From textbook Japanese to the real thing.
pyontan sits in your system tray. Box a speech bubble, copy a line from chat or turn on subtitles for a stream, and you get the reading, the meaning and the grammar on the spot. The words you look up turn into your reviews.
Textbook vs. real life
Textbooks teach 話せません. The internet says 無理ｗ
People online drop particles, shorten words and type ｗ instead of laughing. pyontan shows the reading, a short meaning for each piece and the grammar holding it together, on top of whatever you're reading.
Polite and complete. You'll rarely see it written like this online.
What it does
For the Japanese you read, and the Japanese you hear.
All of this is in the Windows app. The dictionary, Study and your library also work in a browser, phone included.
OCR Capture
Press Alt+L and drag a box round text in a manga, a game or a paused video: you get the reading, the meaning and a translation right there. Live Mode keeps reading one spot as it changes, like a game's text box.
Live Audio Translation
Subtitles for streams, videos and calls, from anything playing on your PC. The speech recognition runs on your own computer.
Batch Translate
Add a folder of manga pages, or any images. pyontan reads and translates every page, and on Premium writes the English into the bubbles.
Dictionary
JMdict, pitch accent, kanji with their parts, and recordings of real people saying the word.
Reading Assist
Furigana over the kanji you don't know yet, and none over the ones you do.
Song Lyrics
Play a song in Spotify or your browser and press Alt+M. pyontan finds the published lyrics and follows the song line by line, with furigana and a translation. Click any word to look it up.
Study
451 grammar lessons from N5 to N1, plus vocabulary and kanji. Your reviews include the words you looked up.
AI Conversation
Chat in Japanese with a partner set to your level. It points out mistakes and tells you why. Try it on Premium, the most on Super Premium.
Quick Translate
Copy Japanese anywhere and a popup answers. Use the hosted translation, or your own DeepL, Google or AI key.
History
Every word you looked up and every line Live Audio heard, kept and searchable.
Words
Save a word with the sentence you found it in, and send it to Anki in one click.
What you already know
pyontan can learn which words you know from Anki, WaniKani or Renshuu, so it only helps with the rest.
In the background
Lives in your tray. Out of the way until you need it.
Start it with Windows and forget about it. Every feature has a hotkey, and none of it needs a browser tab.
- Potato Mode for older PCs: big models unload when idle, and OCR and audio only load once you use them
- Its overlays can hide from screenshots and screen recordings
- Your history and words stay on your PC unless you turn on sync
pyontanStudy
Study what you actually ran into.
Words you look up go straight into your reviews. The grammar lessons run from N5 to N1 in order, each one building on the ones before, with tables that show how a verb or adjective changes step by step. There's vocabulary, kanji, listening and JLPT-style tests too, in the app and on the website.
The first 36 N5 lessons are free.
See what's in Study →Library
Every chapter you translate, on a shelf.
Batch Translate sends finished chapters to your library. Read them in any browser, switch between the original and the English, and carry on from the page you stopped at.
Twitch and YouTube chat, translated as it scrolls by.
Works in Chrome, Edge and Brave, alongside the desktop app.
Add to Chrome →Bug reports, questions and ideas.
I'm the only developer, and I read all of it.
Join the Discord →Plans
Start free. Upgrade if you need more.
The everyday tools. No card needed.
- Dictionary, Quick Translate and Reading Assist
- Live Audio, up to 6 hours a day
- Batch Translate, with 500 MB of synced storage
- Your own DeepL, Google or AI key
- Study: kana, kanji, reviews and the first lessons
Everything in Free, plus:
- Live Audio, up to 12 hours a day
- Hosted AI translation, 2,500 lines a day
- English written into the bubbles, 5 GB of storage
- Study from N5 to N3
- Vocabulary and Anki backup in the cloud
Everything in Premium, plus:
- Live Audio with no daily limit
- Hosted AI translation, 6,000 lines a day
- AI Conversation, 300 replies a day
- Study from N3 to N1, with mock exams
- 20 GB of storage, and new features first