I just recently started using LINE and found a chat bot LINE account called LINE英語通訳 that will translate between Japanese and English. You put in either Japanese or English sentences, and it replies with a translation into the opposite language. (I haven’t really used it much so can’t vouch for the quality of the translation.) The main drawback for those wanting to use it for Eng->Jp translation is that if you put in an English sentence, the response comes back in kanji. I can’t find a way to make it return response using only hiragana or katakana.
Question: does anyone know how to make this chat bot return kana-only Japanese sentences, or know of a similar alternative chat bot account that can do that?
(FYI: If you want to find the chat bot, look under LINE’s official accounts.)
(Also, FYI: this LINE chat bot can duplicate Google camera translation service.)
2 comments
This is not a drawback. It’s just normal? You can’t effectively learn Japanese without Kanji. In general any system that doesn’t encourage also learning kanji in parallel from the very beginning is giving bad advice. It’s much better to look up the kanji you don’t know separately and memorize it. Use a dictionary app like imiwa? or something to learn readings from translated sentences.
I’m pretty sure this feature is for the benefit of Japanese speakers, who would find a solid string of kana difficult to understand.
What’s wrong with just using a translator app? Why do you need to do it within Line?