Playing games in TL (Target Language) was one of my main goals in learning my TL. Creating this thread to share how I sentence mine from games.
Before I go further, note that there is a new tool called Wisp . For most users, WISP is probably good enough, but it is subscription based.
For me, I needed something that works with ANKI and didn't need all the other features of WISP. Actually, I mainly just needed a good game pauser so that I have time to read and understand the in-game text. Pausing the game was the main issue, many game don't have a pause feature.
The problems
- Not being able to pause games to read the text/subtitle in TL.
- How to get that text out from the game and into ANKI without typing it out every time in ANKI.
The 2 Solutions in summary :
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Solution 1 was to go into the game folder, extract all the text and dump them into a text file, process them into shorter sentences and later import into ANKI. This deck can later be sorted by frequency using Anki addons like AnkiMorphs and/or FrequencyMan.
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Solution 2 was to do it while playing game, find a way to play the game and pause the game to screen capture the text region and translate it.
I won't go into Solution 1 as that is very complicated and "hacky" and it is different for every game. I do use solution 1 if it is easy to access the game text data.
I will go into Solution 2 here.
Solution 2
Tools
- To pause games, I tried several tools, and eventually, I settled on a tool called Nyrna https://github.com/Merrit/nyrna
- For screen capturing, I use Windows sniping tool, rectangle region capture feature. It also has an OCR feature, or you can also use PowerToys Text Extractor.
- Alternatively, you can use DeepL application screen capture OCR translation feature.
Anki addons
Steps
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Start Game, start Nyrna , and Anki add card dialog is open, Multiple monitors are good for this. I have ChatGPT open as well, if I need some grammar explanation.
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I use Nyrna to pause the game at the part I wish to capture, I find clicking in Nyrna respond faster than using shortcuts.
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While the game is paused, I use the Windows sniping tool to screen capture the text region.
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In Anki add card dialog. I click on the "Paste image as text" button, which generates the text into one of the anki card fields.
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Still in Anki add card dialog, I then click on the DeepL or Google translate button to get the translation.
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I use ChatGPT to get more explanation as required.
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I also screen capture the rest of the game as an image to add to the card.
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If the game image is not good enough, I use AI (free credits on Leonardo AI or Microsoft Designer) to generate an image based on the text.
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I am not sure of an easy way to get audio out, so for audio, I just use HyperTTS Anki addon.
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Before using deck, i sort it using AnkiMorphs/FrequencyMan.
That is pretty much it. Let me know if anything is confusing. Feel free to share any other solutions, tips, and tricks on using games to learn languages.
It's time to go hard to force russian to stop trespassing into Ukraine without a visa.