rikAI
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写真から·from a photo

Japanese photo translator

Point your camera at a manga page, a menu or a sign and rikAI will translate Japanese from the picture — vertical text included. Then it does the thing an ordinary image translator cannot: every word on the page stays tappable.

山 の 上 に は 古 い が あ る ら し い 神 社 じんじゃ 神社 shrine pitch ［1］
Vertical Japanese, read in the right order — columns right to left, each character its own target.

The actual screens

One page, three taps

  1. A photographed manga spread inside rikAI. Both panels of vertical Japanese are readable, and the caption underneath reads: tap a word for its meaning, press or swipe a line to select it. A Translate button sits at the bottom.

    SnapSeven lines found on the page, none of them selected yet. You sweep across the ones you actually want.

  2. The word 天下 tapped inside the photographed page. A panel over the photo shows the reading てんか, a speaker and microphone button, the meaning “the whole world; the whole country; society; the public; supremacy over a nation”, Add to Anki and Copy buttons, and three suggested questions about 天下.

    TapReading, meaning, pronunciation, pitch practice and Anki — on top of the photo, so the page never goes away.

  3. The selected line back in the rikAI chat: 天下の大将軍だっつってんだろーが with furigana てんか and だいしょうぐん over the kanji, and the English “You're the big general of the whole world, right?” underneath. A Pitch grader button sits above it and a Photo · 7 lines chip below.

    AskThe line comes back with furigana over the kanji and the English under it. The photo stays one tap away on the chip.

What it reads

Vertical and horizontal text support

Vertical & horizontal

Both directions, one shot

rikAI reads vertical Japanese natively — whole columns, right to left, a box around every character, and it stays readable when the photo is taken at an angle. Horizontal text goes through the same pass, so a page that mixes the two — a manga panel with a horizontal sound effect, a menu with a sideways header — comes back as one set of lines in sensible reading order.

Tap any word

The photo stays up. The answers come to you.

Every word in a scanned line opens the same panel the rest of the app uses — over the photo, so you never lose your place on the page.

  • Live definitions

    Tap a word and its reading, meaning and pitch accent come up on top of the picture. The reading is the one that token carries, so a homograph is resolved rather than guessed.

  • Furigana over every kanji

    Readings sit over the kanji they belong to and no further — 行き gets い over 行 with き left bare, never いき smeared across the whole word.

  • Hear it said

    A speaker button pronounces the word, reading the kana rather than the kanji — the one input a synthesizer cannot mispronounce. Optional neural voice for something closer to a person than a phone.

  • Grade your pitch

    Say the word back into the mic and get scored on both the sounds and the melody, against the pitch accent the dictionary gives it. The practice strip opens inside the panel — the photo never goes away.

  • Ask about what you see

    Each word carries an ask box and suggested questions that change with what you tapped: a particle offers why is this used here?, a verb offers what form is this?. Answers come from the model on the phone.

  • Save for Anki

    One button files the word — and the line it came from rides along as the example sentence, so the card keeps the context you found it in. Audio cards require export and import into Anki.

Asked before

Questions about translating Japanese from a photo

Can rikAI translate Japanese from a picture?
Yes. Point the camera at a manga page, a menu or a sign, or pick a photo you already have, and rikAI lifts the Japanese off the image and translates it. It goes further than an ordinary image translator: every word it found stays tappable, so you can open any one of them for its reading, meaning and pitch accent without leaving the photo.
Does it read vertical Japanese text in manga?
Yes, natively. rikAI reads whole columns right to left, puts a box around every character, and keeps working when the photo is taken at an angle. Horizontal text goes through the same pass, so a page mixing the two — a manga panel with a horizontal sound effect, a menu with a sideways header — comes back as one set of lines in sensible reading order.
Can I translate a screenshot instead of taking a photo?
Yes. Alongside the camera there is a photo picker, so anything already in your library — a screenshot of a tweet, a saved manga page, a photo someone sent you — goes through the same recognition pass as a picture you take on the spot.
Do I need an internet connection to translate a photo?
Reading and translating the page happen on your phone. Local Ask requires at least 4 GB of memory and an installed reasoning model. Lower-memory phones need optional cloud Ask for questions. If you allow Ask with ChatGPT, it sends recognized text, question context and assistant preferences through Cloudflare to GPT-5 nano. The photo itself is not sent through Ask.
Does it put furigana over the kanji it finds?
Yes. The line comes back with furigana over the kanji and the English underneath. Readings sit over the kanji they belong to and no further — 行き gets い over 行 with き left bare, rather than いき smeared across the whole word.
How is this different from an ordinary image translator?
An image translator hands you an English blob and the Japanese is gone. rikAI keeps the Japanese: every word stays a target you can tap for its reading, its meaning, its pitch accent, a pronunciation you can hear, and a question box for whatever is still unclear — and you can save the word for Anki with its source sentence. Compatible text cards can go directly to AnkiMobile; audio cards need export and import.

Where the photo goes

Nowhere

Text recognition and translation run on your phone. The photo itself is not sent through cloud Ask. If you enable Ask with ChatGPT, recognized text, question context and assistant preferences are shared with Cloudflare and OpenAI. Privacy details.

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