Hey there everyone! I'm miau, the owner of pyontan!
I hope everyone enjoys pyontan, there's many, many features and a lot to walk through however I just want to say hello to everyone and thank you for registering and trying out the app! This is a passion project for me as someone who loves Japanese and has been learning Japanese and isn't really fluent but sometimes needs that push and can lose motivation or find it difficult to be fully immersed! I work a full-time job so I can't always update things but I'll try to make everyone happy. Feel free to join the discord and send feedback because there's always things to improve and a lot to work on and change and I'm really looking forward to seeing the platform grow.
I'll go through a lot of the elements. pyontan is split up into three segments basically: the Dashboard, the App and the Web Extension. The web extension is more like an add-on, while the dashboard and the app are core and interact with each other a lot, for example for syncing or for logging in and registering, etc.
The App
The app is available at to download here.
The app is able to be used by itself but a lot of connecting is tied to either the dashboard or the web extension and can amplify your experience when connecting to both of these. I think it'd be great to allow for people to discover just how much you can do with the app and what is available. There are things that are limited to Premium and Super Premium which you can get from the Pricing page or from being subscribed to my Patreon.
The app has many features that work standalone, and just to name some:
- Live Audio Translations (LAT)
- Screen OCR (Frozen, Live, Visual Novel)
- Manga & image batch translations
- Reading assistance
- A full dictionary build
- Studying
- Translations
- And so much more!
As well just some of the features that work alongside the dashboard:
- Studying (Sync)
- LAT (Sync)
- Manga batch translations (Sync into library)
- Studying (Sync and accessible on dashboard)
The Dashboard
This is the dashboard that you are on and it plays a bit more like the receiver to the application but has many things that are unique to it. It's mobile-friendly and has its own fully fledged out features to make it more accessible for people. Just as what has been mentioned above in terms of features to the app, the dashboard has features of its own that allows it to be used even when you're not using the app. This allows for being able to have a seamless experience on other devices without feeling like you're only able to progress while on the app.
Some features that are present on the dashboard:
- Studying
- Library (This allows for reading uploaded mangas and images from the app)
- Shared library for those with premium (this is basically a public library where you can upload mangas and read them, comment on them, review them, and so on.)
There'll be more features over time that become available from the dashboard, especially when I'm able to afford better hosting like GPU hosting and when I have the time to implement things.
The Extension
The extension can be found here.
The extension is basically an add-on exclusively for the app, the extension does not need the dashboard or any ties to the dashboard in order to operate however the extension is as good as useless without the application running AND connected to it. The extension primarily uses the translation engine from the app to allow integrating into your browser and has two prominent features:
- Lookups (Similarly to popups in the app), you can choose the key this is binded to, e.g. you can hold Shift on a Japanese word and it'll perform a lookup and show a little window with the information
- Live Chat Translations, at the moment this only supports Twitch livestreams and Youtube livestreams, hopefully soon that'll include VODs and other websites but it allows for being able to live translate a chat
Studying
Studying is a big area that is being extensively worked on at present and hopefully fleshes out well, it's work-in-progress but is mostly here and is early access and already available for those that are Super Premium. It's going to be available for all but there will be more coverage for those that are Premium and Super Premium and feature personalized questions that are set from either the app or from words you mark in areas like the library as well as vocabulary, grammar, conjugations, particles and even original-designed JLPT mock tests that allow for helping people make heavy progress with a huge library of questions and exercises so you can always engage yourself with something new. This will be available on both the app and the dashboard and those of higher tiers will be able to access the higher levels (N4-N1). Content will constantly be produced here to always allow people to engage and keep on challenging themselves, there are settings that allow for people to challenge themselves (such as setting a timer) and the studying area is available to those of any difficult, from very early beginners to the more advanced learners.
Legal
Make sure to go through all the documents, legal pages and make sure you are aware of your rights and the terms and conditions and important things you should know as a user of pyontan, if you wish to delete your account you can do in your settings and it will be permanently deleted without a trace, meaning it'll obviously also be unrecoverable.
Goodbye
I hope you share the project with your friends, enjoy it and find a lot of use in the many features it presents, happy learning everyone and love from miau. Although don't worry you'll be getting messages from me! Hehe 💚
DISCLAIMER: I just want to be upfront so that people know that while most of the elements of this program are human-based, data from APIs, TTS from real humans, etc. studying material from existing verified sources of humans and basically a major portion of the program. However there are elements of AI and this is mostly abundant in AI translations in areas like the app's translate, OCR, or the Live Audio Translation and this is because this allows for quick production and efficiency especially over longer texts while being able to still with some models like custom models and the pyontan AI model keep context in discussions and chats (this is natural because people use AI such as DeepL and Google Translate already and this is something that is inevitable).