Chrodic is a Chrome Extension which provides a mouse over text translation functionality into your browser. Currently it supports translation from English to Japanese based on the Eijiro dictionary. Because it imports an Eijiro dictionary file into an IndexedDB inside Chrome, it works fast and also works offline.
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Get an Eijiro dictionary file. You can either buy a book which comes with a CD containing a dictionary file, or buy a file online at http://www.eijiro.jp
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Convert the dictionary file into utf-8. Type this command in your terminal:
$ iconv -c -f SJIS -t UTF-8 EIJI-118.TXT > EIJI-118-utf-8.TXT -
Import the dictionary file into Chrome.
- Go to chrome://extensions in Chrome.
- Click on the "Options" link on Chrodic. It takes you to the Chrodic options page.
- In the options page, click on "Choose File" button, select the EIJI-118-utf-8.TXT file you just created.
- Wait until "Done!" is shown on the textarea below.
After the installation you can enable Chrodic on any page by keep pressing the left mouse button more than 500ms. Then Chrodic will start showing translation of words which are under your mouse. To disable Chrodic simply click on the left mouse button. When you find a word you didn't know its meaning, you can save it for your later study. To save, during you are seeing its translation in the translation box, press the number key corresponding to the word. By default it saves the word and its translation into localStorage, which you can export to a TSV (tab separated values) file. If you have an Ankiweb account, you can directly save it to your preferred anki deck, by doing appropriate settings in the options page. In order for that you need to be logged into Ankiweb in the same browser you are using Chrodic.