Comparison

RuneTranslate vs MTool

RuneTranslate reads the game's own file formats, writes your translated strings back into them, and saves a complete translated copy of the game to a folder you choose. That copy is the product: an ordinary game folder that starts and plays on its own, with nothing running beside it, on any PC you move it to and for anyone you hand it to. MTool puts the translation somewhere else — you drag Game.exe onto it, it translates the text up front, then launches the game with a version.dll beside the executable and swaps the Japanese out in memory while you play. Everything else on this page follows from that one difference.

Made by: AdventCirno
Licence: Proprietary
Runs on: Windows 7+, Android 11+

The short answer

RuneTranslate handles the whole job in one app. It reads 17 engines and formats — RPG Maker MV/MZ and XP/VX/Ace, Ren'Py, Kirikiri/KAG, Wolf RPG 2.x and 3.x, TyranoBuilder, Electron and Cocos Creator shells, Unity on Mono and IL2CPP, Unreal Engine 4/5, Godot, RPG Developer Bakin, SRPG Studio, NScripter/ONScripter, Artemis, YU-RIS, AliceSoft System, LiveMaker and Gettext catalogs — and translates through nine providers, three of which need no API key at all. Beyond the script it does the parts most tools never reach: the Image Studio re-bakes Japanese painted into title screens and menu buttons, the save editor opens RPG Maker MV/MZ, XP/VX/Ace and 2000/2003, Ren'Py and TyranoBuilder saves, and Cheat Mode injects a live in-game cheat menu. All of that is in the free tier — every engine, every provider, the full editor, the save editor, Cheat Mode and the AI refiner unlocked with no pledge, because free throttles throughput rather than locking features. And what comes out is a game rather than a session: an exported folder you launch directly, with no loader in front of it and nothing to keep current. MTool is built for a narrower case and is quick at it — if you want to be inside an RPG Maker or Wolf RPG title in five minutes and are not keeping the translation, its up-front pass plus built-in cheats does that, and it also runs on Android.

When you might still reach for MTool

MTool suits one situation well: you want to be playing tonight, on a game inside its family, and you do not need the translation afterwards. Its free public build runs a whole game through Bing with no account and no key, a corrected term appears in the game you are already playing without a restart, and because it never writes to the game's data a failed run cannot damage an archive — deleting one DLL undoes it. It also reaches a few engines RuneTranslate does not: SMILE GAME BUILDER, Visual Novel Maker, ChoiceScript, Pixel Game Maker MV, the MKXP-Z and RGU runtimes, and RPG Maker 2000/2003 game text, which RuneTranslate has no adapter for. It is the only one of the two with an Android build. For anything you intend to keep, hand to someone else, or run on an engine outside that family, RuneTranslate is the one that finishes the job and leaves you a playable build.

When RuneTranslate fits better

RuneTranslate turns a game into an editable project and gives you back a finished build. The whole script is in front of you at once: sort it, filter it with regex, find and replace across every file, pin a character's name in the glossary so it never drifts, route short UI strings to a cheap provider and dialogue to a better one, and run an AI second pass over anything that reads stiffly. Most of what usually goes wrong is handled for you — it detects the engine, recovers Unreal AES keys, RPG Maker image ciphers and YU-RIS script keys by itself, carries about 26 ported Kirikiri XP3 schemes, and refuses to auto-translate the scene names, asset paths, lookup keys and comparison operands that silently break a game, with the same structural gates running again at export so an old project cannot push a broken string later. Around that sit cloud translation memory that follows your account between PCs, live collaborative projects, an overnight batch queue, a bring-your-own proxy pool, a local MCP server for Claude Desktop, and CSV, JSON, PO and XLIFF interchange on the Ultimate tier. It runs on Windows; Linux and the Steam Deck run it under Wine or Proton.

Side by side

RuneTranslate 0.53.1 against the current public MTool build. Details verified in August 2026; both projects ship often, so check each project's own site for anything you are about to rely on.

What you are comparing	RuneTranslate	MTool
How the translation reaches the game	Reads the game's own data files, writes the translated strings back, and saves a complete translated copy to a folder you choose.	Starts the game with a version.dll beside the executable and substitutes the text in memory while the game runs.
After the translation run	The exported copy is an ordinary game folder. Start it and play, with nothing else running, on any PC you copy it to.	The game has to be launched through MTool every time for the translation to appear.
Your original game folder	Read during extraction only. The translated build is written to a separate folder you choose, so the install you started from stays as it was and you can re-export as often as you like.	Never rewritten. One DLL is added beside the executable, so a failed run cannot damage an archive and removing the file undoes everything.
Engines covered	17 engines and formats in one app: RPG Maker MV/MZ and XP/VX/VX Ace, Ren'Py, Kirikiri/KAG, Wolf RPG 2.x and 3.x, TyranoBuilder, Electron and Cocos Creator shells, Unity on Mono and IL2CPP, Unreal Engine 4/5, Godot, RPG Developer Bakin, SRPG Studio, NScripter/ONScripter, Artemis, YU-RIS, AliceSoft System, LiveMaker and Gettext .po/.mo catalogs. Some have a confirmed in-game-playable baseline; the rest are best-effort.	RPG Maker 2000 through MZ including the MKXP-Z and RGU runtimes, Wolf RPG, Kirikiri 2/Z, Ren'Py, TyranoBuilder, SRPG Studio, Bakin, SMILE GAME BUILDER, Visual Novel Maker, ChoiceScript, Pixel Game Maker MV. The last four, and RPG Maker 2000/2003 game text, are outside RuneTranslate's list.
Who does the translating	Nine providers, chosen per project and every one of them on the free tier: Google and two DeepL endpoints that need no key, DeepL API, OpenAI, Claude, DeepSeek, any OpenAI-compatible endpoint such as OpenRouter or NanoGPT, and a local model that costs nothing per line.	MTool's own hosted engines, gated by membership level — Bing on the free build; Sugoi JP→EN, Caiyun and DeepSeek from $3/mo; Baidu, Youdao and ChatGPT 3.5 from $7/mo.
Your own API key or a local model	Yes. Keys stay on your PC under Windows encryption, and Ollama or LM Studio runs the entire job offline — no cloud call, no per-line cost.	No documented way to supply your own key, endpoint or local model. Translation runs on MTool's servers; when a membership lapses, existing translations keep working but new runs cannot be made.
Target languages	35 target languages, with the app's own interface in 19.	Depends on the engine chosen. Several of the stronger ones (Caiyun, Baidu, Youdao) target Chinese; for English the practical picks are Bing on the free build or Sugoi at $3/mo.
What the translator receives	Whole strings exactly as the engine stores them, with control codes, inline tags and variables masked so a provider cannot drop or mangle them.	Text is exported split into clauses and fragments. The LinguaGacha project documents that this hurts translation quality and ships an MTool Optimizer feature to reassemble the fragments first.
Correcting a line	Edit it beside the rest of the script, with find and replace, the glossary and the AI refiner available on the same screen, then re-export the build.	Applies live in the game you are playing — no restart, no reloading a save, no rebuild.
Japanese drawn into the artwork	Image Studio detects it, inpaints the plate, typesets the replacement and bakes it back into the image — including encrypted RPG Maker art and Kirikiri TLG. Free accounts open and read; editing is Supporter and up.	Not documented. A memory hook substitutes text strings, not the pixels of a title screen or a menu button.
Cheats, saves and in-game extras	Cheat Mode injects a live in-game cheat menu into RPG Maker MV/MZ games and enables Ren'Py's developer tools, with a one-click Remove; the save editor opens RPG Maker MV/MZ, XP/VX/Ace and 2000/2003, Ren'Py and TyranoBuilder saves. The save editor and the core cheats cost nothing.	Item, gold and stat editing, movement speed and whole-game speed-up across the engines it supports.
Handing the text to another tool	The Ultimate tier's Developer tab exports and re-imports CSV, JSON, PO and XLIFF, and Gettext .po/.mo catalogs are a supported format in their own right.	ManualTransFile.json, which Translator++, LinguaGacha and others already read and write.
Platforms	Windows. Linux and the Steam Deck run it under Wine or Proton.	Windows 7+ and Android 11+, with per-engine plugin APKs and an early-preview Winlator component for running Windows games on Android.
Account and price	The free tier is the whole product: every engine, every provider, the full editor, the save editor, Cheat Mode and the AI refiner, with free throttling throughput rather than locking features. Signing in with Patreon is free and takes a click. Supporter $3.99/mo, Pro $5.99/mo, Ultimate $9.99/mo.	No account for the free public build. Patreon levels at $3, $7 and $15 a month; MTool's own page says level 3 is basically the same as level 2.

RuneTranslate is not affiliated with MTool or its author. MTool's engine list, membership levels, platforms and build date were verified in August 2026 against the project's own site, release page and subscription page; RuneTranslate details describe version 0.53.1.

Questions people actually ask

Does a game translated with MTool still need MTool to play?

Yes. MTool leaves the game's own data files alone and injects the translation while the game runs, so the game has to be started through MTool each time for the translated text to appear. That is stated by MTool's own tutorial flow and independently by the LinguaGacha wiki. RuneTranslate writes the translation into a copy of the game's files, and that copy is what you keep and play — an ordinary game folder with nothing in front of it, on any PC you move it to.

Does MTool support Unity, Unreal or Godot games?

RuneTranslate does: Unity on both Mono and IL2CPP builds, Unreal Engine 4/5, Godot, and alongside them NScripter/ONScripter, Artemis, YU-RIS, AliceSoft System, LiveMaker and custom Electron and Cocos Creator shells. On Unity and Unreal it reaches the text the engine externalizes, which is where the script of most of those games lives. MTool's supported list is the RPG Maker and doujin visual novel family — RPG Maker 2000 through MZ, Wolf RPG, Kirikiri 2/Z, Ren'Py, TyranoBuilder, SRPG Studio, Bakin, SMILE GAME BUILDER, Visual Novel Maker, ChoiceScript and Pixel Game Maker MV — and those engines are not on it.

Can I use my own OpenAI or DeepSeek key with MTool?

RuneTranslate is built for exactly that: nine providers, your own keys stored on your PC under Windows encryption, any OpenAI-compatible endpoint you point it at, and a local model through Ollama or LM Studio that costs nothing per line and works offline — plus three providers that need no key at all. MTool has no documented way to supply your own API key, base URL or local model; its engines are hosted by MTool and unlocked by membership level, and new translations stop working when a membership lapses. The workaround there is MTool's own export: write out ManualTransFile.json, translate it elsewhere, and load it back.

Why does my antivirus flag MTool?

MTool reaches into the game process by placing a version.dll beside the executable and letting Windows load it, which is a pattern antivirus engines watch for. Kaspersky flagged that file as Trojan.Win64.DLLhijack.gen in a January 2026 false-positive thread, and MTool is also known to hang when other hooking software such as Windhawk is active, so users often add an exclusion. RuneTranslate never touches the running game process — it reads and writes files. Its installer is not code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen shows its first-run prompt.

Is RuneTranslate free, and do I need an account?

The free tier is the whole product: every engine, every provider, the full editor, the save editor, Cheat Mode and the AI refiner, with no payment — and three of the nine providers need no API key, so a whole game can be translated without spending anything. What free changes is throughput: roughly half speed on AI providers, one project open at a time, and the Image Studio opens read-only. Signing in with Patreon is free and takes a click. Supporter is $3.99 a month for full speed, cloud translation memory, the glossary, provider routing and the batch queue; Pro is $5.99 and adds a higher project limit, the proxy pool, a larger Image Studio quota and the animated scene themes.

Which one gives better translation quality?

RuneTranslate sends whole strings with control codes, tags and variables masked, then keeps them consistent across a long game with translation memory, a glossary and an optional AI second pass — and you pick the engine behind it, from the free Google and DeepL endpoints up to Claude, OpenAI or DeepSeek on your own key. There is one structural difference worth knowing: MTool exports text split into clauses and fragments, and the LinguaGacha project documents that translating those fragments produces worse results, which is why it ships a feature to reassemble them. On the free tiers, MTool's Bing engine and RuneTranslate's free Google and DeepL endpoints are in the same class.

Try it on the game you are stuck on

The free tier unlocks every engine, every provider, the whole editor, the save editor, Cheat Mode and the AI refiner, with three providers that need no API key — it just runs at about half speed on AI providers and keeps one project open at a time. Point it at your game, see how much text it finds, and export a copy that plays on its own and stays translated wherever you put it.

Download for Windows Get Supporter ($3.99/mo)