Playing games in TL (Target Language) was one of my main goals in learning my TL. Creating this thread to share how I sentence mine from games.

Before I go further, note that there is a new tool called Wisp . For most users, WISP is probably good enough, but it is subscription based.

For me, I needed something that works with ANKI and didn’t need all the other features of WISP. Actually, I mainly just needed a good game pauser so that I have time to read and understand the in-game text. Pausing the game was the main issue, many game don’t have a pause feature.

The problems

  • Not being able to pause games to read the text/subtitle in TL.
  • How to get that text out from the game and into ANKI without typing it out every time in ANKI.

The 2 Solutions in summary :

  • Solution 1 was to go into the game folder, extract all the text and dump them into a text file, process them into shorter sentences and later import into ANKI. This deck can later be sorted by frequency using Anki addons like AnkiMorphs and/or FrequencyMan.

  • Solution 2 was to do it while playing game, find a way to play the game and pause the game to screen capture the text region and translate it.

I won’t go into Solution 1 as that is very complicated and “hacky” and it is different for every game. I do use solution 1 if it is easy to access the game text data.

I will go into Solution 2 here.

Solution 2

Tools

  • To pause games, I tried several tools, and eventually, I settled on a tool called Nyrna https://github.com/Merrit/nyrna
  • For screen capturing, I use Windows sniping tool, rectangle region capture feature. It also has an OCR feature, or you can also use PowerToys Text Extractor.
  • Alternatively, you can use DeepL application screen capture OCR translation feature.

Anki addons

Steps

  • Start Game, start Nyrna , and Anki add card dialog is open, Multiple monitors are good for this. I have ChatGPT open as well, if I need some grammar explanation.

  • I use Nyrna to pause the game at the part I wish to capture, I find clicking in Nyrna respond faster than using shortcuts.

  • While the game is paused, I use the Windows sniping tool to screen capture the text region.

  • In Anki add card dialog. I click on the “Paste image as text” button, which generates the text into one of the anki card fields.

  • Still in Anki add card dialog, I then click on the DeepL or Google translate button to get the translation.

  • I use ChatGPT to get more explanation as required.

  • I also screen capture the rest of the game as an image to add to the card.

  • If the game image is not good enough, I use AI (free credits on Leonardo AI or Microsoft Designer) to generate an image based on the text.

  • I am not sure of an easy way to get audio out, so for audio, I just use HyperTTS Anki addon.

  • Before using deck, i sort it using AnkiMorphs/FrequencyMan.

That is pretty much it. Let me know if anything is confusing. Feel free to share any other solutions, tips, and tricks on using games to learn languages.