WaniKani - Translation practice sheet generator

(This tool works only for WaniKani users - paid or not)

A few years back, Koichi from Tofugu made a wonderful exercise sheet, which consisted of… 4500 sentences in Japanese, that you had to translate. With no solution sheet. The thing is, his idea is actually — and perhaps surprisingly — deeply rooted in the science of learning. You can learn more about it here.

Alas, things have happened and this exercise sheet is not available anymore. With no indication of a chance to see it resurface, I’ve took it into my own hands to try and make a replacement for it for WaniKani users.

Here is the result: a simple tool (it fits in one small JS script) running on your device that fetches all the example sentences you’ve seen in WaniKani and generates a printable PDF.

As the generated PDF can get a bit long depending on your current level, I recommend using double-sided printing and/or printing 2 pages per sheet. You’ll use less paper and ink, and have a smaller pile of sheets.

🪲 The script doesn’t work?

Try another browser or device, that might fix it (the script runs on your device so it’s sensitive to those things). Whether it does or not, don’t hesitate to tell me your OS version, your browser version and what went wrong, I’ll have a look into it.

To do that, you can open an issue on GitHub or write a message under the WaniKani community post for this tool. You can also clone the repository here to submit a pull request if you want to and can fix it yourself!

Please don’t use my personal email for this, though.

🛡️ Worried about putting your API token below?

You can take a look at the script, it’s not very long and I try to keep it well commented.
You can also see from the domain name that this website is hosted by GitHub Pages, which means that the code you see on GitHub is the same that’s being run on this page 😉
You only need a read-only token to use this tool ^^

🙅‍♂️ Limitations

The phrases are ones you’ve seen before, unlike in the exercise sheet that inspired this.
As the PDF is generated by placing sentences at specific coordinates, there is no word wrapping. As a consequence, I was forced to remove a few sentences (under 1%) that have more than 40 characters.

💡 Want a new feature?

See current ideas and add others on GitHub or under the WaniKani community post for this tool, or clone the repository here to submit a pull request.

Please don’t use my personal email for this, though.

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