Friday, August 30, 2019

Now I can sort of read my Japanese cards!

SumoMenkoMan has sent me a lot of Japanese cards. I really appreciate that because I would have pretty much zero chance of getting them otherwise. But I couldn't read them. Luckily, and somewhat confusingly, the team and player names are in English on the basketball cards...but I couldn't read the backs at all.

Until now!

Yesterday, my brother got a new phone, nearly identical to mine. He was the first in the family to have a smart phone and it's dying, so it was time to upgrade. When he was checking out his new one last night, we saw an icon on the camera screen and didn't know what it was, so naturally, he clicked on it. As it turns out, it's something called Google Lens, and it has a few options. You can place it over food to find out more information (something I've not used yet), over products or images to pull them up on sales sites or a general Google search, it can copy text, and on the far left of the icons- Translate.

My first thought was about cards. I ran and grabbed my phone, and I had it too. So then I went and got one of the latest cards Ryan had sent me and tried it out! It's not perfect...but it's a heck of a lot better than it was before!
 This is a regular picture taken with the camera on the phone
This is a screencap of Google Lens. As you can see, it works pretty well but not perfect...it translated Brave Thunders as Brave Sanders, I'm not sure what Students should be in the bio area, and it gets the nouns a little confused (we don't refer to people as It) but this is a FAR cry better than it was before! When I could read nothing. Interestingly, it didn't translate the stat headers, but they were printed in English anyway.

I've actually got half a mind to go in and screencap each and every one of my international issues- not just the Japanese cards. I've also got cards from Germany, Belgium, and others, although the vast majority of untranslated cards are Japanese.

This is a pretty cool tool to have, now I need to get out some of my world coins and see if it can translate them...
Posted by at
Labels: ,

7 comments:

  1. Zippy ZappyAugust 30, 2019 at 8:47 PM

    Huh, didn't even know BBM made cards of the B League. Good to know.

    As for the translations, as someone who can actually read Japanese I'd say that that translator is surprisingly well done outside of some weird grammatical errors and that weird bit about Thunder being turned into "Sander".

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Billy KingsleySeptember 1, 2019 at 12:25 PM

      They started in 2016-17. I have not seen if they did a set for 18-19 but they seemed to be pretty successful so hopefully. I'm glad to hear they mostly got it right. That makes me feel pretty good about not being a waste of time to screencap them.

      Delete
  2. SumoMenkoManAugust 31, 2019 at 1:04 AM

    Awesome that you were able to discover it. Google Translate does a good job too. Someday I'll get all the Japanese checklists loaded for you in TCDB.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Billy KingsleySeptember 1, 2019 at 12:28 PM

      My problem with Google translate is that I don't have the Japanese keyboard to type them in...and even if I did, probably not the patience, haha. That would be great. I have sumo scans ready and waiting.

      Delete
  3. FujiAugust 31, 2019 at 9:35 AM

    I'll have to look into this Google Lens and see if they make it for the iPhone. I've actually thought about buying one of these translator apps for the sole purpose of translating Japanese trading cards.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Billy KingsleySeptember 1, 2019 at 12:31 PM

      I'd bet they have a competitor even if not the same app. It was built in for me so I didn't have to look for it or download anything.

      Delete
  4. SeanSeptember 1, 2019 at 10:15 PM

    That is pretty neat. Tech like that seems to have the potential to make Japanese cards way more accessible to American collectors!

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)