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Comment by ericdykstra | Hacker News Reader

Fun feature. Would be killer with support for non-latin based language. Imagine walking down a street in Japan, seeing a restaurant, and wanting to search for reviews. Oh no! It's written in kanji and you have a hard enough time reading basic words, much less names. Open up Google on your phone, write the kanji and add the japanese word for review behind it, and off you go.

Great potential, anyway.

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You can already do this on Android in any text field of your choice using the "7notes with mazec" keyboard[0]. The kanji recognition is nothing short of miraculous[1]. It's a little expensive, so check out the free 10-day trial[2] if you need any further convincing.

0: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sevenknowl...

1: http://i.imgur.com/rfHTu.png

2: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sevenknowl...

Thank you for the recommendation. I haven't checked this solution out yet, but it looks fantastic! I have never seen an app with this kind of kanji recognition.

It is indeed one of a kind. I haven't formally studied 書道 (calligraphy), but the ad hoc 行書 (cursive style of writing) I've developed out of laziness is recognized perfectly by it.

If you're interested in good Android apps for Japanese, I would also urge you to check out Aedict[0] and DroidWing[1]. The latter, when combined with EPWING-format dictionaries obtained from a 3rd party source, is (IMO) just as good as any 電子辞書 (which themselves use EPWING-format dictionaries). I personally use the 研究社新和英大辞典第5版 and 研究社新英和大辞典第6版 (they are, surprisingly enough, more than sufficient for classical Japanese and for kanbun), though you can also get J-J dictionaries and domain-specific ones, such as for IT or medicine.

0: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=sk.baka.aedict...

1: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aokabi.and...

Are there any apps that use a dictionary other than EDICT? EDICT is great if you are trying to read a textbook or something, but if you're trying to decipher manga, anime, or a conversation that took place anytime after 1995, it's nearly useless. Actual denshi jishos tend to do much better, but are really optimized for users that speak Japanese natively.

> Are there any apps that use a dictionary other than EDICT?

Look into the second app I mentioned (DroidWing). Like I said, it supports EPWING-format dictionary files, the same as 電子辞書 use, meaning that comprehensiveness is no longer a distinguishing factor when it comes to 電子辞書 vs. smartphones. The specific dictionaries I mentioned (from 研究社) are considered to be the authoritative E-J/J-E dictionaries, both printed and digital. You can of course get other speciality E-J/J-E dictionaries, or J-J dictionaries, if that's what you desire.

Ah, OK. When I read the description of DroidWing I wasn't sure what the point of converting EDICT to some other format was. I will look into this further.

Edit: Hey, the Kenkyusha dictionary is only $500 on Amazon! http://www.amazon.com/Kenkyushas-New-Japanese-English-Dictio...

That's a hard copy, and an old edition at that. The digital version (which is what you need for DroidWing) is only $270[0], or free if your ethics are flexible.

0: http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E7%A0%94%E7%A9%B6%E7%A4%BE-EPWING%E...

Thanks. They might consider using less expensive paper when printing dictionaries in the future :)

I must thank you as well. Though I love my standalone denshi jisho (Wordtank G55) that's lasted me a good 5 years or so, having an app for this works well if I don't want to bust the thing out... especially since these days I'm not sitting down writing Japanese essays.

Maybe it's because I was still in high school when the modern smartphone revolution came about, but for some reason, I just abhor the idea of a standalone 電子辞書 and see it as a 20th-century anachronism.

When I began studying 古文 and 漢文, despite being told that I would "need" to purchase a 電子辞書, I persevered and was able to (most likely thanks to my technical knowledge, which most other Japanese students admittedly do not possess) replicate all the functionality of a 電子辞書 on my existing smartphone for nearly free. In fact, I often found it superior in many ways, such as handwriting recognition with 7notes being far superior to the write-on-a-tiny-1-square-inch-pad-with-a-stylus approach that most 電子辞書 continue to take. And let's not forget the huge advantage provided by cellular internet access, particularly when it comes to looking up proper names when reading texts such as 三国志演義 (Romance of the Three Kingdoms).

Wow, thanks again. I'll be in Japan in a couple of weeks, and these will surely be helpful, seeing as my vocabulary is trash.

No problem! Have fun in Japan, I can't wait to return for at least a couple years. I spent a few months there and enjoyed every moment of it. It's not exactly easy for engineers to get jobs there though, and I have no interest in teaching English :/

Judging from the commercial it does. Although I won't embarrass myself by guessing the language.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyeJXKfAcpc

Just tested myself. You need to change the browser default language to make it work, but it does a very good job!

That was Japanese (Hiragana, one of the glyph forms that Japanese uses).

The search was actually in kanji, not hiragana. And the first result (a Wikipedia page), had sakura in katakana.

Sakura in kanji: 桜

Sakura in hiragana: さくら

Sakura in katakana: サクラ

It was Japanese - it was the Kanji for sakura (桜) - hence the cherry trees in the background.

Having to handwrite the Kanji seems like an extra step though - it'd be easier to simply take a photo.

It's not easier if you're standing in a forest of 桜 and there's no paper and pencil around, as in the demonstration video. :-)

And even if you do have it written, it may be easier for the user, but it's harder for the computer. The order and direction of strokes is standardized, and getting this information as the user writes it is tremendously valuable.

I've played with handwriting recognition algorithms for kanji before, and if you assume the stroke order and direction are correct, you can make a surprisingly good algorithm with very little code. Detecting a character from an image is much harder.

The iOS handwriting recognition, for one, takes this into account. iOS officially only has hanzi (Chinese) handwriting recognition, but it usually works OK for Japanese, too, as long as it's a character that both languages have. But when you run into one of the characters where Chinese and Japanese have standardized on a different stroke order, like 王, it'll never recognize it when written using the Japanese stroke order, no matter how nicely you write it.

The video shows a Japanese woman doing just that :)

The Google Translate app for Android does this. I was recently in Japan, and that app was invaluable. It's also pretty decent at Japanese speech to English translation.

Using the camera would remove a step - have you seen word lens? http://questvisual.com/us/ (though it doesn't seem to support kanji).

For this use case, I'd rather take a picture of the restaurant name rather than handwriting the kanji.

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