I’ve seen that this topic has already been covered, but that was 5 years ago, so I thought why not ask if anything has changed.
Now, I know that translating WaniKani into other languages would be a lot of work, but it would surely pay of, as other people who don’t speak Enlgish that well would be able to use this amazing platform as well! I would love to help you translate it to German, for example (including making new mnemonics whenever needed, which would be quite a lot), and I’m sure there are other people as well that would love to help making WaniKani available in other languages as well!
But… is this even being considered in the near future to “translate” WaniKani to other languages?
By what metric have you decided that it would “pay off?” Given the extensive amount of rewriting and reworking required (independently per language), and the amount of additional hires needed to support such an initiative, I can’t imagine it would generate enough additional subs to warrant the effort. This is a small team with limited resources, not Amazon.
Supporting other languages would be great, but it would take an incredible amount of time and resources. All of the content would not only need to be translated, but the mnemonics (our sweet, sweet bread and butter) would need to be localized and rewritten from the ground up.
Plus, we’re a tiny team and none of us have the language knowledge needed to venture outside of the English⇔Japanese world right now.
If you aren’t a native English speaker, and you’re having trouble learning Japanese and English at the same time, you can always add the translations for radicals, kanji, and vocabulary words in your language with the user synonyms feature."
I didn’t mean it regarding the money, what I meant is that more people would be able to use WaniKani (even though a lot of people can already use it). I personally would help them anytime without asking for any kind of money or reward, I’d just do it to help other people learn Japanese
Would it be nice, in a perfect world? Absolutely. But it also needs to be financially viable. Many non-native English speakers already use WK today, which I think speaks to how few extra subs this would likely generate.
This might be true, but I would still like the idea that everyone could use WaniKani in their own native language, and I could help doing that with German. While it would probably not genereate many extra subs, as you’ve already stated, I think it would still be a good idea for everyone who is not fluent in English yet, because these people have to think like this when saying something in Japanese or when translating something from Japanese to their native language: Language → English → Japanese
or
Japanese → English – Language
This is because the learn all the Kanji and Vocab in a language they haven’t mastered yet. If they could learn it in a language that they can use natively, I think it would make the learning process much easier and quicker or them.
These are just thoughts, tho, I might be completely wrong
OK but again, who’s going to pay for all that? Even if we assume that fans can provide free quality translations for every item, who is going to coordinate all the translations, verify they’re accurate/inoffensive, post them, update them when they need updating, etc.? Not to mention all the code changes required to support multiple languages, those are not free.
If you really want to create an original Japanese mnemonic system for Germans from scratch, why not use something free like Anki?
Hm, you got a point there. Perhaps that’s why WaniKani hasn’t been translated into other languages yet, it would be an absurd ammount of work just watching over the qualtity of the kanjis, radicals and vocabs in multiple languages! And since WaniKani’s team is, as they state, rather small, it’s probably better to first focus on making the English version perfect
But, if they ever decide to make WaniKani available in other languages as well, I’d be more than happy to help them Even though this will probably need a long time to get started, I am very patient, and I will always be there
We do get a lot of requests (and very kind offers) for this. But yes, what everyone said. It’s quite the undertaking, and it’s not even just writing new mnemonics for everything (and making sure the quality is there, too) but it’s maintaining them (every time we add something or move something), editing them (when someone’s kind enough to let us know we made a mistake in the copy, or even when we realize we wrote something kind of rude). I do feel for everyone who wants something like this in another language, but it is pretty far beyond what I think we could realistically take on.
That said (and this is very much in the “only talked about this, don’t get any hopes up” stage), there’s potential for a future where we better support your own custom mnemonics. And then, yet another potential future where we let people share their custom mnemonic sets. Though, with sharing we have to think about moderation — which, again, gets really tough for us when it’s a bunch of languages we don’t speak.
For right now, you can use the note fields in Lessons to write up something for yourself, though. And, while that’s a huge amount of work, there’s nothing better than creating and writing your own mnemonics, at least where recall strength is concerned.
Ok, I will then wait patiently, never letting the hope die, and I think I will use the note fields By the way, I have a question about them: Can only I see my notes or can the WaniKani team see what I’ve written there as well?
Eyyyy, @Belthazar! I’m not a hundred percent sure how long the + part of 3+ years is, but I do have a child that is exactly 3+ years old, and another that is now 1. If I had to make a guess, that’s probably where it all went.
How about you? How’s life? How was the pandemic? Let’s see if we can get this so far off topic the mods close the thread.
Ah, good to know, so you could, for example look at my deepest secrets?
I don’t know, maybe it is… destiny! This is what the crabigator had intended to happen all along! He prepared everything for me to accidently (probably) perform a ritual to bring you back to us! It was all part of his big plan. And know, that you’re here with us again, we hope that we won’t lose you again (I mean, I’ve only been here for 18 days, but it feels like a decade already, with all these great people around here )
Well, three years ago was 2020, so who does? But yeah, you made some sort of announcement posts in March last year and August 2021, but your last actual, written-from-the-heart post was June 2020.
Well, that might do it. (How exactly? Like, “happy birthday!”?)
Were you planning to tell us about this development at any point? Your elder child WaniKani was feeling a bit neglected.
Life is life. Pandemic was certainly… interesting, in the “ancient Chinese curse” sense of the word.
Many non-native English speakers already use WK today, which I think speaks to how few extra subs this would likely generate.
Even if we assume that fans can provide free quality translations for every item, who is going to coordinate all the translations, verify they’re accurate/inoffensive, post them, update them when they need updating, etc.? Not to mention all the code changes required to support multiple languages, those are not free.
(I mean, I’ve only been here for 18 days, but it feels like a decade already, with all these great people around here 
