Sonkeigo Japanese Translator

Inspiration

I studied Japanese for four years in high school. And, in my second year, I tried to create a translator for it for my AP Computer Science Principles; It wasn't very good. However, I did enjoy the process of making it. In my fourth year of Japanese, I was taught Teneigo (Polite), Kenjougo (Humble), and Sonkeigo (Respectful) grammar which made me realize that current translator tend to not offer the ability to change levels of formality. I wanted to enable the ability to translate a phrase in English to a more formal Japanese equivalent.

What it does

The project collects a user inputted phrase from a tkinter entry, then breaks that phrase into a list. That list becomes a tuple. After becoming a tuple, it gets compared to the keys of a dictionary that contains Sonkeigo Japanese verbs, subjects, and objects. The project then pulls the respective value and stores it. Afterwards the "Translate" Button is clicked, and the phrase outputs onto the GUI via a label.

How I built it

I built it through Pycharm, and went through a lot of trial and error to get the project to function correctly. Additionally, I asked for advice to correct mistakes that I was not able to solve on my own.

Challenges I ran into

A challenge I ran into was that the project was printing the entire values of the dictionaries instead of a specific value. I resolved this by asking for help on what could be causing the error. Then, the tuple for the phrase was becoming undefined later in the program. I solved it by shifting the placement of global variables.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I am proud to know that I managed to create a translator that surpasses the translator that I made in high school.

What I learned

I came into this hackathon with a brief and basic knowledge on Python. Through my countless errors and with the assistance of others, my knowledge on Python increased. I was not mimicking tutorials instead I was understanding why my project wasn't working which led to me improving my overall programming skills.

What's next for Sonkeigo Japanese Translator

I would like to add the feature for the other levels of formality such as Teneigo and Kenjougo. Additionally, since I am studying Russian which also has levels of formality, I would like to add a feature for my translator to translate Russian.

Built With

• pycharm
• python
• tkinter