RuneTranslate cracks open RPG Maker, Ren’Py, Kirikiri, Wolf RPG, Unity and more — extracts the script, translates it with your provider of choice, and rebuilds a playable game. Built for Japanese — but the source language is yours to set.
Every engine is unlocked on the free tier. Status is honest — green is rebuilt-and-played, amber is best-effort.
Translate RPG Maker MV, MZ and the older Ruby-based XP / VX / Ace end-to-end — dialogue, database, item names, plugin strings.
Translate source, compiled (.rpyc) and archived (.rpa) Ren'Py visual novels.
Translate Kirikiri / KAG visual novels with 26+ ported XP3 encryption schemes.
Send short menu strings to Google and narrative to Claude — automatically, with provider routing.
High-quality JA→EN. Best balance for long dialogue. Use DeepL as your Japanese game translator backbone.
gpt-4o / o4-mini for context-aware translation of RPG Maker, Ren’Py, and visual novel scripts.
Strong on register, tone, and onomatopoeia. The best LLM for translating eroge / doujin dialogue without losing voice.
OpenAI-compatible LLM translation at a fraction of the cost — deepseek-v4-flash / v4-pro. Context-aware quality for a few cents per game.
No API key required. Fast and free; ideal for menu strings, choices, and item names via provider routing.
Any OpenAI-compatible local server — Ollama or LM Studio. Runs fully offline on your own hardware; no API key, no per-token cost, nothing leaves your machine.
Any hosted OpenAI-compatible service — OpenRouter, NanoGPT, and others. Bring your key + base URL (one-click presets) and pick from the provider’s live model list.
lines of game text translated by RuneTranslate users so far
Free unlocks every engine, provider and editor feature. Supporter and Pro add full-speed translation, more projects, and pro tooling.
Connect Claude Desktop to RuneTranslate and just talk to it — “find the untranslated lines,” “look up this character’s official name,” “translate the rest and keep the honorifics.” Claude researches the game with its own web search and writes the results straight back into your project. Browsing is free; the actions are a Supporter perk.
One click installs a Desktop Extension into Claude Desktop. From then on you just talk to Claude about your projects — no copy-paste, no extra tools to run.
Claude uses its own web search to look up character names, items, and honorifics on the game’s wiki, then writes consistent translations straight back into your project.
Anyone can let Claude list and search their projects and glossary. Supporters unlock the actions: translate lines, build glossaries, run the engine, and export.
Off until you switch it on. Claude reaches RuneTranslate over a private local link guarded by a token only you hold — built on the open MCP standard.
Host a project, share an invite code, and translate with your team like a shared doc — live presence, a drag-to-select “blue box,” and a “translated by” credit on every line. Joining and translating is free; hosting is a Supporter perk.
Host a project on RuneTranslate and share an invite code — teammates join in one click. Hosting is a Supporter perk; joining and translating is free for everyone.
Everyone works the same line list and each person’s changes show up for the others within a couple of seconds — like a shared doc, last edit wins.
See who’s online, the line each person is editing, and the rows they have selected — plus a drag “blue box” to multi-select like a file manager.
Every translated line shows who did it, so your team always knows who handled what. Anyone with their own copy of the game can export the finished build.
Title screens, “New Game / Continue” buttons, HUD labels — the words your extractor can’t reach because they’re pixels, not strings. Box them, recognize them, translate them with your own provider, and on export they bake back into the image. The new inpaint removes the original lettering and rebuilds the art behind it — a clean background, not a colored patch.
Open a title or menu image, drag a box around each piece of text, and Recognize reads it back as editable text — in your project’s source language, not just Japanese.
Send the recognized text through the same provider you use for dialogue — DeepL, Google, OpenAI, Claude — then tweak it to fit the button before it touches the art.
Text-stroke inpainting removes only the original lettering and rebuilds the artwork behind it — so a translated title screen looks drawn that way, not stamped over.
Export writes the translated image under its original filename so the game just loads it, and keeps the untouched original as bk_<name>. Recognition is Supporter; free gets a local erase.
Drag a save file in and edit it directly — no replaying to fix a missed flag or grind for gold. Edits auto-save, and your original is backed up on the first change so you can revert anytime. Free.
A structured editor for .rpgsave / .rmmzsave — gold, party levels, HP / MP / EXP, variables, switches, and inventory. Variable and switch names are read straight from the game.
Edit Ren’Py store variables and TyranoBuilder f / sf game variables in a generic field editor — flip a flag or bump a counter without replaying hours of the game.
Drag a save in and edits auto-save. The first change backs up the original so you can revert in one click. It can even translate Japanese variable names so you know what you’re editing.
Point the Cheats tab at any RPG Maker (MV/MZ) or Ren’Py game folder and inject a hotkey-toggled cheat menu in place — offline, single-player only, removable in one click. Free for everyone; a few advanced cheats are part of a paid plan.
A hotkey-toggled in-game menu: add 1000 gold, godmode, full heal, one-hit kill, no random encounters, and walk-through-walls. One plugin covers both MV and MZ.
Tabs that list every game variable and switch — search by name or id, read live values, and set or toggle anything on the fly.
Enables Ren’Py’s built-in developer console (Shift+O) plus a live store-variable editor screen, injected straight into the game.
Step-by-step walkthroughs and provider comparisons from the people who built the extractors.
Quick answers about engines, providers, pricing, and what RuneTranslate actually does.
Yes — a built-in Save Editor. Drag in an RPG Maker MV (.rpgsave) or MZ (.rmmzsave) save and edit gold, party levels, HP / MP / EXP, variables, switches, and inventory in a structured editor (variable and switch names are pulled from the game). Ren’Py (.save) and TyranoBuilder (.sav) saves open in a generic variable editor. Edits auto-save and the original is backed up on the first change so you can revert. It’s free.
Yes. The Cheats tab injects a live in-game cheat menu into any RPG Maker MV / MZ or Ren’Py game you point it at — a hotkey-toggled overlay with add gold, godmode, full heal, no random encounters, and walk-through-walls, plus tabs that list and edit every game variable and switch. For Ren’Py it enables the developer console (Shift+O) and a live variable editor. It’s for offline single-player use, injects in place, and removes cleanly in one click. Free for everyone; a few advanced cheats are part of a paid plan.
Yes. Ren'Py source (.rpy), compiled (.rpyc), and archived (.rpa) games are all supported end-to-end. Compiled games are decompiled with the bundled unrpyc sidecar; .rpa archives are unpacked with rpatool. The translated build writes back to game/tl/translated/translation.rpy, which Ren'Py's runtime auto-prefers over the compiled archive scripts.
Yes for the 26+ GARbro-ported encryption schemes shipped today, plus a generic single-byte-XOR auto-solver and per-file XOR descramble. RuneTranslate emits loose files in scenario/ plus an AfterInit2.tjs path-priority hook — KrkrZ engines load the loose translated files ahead of the original encrypted XP3.
Point RuneTranslate at the .wolf game folder. The bundled UberWolfCli sidecar (MIT-licensed) decrypts and repacks the archive; a length-prefixed string scanner extracts dialogue from .dat / .mps files. V2.x is stable; V3.x is provisional. A length-preserving writeback option keeps binary stability where it matters.
Yes. RuneTranslate translates the text Unity games externalize: TextAsset and MonoBehaviour string fields inside .assets / level files / AssetBundles (read and written via a bundled UnityPy runtime), plus loose script files under StreamingAssets. MonoBehaviour fields read on both Mono and IL2CPP builds — for IL2CPP the type info is reconstructed from the game's metadata. It does NOT translate strings compiled into the game's code (Assembly-CSharp.dll / the IL2CPP binary). Most JP indie/doujin VNs and RPGs externalize their script, so coverage is good — but verify on your specific game.
Yes. RuneTranslate reads the database (item / skill / character / class / condition names + descriptions) and event / scenario text out of a Bakin game's data.rbpack, then ships your translations through Bakin's own built-in localization system — your target language is added as a real in-game language you pick from the title menu. 3D models, textures, and audio are left untouched, and text compiled into a game's C# battle / menu scripts is out of scope. Verify on your specific game.
Yes. RuneTranslate is engine-aware, not content-aware. Anything built on RPG Maker MV / MZ, Kirikiri / KAG, Ren’Py, Wolf RPG, TyranoBuilder, Unity, RPG Developer Bakin, SRPG Studio, NScripter / ONScripter, Godot, Artemis, or a generic Electron VN shell is supported regardless of theme, including adult-content visual novels and eroge.
RuneTranslate is built around the actual game engines, not text injection at runtime. You translate the project once, export a redistributable build, and ship it. No client-side overlay, no Sugoi server to run locally, no engine-specific scripting per game. It also gives you DeepL / OpenAI / Anthropic / Google in one editor without bouncing between tools.
Optional. Google Translate works with no key. DeepL has a free tier. OpenAI and Anthropic are BYOK — you bring your own key, and the keys are stored DPAPI-encrypted on your machine; they never touch our servers.
Yes. Every engine, every provider, and every editor feature is unlocked on the free tier — translation just runs ~3–4× slower than paid. Supporter ($3/mo on Patreon) and Pro ($5/mo) unlock full-speed translation plus translation memory and provider routing. There is no paid-only engine and no paid-only language. Free keeps 1 project at a time; Supporter 10 and Pro 30.
Yes — collaborative projects. A Supporter hosts a project on RuneTranslate and shares an invite code; anyone (including free users) joins and translates together in real time, like a shared doc. You get live presence (who is online, the line each person is editing, the rows they have selected) and a “translated by” credit on every line. Joining and translating is free — only hosting a shared project needs the Supporter tier. Any member with their own copy of the game can export the finished build.
More answers: full FAQ page.