terrible result
mangaday.ai - better than slider but still not very good
transmonkey.ai - best so far, but translation is a bit off, and font is very manga-style
ChatGPT - Great translation of the text, but can't do the format of the original magazine

Attached is "Slider.ai"'s attempt which is pretty terrible

[IloveCats100]

as someone who is interested in translation, I don't think I agree with it being 'good'! It's more that the translation software is better at sounding correct because it now has an understanding of common english phrasing, so when you give it text to translate it can workshop it into a more natural-sounding result! Unfortunately the actual accuracy of a translation can vary wildly based on many factors- for example a news article about facts may be simple but something more informal and emotive will suffer quite a bit! Another thing that can hurt is the origin language- japanese is notoriously difficult to translate due to the multiple meanings and readings of its characters which has led to a lot of confusion, as well as an almost total lack of pronouns!

If you want to use these sorts of tools to get the gist of an article they'll probably do the job but you should always remember that it will get things wrong, and you won't know what it gets wrong since you don't speak the language!

[kitsunebi]

Google works fine.  The output images are going to be much lower res, but it keeps the format/images intact and you'll be able to read it, so mission accomplished.

The problem with translating Japanese video game mags is that, since their intended audience is children, the text is polluted with furigana (phonetic pronunciation guides).  So for example, the page you provided as a demonstration confuses translators by having not just the text, but tiny pronunciation guides for the more advanced kanji as well. (see below)

Japansese texts without furigana (basically anything aimed at high school and above) will provide a much more readable translation.

You cannot view this attachment.

[kitsunebi]

Here's an example of a page from a mag aimed at adults (LOGiN) as opposed to one aimed at children (Famitsu).  You can see how much better it is:

You cannot view this attachment.

[amorri40]

as someone who is interested in translation, I don't think I agree with it being 'good'! It's more that the translation software is better at sounding correct because it now has an understanding of common english phrasing, so when you give it text to translate it can workshop it into a more natural-sounding result! Unfortunately the actual accuracy of a translation can vary wildly based on many factors- for example a news article about facts may be simple but something more informal and emotive will suffer quite a bit! Another thing that can hurt is the origin language- japanese is notoriously difficult to translate due to the multiple meanings and readings of its characters which has led to a lot of confusion, as well as an almost total lack of pronouns!

If you want to use these sorts of tools to get the gist of an article they'll probably do the job but you should always remember that it will get things wrong, and you won't know what it gets wrong since you don't speak the language!

This is a very good point, especially when I am trying to research old game development topics, I could easily get the wrong impression and spread misinformation. I am just wanting it to get the gist of articles and when I find an interesting fact that I want to use I can send it to a real Japanese translator.

Google works fine.  The output images are going to be much lower res, but it keeps the format/images intact and you'll be able to read it, so mission accomplished.

The problem with translating Japanese video game mags is that, since their intended audience is children, the text is polluted with furigana (phonetic pronunciation guides).  So for example, the page you provided as a demonstration confuses translators by having not just the text, but tiny pronunciation guides for the more advanced kanji as well. (see below)

Japansese texts without furigana (basically anything aimed at high school and above) will provide a much more readable translation.

You cannot view this attachment.

Thank you this is really good context!! This is something I hadn't even noticed and wouldn't have been aware of until you said, as to me its just a wall of Japanese characters. But now I can see the furigana and you are bang on about the impact of it on the AI is huge as it also tries to translate it!
Now that I know about it I can in theory photoshop the furigana out and then the AI should have an easier job translating. Also great to know that more adult oriented magazines will not have this problem.

Strangely I tried using google translate but it said it couldn't detect any text (both in japanese and auto-detect mode) on the same Tetris page: https://translate.google.com/?sl=auto&tl=en&op=images

But I will try the Google Cloud Translation API to see if it works in that instead.

Also thank you @kitsunebi it is because of your scans that we get access to any of this content in high quality in the first place  .

My goal is to find the best way to translate entire magazines to english in the highest quality so I can read them on my phone on the way to work without having to guess a page is interesting and manually screenshot and convert. But it depends how expensive the translation APIs are it may or may not be worth the money doing it on a whole magazine at once

[IloveCats100]

My goal is to find the best way to translate entire magazines to english in the highest quality so I can read them on my phone on the way to work without having to guess a page is interesting and manually screenshot and convert. But it depends how expensive the translation APIs are it may or may not be worth the money doing it on a whole magazine at once

I think if you want to read it casually and in the long-term like that perhaps it'd be more worthwhile to learn Japanese yourself! Sure it sounds scary but it's never too late to learn a new skill and it'd be useful if you ever went on a trip there, you could just pick up any book and read it yourself better than any AI could!

[kitsunebi]

I think if you want to read it casually and in the long-term like that perhaps it'd be more worthwhile to learn Japanese yourself! Sure it sounds scary but it's never too late to learn a new skill and it'd be useful if you ever went on a trip there, you could just pick up any book and read it yourself better than any AI could!

That's a nice thought, but not very practical for most people.  Granted, there are some people gifted with languages who can pick them up quickly, but not so for most people.  Japanese is one of the harder languages for an English-speaker to learn and it would take a SIGNIFICANT amount of study time before you could just pick up a book or magazine and read it better than AI.  (I'm speaking as someone who has lived in Japan for almost 20 years.)

I mean, sure, if you WANT to learn Japanese, go for it.  But it will still be a long time before you'll be able to pick up a book and read it fluently, so in the meantime, finding whatever AI solution you're looking for is definitely where you should start.  The difference between AI translation of Japanese today and machine translation of ten years ago is like night and day, it's improved so much.  So chances are, by the time you could actually master Japanese, AI will have done so as well.  (Of course if you want to actually be able to TALK to people in Japanese, better crack open those books and enroll in some classes!)

[IloveCats100]

I think if you want to read it casually and in the long-term like that perhaps it'd be more worthwhile to learn Japanese yourself! Sure it sounds scary but it's never too late to learn a new skill and it'd be useful if you ever went on a trip there, you could just pick up any book and read it yourself better than any AI could!

That's a nice thought, but not very practical for most people.  Granted, there are some people gifted with languages who can pick them up quickly, but not so for most people.  Japanese is one of the harder languages for an English-speaker to learn and it would take a SIGNIFICANT amount of study time before you could just pick up a book or magazine and read it better than AI.  (I'm speaking as someone who has lived in Japan for almost 20 years.)

I mean, sure, if you WANT to learn Japanese, go for it.  But it will still be a long time before you'll be able to pick up a book and read it fluently, so in the meantime, finding whatever AI solution you're looking for is definitely where you should start.  The difference between AI translation of Japanese today and machine translation of ten years ago is like night and day, it's improved so much.  So chances are, by the time you could actually master Japanese, AI will have done so as well.  (Of course if you want to actually be able to TALK to people in Japanese, better crack open those books and enroll in some classes!)

That is possible, but I think if the goal is born from enthusiasm for Japanese media and culture, you're going to derive more meaning from it, even if it is longer and more painful a path to walk. If the goal is just finding specific games information then AI can do the job, sure.

[kitsunebi]

That is possible, but I think if the goal is born from enthusiasm for Japanese media and culture, you're going to derive more meaning from it, even if it is longer and more painful a path to walk. If the goal is just finding specific games information then AI can do the job, sure.

Exactly.  The OP made no mention of any interest in Japanese aside from doing research on videogame articles, which by itself doesn't seem to me to be reason enough to put in years of study to learn a language.  At any rate, the OP specifically asked for help finding good AI translators, so advice related to that is what they're looking for.

It's like if I ask if anyone knows any good Chinese restaurants in my area, and all I get are replies telling me I should just learn to cook it myself since I could probably do it better once I know how.  Maybe so...not what I was asking, though! 

By all means, though - I think everyone should study a foreign language if they can (not Duolingo, but rather actual study).  And more importantly, spend some time visiting other countries (if you can manage to live and work there for a while, even better.)  So many of the problems in the world would go away if people had a better understanding of how much they have in common with each other.