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General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: rsutter on February 20, 2021, 12:18:57 PM

Title: Machine Translation from Japanese to English
Post by: rsutter on February 20, 2021, 12:18:57 PM
Hello All,
Some time ago, I purchased a noodle maker for making Udon noodles from scratch.
See https://www.ebay.com/p/1869703792?iid=112590190054

Though the device shipped from Japan, it arrived in short order.  Eager to try it out, I opened the box.  It consisted of a hand cranked machine with rollers to flatten dough and 4 interchangeable cutting modules to produce pasta of different widths.

It included a detailed instruction manual/recipe book.  Unfortunately for me, it was in Japanese, a language that I do not read.

Out of curiosity, today I scanned a page of the manual and saved a small section of that page as a .pdf file.
Next, I searched on-line for a free optical character recognition program that could turn my image to characters.  I found Convertio; www.convertio.com and uploaded my .pdf image.  Convertio offers to translate 10 submissions for free.  After that, the charge is $7.99 for 100 pages.  Convertio performed OCR and produced a transcript for download.  Mind you as expected,  the text was in Japanese.

I then went to Google Translate; https://translate.google.com/  and pasted the Japanese characters into the program.  Soon, Google Translate transformed the text into English.

Amazing technology.

What had been translated? 
"Put ①, strong flour and potato starch in a sea urchin bowl and mix them roughly like cutting with a rubber spatula.
If you don't have enough water, add a little hot water."

Ralph Sutter
Title: Re: Machine Translation from Japanese to English
Post by: dick on February 20, 2021, 07:50:49 PM
Perhaps you shouldn't have cut the board twice?
dickJ
Title: Re: Machine Translation from Japanese to English
Post by: Alan J. Raul on February 21, 2021, 09:57:01 AM
I don't want to work for my food in preparation time, etc. I'm willing to pay the extra price for convenience and simplicity. I was recently given 4 Nongshim Udon Noodle Soup from Costco. I found this to be simple and very, very tasty and filling. A side benefit are the nice plastic bowls you are left with for future projects.

https://www.costcobusinessdelivery.com/Nongshim-Udon-Noodle-Soup%2c-9.73-oz%2c-6-ct.product.100082210.html (https://www.costcobusinessdelivery.com/Nongshim-Udon-Noodle-Soup%2c-9.73-oz%2c-6-ct.product.100082210.html)
Title: Re: Machine Translation from Japanese to English
Post by: rsutter on February 22, 2021, 08:20:42 AM
Hi Alan,
I know the product.  I have 2 cases of it in my pantry but I still enjoy making things from scratch.
Yesterday, I blended my version of Chinese Five Spices.
For those who are curious, here's the composition
2 tablespoons aniseed
2 tablespoons fennel seed
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons whole cloves
2 tablespoons whole peppercorns
Grind all together, sift and regrind

Ralph Sutter