Miteiru

Japanese is a language that probably many of us have considered to learn. It’s certainly fun to think about — knowing Japanese — but the steps to reaching even a conversational level of proficiency are too many for most outsiders. You can learn anything on the web these days, and the resources to starting your journey to writing and speaking Japanese are surely plentiful. All it takes is just a little determination. Well, more than a little, actually.

Miteiru is an effort to grant prospective Japanese speakers a tool where they can learn the language through video: the app is a video player that provides definitions and translations for each spoken Japanese word.

Video resources to learn Japanese really are quite many, as you’d be hard-pressed to not find something to help you further your knowledge of the language. Go to a YouTube video where Japanese is spoken, copy its link, then paste in onto the app’s interface. Please note that a video with Japanese CC is required for the subtitling to function.

The program will then generate a series of subtitles to hopefully help your learning process. By default, definitions and translations for each word will be simultaneously provided, but you’ll be able to configure those later.

Take a glance at the JP subtitles, and you’ll notice that each character has its pronunciation spelled right below it, which will hopefully make it easier to understand the transition from one word to another.

Users can customize the way the program displays certain elements. You can toggle Furigana, either by itself or on Kana, hide or display Romaji, as well as opt to show meanings for each word. Of course, the subtitles may also be colored and resized as you see fit.

With all of that in mind, being able to click on any word from the subtitles is the highlight in my eyes. Doing so will provide its thorough definition and translation, as well as a tutorial on how to write its respective character. Very nicely implemented.

As far as Japanese learning resources go, Miteiru is really a very well-put-together one. Perhaps the highest praise I can give is that, if I were to start studying Japanese today, I’d use it without hesitation.