I haven’t had any issues with bookwalker, but maybe I have low expectations. I use the app on android. For manga I really love that. I use a tablet with S pen that can do hover OCR. I’m not looking up whole sentences, and not relying on Google translate, most of the time if a word is completely new I paste it to a dictionary in a small parallel screen, then I get more info.
For novels, I just set the screen to dark mode and in prose it’s possible to select words and again, use my dictionary of choice that I put in parallel on the page (1/4). One click copy, one click paste
I think Bookwalker Android app is slow on first downloading the book, but after that, it works offline.
An obvious downside is it takes quite some storage space for mangas. Clearing the space can be done, but manually. But after that, it has to be slow on first read-download again. You can’t use the app without downloading for offline.
I also find syncing annoying. Switching between apps will make dim with sync overlay. Not an issue with the web app (and also Kindle app). Switching off both WiFi and mobile data will disable sync.
Split screen and floating wondow don’t count as switching apps.
Anyway I can see the web app be less annoying, just not offline.
It works best with short fragments like manga, but I have used it on everything from paused YouTube videos to image based promotional text I can’t select.
What you do is enable a feature from the side bar, this turns the pen into a pointer for google’s OCR and translation. Now, with the caveat that some people don’t get along with this that well, for me, I love it. I was never really going to go through the pfaff of downloading pdfs (???) and all the mokuro steps (???), but you should know that’s what most people do and love. But if you’re like me and would like to read manga without that hassle, this is like magic
I select isolated words and look them up in Chase Colburn’s Kanji Study app (open in parallel so no lag issues). I use it like a dictionary (same as jisho) and that is also where I track my kanji study, so for me personally a very useful tool for connecting word lookups to kanji I know or want to study. Occasionally I’ll use it for full sentence translation for something I’m not invested in, but that’s not where it shines
For long form text, it’s faster to just select it and use the dictionary integrated in bookwalker (no need for ocr) or copy, paste in the parallel app. It’s possible to use s pen for long form text, though, and that has come in handy, eg, editorials in manga magazines!
Back to the S pen use:
Pros of Samsung S pen point to get ocr (for manga etc)
direct and no prep required, anything on your screencan be a target
Not too shabby at handwritten text!
best for manga without furigana
great for free trials of manga or Twitter manga etc. as well
Cons
the selection field gets screwed up by furigana. But then if there is furigana you don’t need this
it doesn’t always parse it right. I think Mokuro has this problem too, no idea on accuracy comparison
occasionally it really will just refuse to select a certain passage. It’s rare enough I use other means to look up what I need and it doesn’t bother me
once (in more than a year of use), it totally went off the rails and just spit out random words. The next day it was OK again
occasional updates may disrupt your work flow, I think cezarL got caught out by this. The way I use it wasn’t affected. ymmv
Google translate sucks for Japanese, you really do need a separate window for lookups, which may not be what you want
tablets are heavy
if you don’t already own a Samsung with S pen, expensive
I tried to put in all the cons I can think of, mostly because I’m just so surprised this hasn’t caught on. For me, it’s made reading manga or anything in the net without furigana accessible and such a pleasure.
What’s this dimming? Literally dimming? I haven’t seen that. I get a reload if I completely leave bookwalker and come back,
which Iguess is annoying . That’s why I split my screen on Android so I never technically cause the reload sync
It’s fine on PC (which I don’t read manga on), but yeah I won’t bother with mobile.
There is no integrated dictionary for Android Bookwalker, unfortunately.
Can you scan things from other devices? If not, I’m not sure this is really any nicer than just using Google lens → Akebi on my phone, now that I think about it. Especially not with my laggy tablet. Split screen isn’t useful, bc it forces into 2-pg wide layout, which is far too small to read for me.
on mine when I highlight a word there’s a translate button. I either use that or copy from it. If you’re looking for a monolingual dictionary, no i haven’t seen that
We might be talking at cross purposes because Ihave no idea what you mean . This isn’t about scanning through the camera of my tablet. It’s about pointing the pen at anything that is on my screen regardless of where it is hosted.
Manga on Bookwalker (on tablet) or anything else on my tablet (YouTube, website graphic, etc) → point at word with S pen → OCR result + translation pops up (this does not require split screen, it’s just a small overlay tool)
So anything that’s on my screen I can target with my pen. If you’re thinking about reading manga on your phone then I’m confused how a split screen on tablet can be too small? Plus you can zoom in.
The split is not necessary, by the way, just what I do, and at least on my tab I can shove the split line so the dictionary takes up less than a quarter of the screen. for easier stuff where I don’t have too many lookups, the pop-up translation from Google often suffices for the odd lookup. Maybe on an old tablet it doesn’t work, I have no idea, mine is from 2023 or 2024 I think.
Edit: I found a video that illustrates Imgur: The magic of the Internet - that’s pretty cool. I do wish it could connect straight to a separate app rather than Google translate tho. But still I think I’ll order and give a try
You can basically ignore everything below
Yeah that’s Google translate, not a dictionary
So I read manga on my tablet (or very occasionally Kindle). Right now if I want to look up a word, I use my phone to Google Lens it, and pop that into my phone’s dictionary. Split screening my tablet is what results in the layout change:
There is not a way to adjust that layout change in Kindle or Bookwalker afaict. Probably an old android version issue
That is exactly how I don’t wanna read manga on a tablet I’d rather read without lookups
What I had missed from your description before was the overlay part (Is that a separate tool? Or is that like a builtin function?) - that is basically what I’d want out of this then
What I was asking is: can I point the pen at things that aren’t the connected tablet (ex my Kindle, or the computer monitor), and it will OCR them? Or will it only OCR things on the connected device?
I don’t think this is logically possible. The pen isn’t a mini camera, it’s an input device which is connected to a certain device (the main tablet). I don’t really know how Samsung pens work, but my guess is it’s OCR-ing based on the data the tablet already ‘knows’ about what is on-screen.
You can get tablet pens that are able to transmit very basic input to other devices (eg my Boox stylus pen works on my phone for basic swiping and touch inputs), but that’s only because phone screens can take universal capacitor styluses - there’s no data being transferred there, the phone basically just acts as if it’s being touched with a finger.
Yeah, that’s why I paste it to the dictionary I like
Ah OK, might be. I can pull the split screen down from the center and then the layout normally reverts to single page. Otherwise I zoom in.
Oh now I get it. I really need to make a video of this. As Jintor said, the pen can only interact with your tablet, and is normally sold with the tablet, I don’t even think an old tablet is compatible with a new pen. So it replaces your phone pointing, but only for the tablet screen. The overlay part is the result from the ocr and Google translate (probably the same as what you get from Google lens)
So imagine it like this: on the tablet screen, you see something you want to translate. From the tablet turn on the overlay pen ocr tool, now the pen has a function that when pointed in the tablet in one position, it searches for text to ocr. If it finds it, the ocr result and translation will appear in the overlay tool field.
It doesn’t sound like it will work for your current tablet or how you read, but maybe something to be aware of for a future device. I would love if I could choose where that ocr result ends up (ie, straight to dictionary or deepl or etcetera). That would be gold.
I can’t seem to find an S Pen that’s compatible with a Galaxy Tab A8 (as you said), so it’s moot anyway. I’m surprised nobody else has designed a feature like this that would work with any stylus. But guess I’ll keep in mind for whenever my current tablet dies (hopefully not many years lol)
What I fundamentally don’t understand is what the stylus does exactly. Isn’t it just a piece of plastic? Why is functionality tied to it, couldn’t you do all that with your finger? Is it just to sell you a 30 euro add-on?
It’s mostly just a more precise finger, and for some tools like this, it has a different function than your finger. So I can’t use this ocr translation tool by pointing my finger. There’s a button I’ve never used as well it came with the tablet and I only discovered this feature after buying it
. This isn’t about scanning through the camera of my tablet. It’s about pointing the pen at anything that is on my screen regardless of where it is hosted.
I’d rather read without lookups
here’s a