Donmai

Japanese danbooru UI

Posted under General

It seems that some enterprising Japanese speakers (primarily our very own Brightlight) have been translating the danbooru user interface into Japanese. Even a large collection of commonly used tags has been translated.

To try it out, you'll need to install a firefox extension, though I believe clicking that link in IE will install a toolbar or something which does about the same thing. It seems to have a functionality that's a subset of greasemonkey, but automatically applies to all sites. Translations are done wiki-style at the website.

Updated by RaisingK

Huh, that's pretty cool! I vaguely remember someone suggesting that Danbooru should be translated into Japanese, but it was seen at the time as too time-consuming. The only thing I'm slightly worried about is tagging--if they're translating tags, and they're adding new tags, will they show up as Japanese or English? That is, of course, assuming they will upload anything.

I have been thinking about making a topic suggesting we alias Japanese tags to English tags to some extent anyway though. This might just make that more immediately necessary.

Updated

This seems out of the blue to me. I mean why do you want Danbooru to be translated into Japanese? Is it to better attract and/or befriend native Japanese to the site since they would be able to read the site?

Yeah, that's pretty awesome.

Mr_GT said:
I mean why do you want Danbooru to be translated into Japanese? Is it to better attract and/or befriend native Japanese

Besides attracting users to this site (and other danbooru-driven sites), it could also gain more market share vs other imageboard software.

スラッシュ said:
The only thing I'm slightly worried about is tagging--if they're translating tags, and they're adding new tags, will they show up as Japanese or English? That is, of course, assuming they will upload anything.

I have been thinking about making a topic suggesting we alias Japanese tags to English tags to some extent anyway though.

It might get a bit more complex than that. You'd first have to alias input tags (both searching and tagging) into English, then process aliases and implications as needed, and finally switch back into Japanese for display. Whether the first and last steps can be implemented simply as the exact complement of each other is not immediately obvious, owing to differences in grammar forms, etc. And the existing alias system works only in one direction.

There are also implications for notes. For something like post #525683, how would you add Japanese translations? A stopgap would be to cram multiple translations into the same note, but the ideal solution would be to be able to toggle different sets of notes for different languages.

Translation (and, in general, internationalization) of the interface so that the software can be used elsewhere is one thing, true internationalization of the site contents and semantics is rather more complicated. If we do choose address this, it would be paramount to formulate a generic approach that could support additional languages beyond Japanese.

スラッシュ said:
The only thing I'm slightly worried about is tagging--if they're translating tags, and they're adding new tags, will they show up as Japanese or English?

I'd guess/hope it would translate the side bar, but not the tag edit field.

Mr_GT said:
This seems out of the blue to me. I mean why do you want Danbooru to be translated into Japanese? Is it to better attract and/or befriend native Japanese to the site since they would be able to read the site?

Presumably it's about what they want as much as it's about what we want. Personally I wouldn't mind more Japanese translators, but anybody with the requisite skills should be able to navigate the site in English...
Worst case scenario I see from more Japanese visitors would be more takedown notices.

Mysterio006 said:
At the very least, our tagging system is way more detailed and extensive than what you'd find on most other sites and pixiv itself.

Ironically enough, Moe tend to think of Danbooru's tagging systems as a slaughterhouse and/or shit storm.

r0d3n7z said:
Besides attracting users to this site (and other danbooru-driven sites), it could also gain more market share vs other imageboard software.

And will the increase of market share increase Danbooru's lifespan in terms of maintenance bill or whatnot. I assume it's either those shares or the ads you seen when you're a member levle users are what paying for Danbooru's existences.

Here r0d3n7z is talking about "market share" of the underlying code this site is built on, in competition with other similar codebases such as shimmie, etc.

Also, Mr GT, r0d3n7z, I'm not proposing we do anything. Just thought I'd bring the forumgoers' attention to this project. By the way, it's not really something new - Brightlight seems to have been working on it since 2007, if you check the history of the page.

Shinjidude said:
Probably for the same reasons people have built greasemonkey extensions to translate Pixiv into English.

They're an extension to translate Pixiv? Is it Google chrome friendly and where can I find it? I like Pixiv just as much as anyone but sometimes I wished I knew what people were saying on that site.

Log said:
No need to freak out guys, there's an english version too called MyLingual and it hasn't resulted in english tags flooding niconico/pixiv. It does not affect text edit fields, only display. Read this if you want to understand how it all works.

That just means my "worst fear" is confirmed. I find it highly unlikely that Japanese people are willing to learn English tags for our convenience. That's not the Japan I know, at least. If they are only browsing the site it's not a problem at all, but if they start uploading, they should be taught to tag at least a little bit properly. If there are JP-EN aliases in place, at least they can do so in their own language to some extent. This would be especially useful for things like names, and it would even facilitate tagging on our end since you could copy-paste 初音ミク and get Hatsune Miku (okay, kinda easy example, but for example for Touhou characters it could be very useful).

Anyway, I guess we can hold off on doing a drastic aliasing project like that until we see actual activity like that. I definitely don't think it's a bad thing that more people can enjoy the great collection of art that Danbooru has.

スラッシュ said:
Anyway, I guess we can hold off on doing a drastic aliasing project like that until we see actual activity like that. I definitely don't think it's a bad thing that more people can enjoy the great collection of art that Danbooru has.

I actually thought we were headed towards this way back in forum #16659 . I still think it will be a lot of work to do, but could be useful . With some work it could also provide suggestions for tags when uploading for Pixiv, in addition to dealing with people potentially tagging in Japanese.

The greasemonkey script I was referring to could be a good place to start. The English would need converted to danbooru tags, but it would provide a small sampling of Pixiv tags in use that might potentially be applied to Danbooru.

I'm sure majority of the artist on Pixiv or any other Japanese related site don't mind having their art posted on Danbooru. As long as we're not claiming said art as our own, they don't seem to mind. I aware they're may be a few artist who don't like they're art being posted regardless of the fact we're not stealing, but I think most of them are cool with it.

Never really been my impression.

Svatopluk said:
Most Japanese artists are strictly against having their art posted on other sites. There is even a special site about that to which many link:

http://www.geocities.jp/onlinefanartsprotection_2006/

And BTW in Japan it's usually considered rude to link to a site without contacting the webmaster first, unless it is explicitly declared "link free".

forum #10675

Three of the four artists I checked the main pages of just now while I was fixing artist entries have notices forbidding posting their art...

Updated

Hum, I'm a little late to come.

Yeah, I'm the man who has translated the Danbooru UI into Japanese by Japanize. At first, I wanted to reduce the cost to understand those interfaces and tags each time (yes, I did that for myself). But reading this thread, I found myself falling into the activity trap. So I might be going to stop translating (especially about tags).

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