Have you ever picked up a book, manga, or even a photo and come across an ideogram that you don’t know how to read, write, or type on the computer? In this article, we will help you discover the Kanji, its meaning, and reading of the mysterious ideogram.
It is very common to encounter ideograms and not know their writing when we are away from the computer. Whether it’s on a street sign, in a YouTube video, in a book, light novel, or manga. I hope the tips in this article are useful for you!
OCR – Google Lens – Live Text and Google Translate
The first idea that comes to some people’s minds may be to resort to Google Lens or even to Google Translate itself, using the camera to take a photo and scan the text.
If you use macOS or iOS, you can simply copy the ideogram from the image or manga you are reading with Live Text. There are websites that also scan text from images called OCR.
The big problem is that most of the time these ideograms are written in a strange way or in a font that such programs cannot decipher. Therefore, we can turn to other methods.
Using Radicals and Pieces of Ideograms
Some websites allow you to search for ideograms by drawn strokes or by selecting radicals. For those who don’t know, radicals are pieces that form the ideograms.
Websites like jisho.org allow you to choose pieces of the kanji you want to discover, filtering and showing suggestions of what you are looking for.
On the jisho.org site, look for the Radical icon, then select the parts of the ideogram you want to discover until it appears among the suggestions. Be careful not to choose the wrong radicals or pieces.
Jisho.org is not the only tool that allows searching for ideograms through radicals; there are many others that use the same API, including mobile applications. I believe that most Japanese dictionaries offer this option.
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