VNReader Advance Guide/Tutorial Part 3

Today we’re going to cover ways to improve translation in VNR as well as discussing the  importance of the shared dictionary feature.

Related tutorials:
Basics 1
Advance series Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4  | 5

The Shared Dictionary

If you’ve played with Translation Aggregator before, there’s a feature called “Substitution” which replaces text with your desired translation. Basically what it does is replacing Japanese text with the translation you want. It’s primarily used for Character names and modern slangs. VNR has the same feature, but with improvements. The shared dictionary is as easy as filling data in a spreadsheet (like Microsoft Excel).

Adding words/terms in the Shared dictionary.

1. Be sure to open/start the game with VNR’s springboard.
2. In the side menu Menu > Shared dictionary.
3. Click “ADD” from the entry action menu.
4. Change the target language and the target (Category discussed below).
5. Add the JP pattern as well as the desired translation.
6. Comments are optional, but are pretty useful if you need to backtrack.
7. Click save and  you’re done.

Unique features of VNR’s shared dictionary

Categorizing substitution text
In VNR’s shared dictionary, you can categorize words and it will treat it as such. Before the text will be parsed to ATLAS or LEC, VNR will substitute/change the words depending on the type.

Type	Description
Chara	Treats the word as Character names. Prevents machine translation to translate names literally.
Translation	Replaces the desired word AFTER the machine translation.
Japanese	Replaces the desired word BEFORE the machine translation.
Escape	The replacement will be applied to the original game text in Japanese, and ESCAPE the result text from the machine translation process.The “escape” term will prevent the machine translator from modifying the result text.
Voice	Replaces how the word is being pronounced when you use TTS (Text to speech) feature. For example “眞太郎” is read as “Makoto” in Voiceroid Yukari, but it could also be pronounced as “Shintarou”.
Original text	Replacement will be applied to the original game text. You only need to do this if necessary or critical changes to the game script like removing text garbage.

Check Boxes

Type	Description
Select	To group select the terms, and apply actions from the entry actions menu. [screenshot]
Enable	To enable or disable the word in the dictionary. If you see a person abusing the dictionary or wrongly putting words, feel free to uncheck it.
Private	This will make the dictionary entry exclusive to you. No other user can see it.
Type	Discussed previously. “Categorizing substitution text.”
Language	Specify, if the dictionary term will be used to a certain language. In the example above, I limit the character name/translation to English speakers.
Regular Expression	Like TAHelper, Shared dictionaries support RegEx. All you have to do is check the checkbox in the cell.
Hentai	If this is a hentai term check it. This is good for defining moaning or perverted words commonly used in eroge.
Series Specific	This will make the dictionary entry exclusive to the game title you are playing. In the example above I made the name “Kintoki” exclusive for Hana Awase game.

Hashtag Filter Search
You can easily filter or search for terms by clicking the hashtag buttons. This will enable/disable search filters.

Type	Description
@user	Clicking this will display your submitted entries.
#game	Clicking this will display the entries of the current game you are playing.
language	Clicking this will filter the entries according to the default language you have set up in your Annot.me/Sakuradite account.
Dup	Displays possible duplicate entries. Feel free to enable/disable duplicate entries, but be careful. Some games have the same names but different ID’s. Check the Game column if the Game ID’s are the same or not. Example: Hana Awase ~Mizuchi Hen~ and Hana Awase ~Himeutsugi Hen~ are in the duplicate filter but entries are belong to their respective games so it’s not duplicate at all.

Aside from clicking the buttons you could also use hashtag filter search by manually inputting it on the search bar.

•  For example you want to look-up jichi’s submitted entries. You can input @jichi in the search bar.
• For games. #Game name. Or #GameID.

What’s the purpose of the shared dictionary?

• Adding words in ATLAS dictionary can be fatal, especially when adding names. For example ‘Mirai’ can be a name and can also mean ‘Future’.  Machine T/L would most often times prioritize new dictionary entries over existing ones.
• Before shared dictionary was made there was TAHelper, but since you can’t share you’re entries with other people you have to google if name lists exists or make one yourself.
• The shared dictionary in VNR can sort your entries via series. So you don’t have to do the old fashion way of making separate NAMES database.

Improving Atlas

In this step, I am not responsible for your ATLAS settings, as these are extra steps that were done by people who created their own dictionaries to slightly improve ATLAS translation.

• I am currently using FHC‘s dictionary and ErzoTL‘s dictionary in this order and overwrite General translation environment.

• In case you don’t like their settings, you can simply go back to ATLAS main window > Environment > Translation Environment List > General > Restore settings.
• If you want to add entries in ATLAS, you can read Vivin‘s tutorial about it.

ErzoTL’s replacement script

• Discussed in part 4

Resources

• For help, please visit VNR forums.
• If you want to contribute for a better machine TL, please do visit VNR forums or drop by a comment here for your suggestions. We’d be thrilled to hear your opinions.
• You can find more detailed information about the Shared dictionary at the VNR Wiki.