Thaluna Complete Guide | Game Lens, OCR & Audio Translation

Installation & First Launch

Extract the ZIP anywhere on your computer, open the extracted folder, and run Thaluna.exe.
Do not install or run Thaluna from folders containing accented or non-English characters such as Téléchargements, Pobrane, or names with accents.
Recommended install paths: C:\Thaluna\ or D:\Apps\Thaluna\.
The first launch can take longer while models are prepared. Wait for it to finish and do not launch the app multiple times.
Windows 10 or newer is required. Install the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable (x64) from Microsoft's official site if it is missing.

Hardware note: on very new or partially unsupported GPUs, OCR and local translation can fall back to CPU. If you need stable behavior, open Settings → Performance and set both OCR Device and Translation Device to CPU. For faster translation, use Ollama on supported local GPU hardware or OpenRouter for cloud translation.

Display scaling note: if the OCR region appears offset, Windows display scaling is usually the cause. Set the relevant monitor to 100% scaling, keep the game and Thaluna on the same monitor if possible, and re-set the capture region after restarting Thaluna. Starting from v2.8, an experimental DPI scaling fix is available in settings.

Guide Sections

Interface Translation Models Model Quality Guide OCR Language Backlog Lens Mode Continuous Lens Game Lens General Settings Appearance Presets Performance OCR Preprocessing Audio Translation Ollama / Local API / Cloud Session Recording Real-Time TTS

1. Interface Overview

Thaluna interface overview screen — Main interface with the real-time controls, model selection entry points, OCR area, and translation window sizing.

1. Start / Pause

Starts or pauses the translation process.

2. Lens Mode

Opens Lens Mode, including Manual Lens, Continuous Lens, and Game Lens workflows.

3. Backlog Viewer

Opens the translation backlog, similar to visual novel history.

4. Translation Language

Select the translation provider and target language.

5. OCR Language

Choose the language used for text detection.

6. Application Settings

Open the main Thaluna settings panel.

7. Minimal Mode

Hides the application background and leaves only subtitles visible.

8. Minimize Window

Minimizes Thaluna to the taskbar.

9. Close Application

Closes Thaluna.

10. Resize Text Display Area

Adjust the area where translated text appears.

11. Resize OCR Capture Area

Adjust the region Thaluna scans for text.

12. OCR Capture Region

The screen area where Thaluna reads text from.

2. Translation Model Selection

Local API option in the Thaluna translation model selector — Select between built-in local models, your own Ollama models, Custom OpenAI-compatible Local API, or OpenRouter cloud translation.

Selecting a translation model and target language in Thaluna — Choose the model, select the target language, and confirm with OK to apply the new translation workflow.

Which model should you use?

For detailed recommendations across OpenRouter, Ollama, KoboldCpp, llama.cpp, LM Studio, Qwen, Gemma, and built-in offline models, see the Translation Quality Guide.

Model category window

1. Standard Models

Built-in local translation models. Fast and lightweight, designed for weaker computers. Quality may be lower than larger AI models, especially for rare languages.

2. Ollama Models

Allows you to use your own local models installed through Ollama.

3. Local API

Use a local OpenAI-compatible server such as llama.cpp, LM Studio, or another compatible endpoint.

4. OpenRouter (Cloud)

Use cloud AI models through OpenRouter for higher quality translations.

5. Cancel

Close the window without applying changes.

6. OK

Confirm the selected model and apply the settings.

7. Model List

Displays the available translation models for the selected category.

Model and target language window

1. Select a Model

Choose the translation model you want to use. If you select Ollama, your installed Ollama models appear here. If you select Local API, Thaluna uses the configured OpenAI-compatible endpoint.

2. Choose Target Language

Select the language you want Thaluna to translate the text into.

3. Click OK

Apply the settings and start using the selected translation model.

3. OCR Language Selection

OCR language selection in Thaluna — The OCR language tells Thaluna what language is actually on your screen before translation happens.

Chinese

Use when the source text is written in Chinese characters.

Cyrillic

Use for Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, and other Cyrillic-based text.

English (Default)

Recommended for English subtitles, UI text, and most Western PC workflows.

Japanese

Use for Japanese games, visual novels, manga, and anime subtitles.

Korean

Use for Korean Hangul text. Korean target translation works normally, but Korean source OCR may vary more depending on font, resolution, background, and capture region. Test your setup with the free demo when possible.

Latin (Alternative)

Alternative recognition path for Latin-based languages, sometimes better for stylized fonts.

4. Backlog Panel

Thaluna backlog panel — The backlog keeps previously translated lines available for review, similar to a visual novel dialogue history.

1. Backlog Button

Opens the translation backlog with previously translated text.

2. Lock / Unlock Backlog

Locks or unlocks the backlog window so you can move it freely.

3. Close Backlog

Closes the backlog panel.

4. Scroll Bar

Scroll through previously translated lines.

5. Resize Handle

Drag to increase or decrease the size of the backlog window.

5. Lens Mode

Thaluna Lens Mode controls — Lens Mode places translated text directly over the original source text and supports manual snapshots, Continuous Lens, and Game Lens workflows.

New Lens Mode UI buttons in Thaluna — New Lens controls make it easier to hide the Lens UI and manage overlays without leaving the reading workflow.

1. Full Screen Scan

Scans the entire screen and overlays translated text wherever text is detected.

2. Area Selection

Select a specific region of the screen to scan and translate. This often improves accuracy because OCR focuses on a smaller area.

3. Toggle Translation Visibility

Hide or show Lens translations. In Game Lens, OCR and translation continue while overlays stay hidden, and the latest translated text appears when visibility is enabled again.

4. Exit Lens Mode

Close Lens Mode and return to the main Thaluna interface.

5. Manga Mode

Improves text formatting for manga panels and speech bubbles.

6. Vertical Text

Improves detection and formatting for vertical Japanese text.

7. OCR Language

Choose the language of the text you want Thaluna to detect.

8. Font Size

Adjust the size of the translated text displayed on the screen.

9. Hide UI

Quickly hide the Lens interface when you want only the translated overlay visible.

10. Game Lens

Use the game-focused Lens workflow for automatic in-place overlays, typewriter dialogue, subtitles, and game UI text.

6. Continuous Lens (Immersive Lens)

Continuous Lens button in Thaluna — Starting from v2.8, Lens Mode can keep monitoring a selected region and refresh translations automatically.

Continuous Lens settings in Thaluna — Sensitivity, refresh delay, and anti-flicker behavior can be adjusted in Lens settings.

What it changes in practice

Continuous Lens removes the need to manually re-select the same area every time the content changes. It remains the best fit for manga readers, static pages, selected panels, and predictable UI regions. For games, subtitles, and scenes where the camera keeps moving or text appears slowly, use Game Lens instead.

6A. Game Lens

Game Lens is the Lens workflow for games, anime subtitles, and moving scenes where text changes automatically but should still be translated directly on top of the original UI.

Game Lens button inside Thaluna Lens Mode — Open Lens Mode, then use the dedicated Game Lens button when you want automatic in-place overlays for games instead of a static manga/page workflow.

Original game objective before Thaluna translation — **Before / after in one frame.** Game Lens keeps the translation in the same visual context as the game text. Click the image to enlarge.

Game Lens objective translation example — **Before / after in one frame.** Game Lens keeps the translation in the same visual context as the game text. Click the image to enlarge.

When to use Game Lens

Use Game Lens for dialogue boxes, item descriptions, quest panels, menus, tutorials, signs, subtitle regions, and games where text appears inside the world or UI. It is especially useful when the text appears slowly from left to right, because Game Lens waits briefly before OCR so it does not translate only the first one or two words.

Basic Game Lens workflow

1. Open Lens Mode

Click the Lens Mode button from the main Thaluna window. Lens Mode contains Manual Lens, Continuous Lens, Manga options, and Game Lens.

2. Click Game Lens

Use the dedicated Game Lens button instead of normal Continuous Lens when the target is a game, anime subtitle region, or moving scene.

3. Select the game text region

Choose the area where dialogue, subtitles, item text, or UI panels appear. Smaller focused regions usually improve OCR accuracy.

4. Let the text settle

For typewriter-style dialogue, wait for the line to finish appearing. Game Lens is designed to avoid translating partial text too early.

5. Tune OCR preprocessing if needed

If OCR misses colored subtitles or stylized UI text, open Settings → Performance and try Auto-crop only, Light subtitles, Yellow subtitles, or Custom color.

6. Stop when finished

Stop Game Lens when you leave the game, change monitor layout, or want to return to normal Real-Time OCR mode.

Game Lens vs other modes

Mode	Use it for	Output style
Real-Time OCR	Fast subtitles and dialogue when a floating translation window is enough.	Translation appears in Thaluna's real-time translation window.
Manual Lens	One static capture, screenshots, signs, documents, or a single manga panel.	Translated overlay is created once.
Continuous Lens	Manga readers, static pages, selected panels, or predictable page regions.	Selected Lens region refreshes when the content changes.
Game Lens	Games, anime subtitles, typewriter dialogue, item descriptions, and moving scenes.	Translated boxes stay in place while source text is visible and refresh when it changes.

OCR preprocessing menu for Game Lens tuning — OCR preprocessing profiles are useful when game fonts, subtitle colors, or dark backgrounds make raw OCR unreliable.

Preview Current Capture before and after OCR preprocessing — Preview Current Capture lets you inspect the processed OCR image before relying on translation output.

Practical settings for games

Use Auto-crop only when the selected region contains extra empty space around subtitles or dialogue.
Use Light subtitles for bright text on dark backgrounds.
Use Yellow subtitles for yellow or orange subtitle styles.
Use Custom color when a game uses a consistent text color and the default OCR misses it.
Keep Continuous Lens for manga/static pages; use Game Lens when text appears, disappears, or changes while the scene keeps moving.

Open the dedicated Game Lens guide

7. General Settings

General settings and shortcuts in Thaluna — General settings cover theme style, custom colors, and global shortcuts for the core workflows.

Theme Style

Choose a predefined theme for the real-time interface.

Custom Colors

When Theme = Custom, adjust text color, background color, and UI/frame color for real-time mode.

Global Shortcuts

Assign keys for Minimal Mode, hide icon, toggle mode, snapshots, Lens translation visibility, and preset loading.

Shortcut Setup

Click a field and press the physical key or key combination. Use the clear button, Backspace, or Delete to remove it. Duplicate assignments are marked and must be resolved before saving.

8. Appearance

Appearance settings in Thaluna — Appearance settings cover translation font size, outline thickness, background effects, and Lens overlay colors.

Snapshot background opacity slider in Thaluna Lens settings — Snapshot background opacity lets you tune translated overlay readability without fully blocking the original image.

Translation Font Size

Adjust the translated subtitle size in real-time mode.

Stars Effect

Enable or disable the animated star background effect in the translation window.

Text Outline Thickness

Increase outline thickness to improve readability over bright or busy backgrounds.

Lens Appearance

Change text color, background color, and background opacity specifically for Snapshot / Lens Mode overlays.

9. Window Position Presets

Window position presets in Thaluna — Presets save and restore both the OCR capture region and the translation window position.

Saving Presets

Set your OCR and translation windows where you want them, give the preset a name, and click Save.

Loading Presets

Use Load to restore a saved layout instantly for the current game, video player, or monitor setup.

Best Use Cases

Presets are especially useful when you switch between different games, monitors, or media players.

10. Performance & Modes

Performance settings in Thaluna — Performance settings control OCR mode, OCR preprocessing profiles, optional real-time OCR auto-crop, CPU/GPU choices, low CPU behavior, and auto-pause.

Real-time OCR auto-crop setting in Thaluna — Real-time OCR auto-crop can reduce empty margins before recognition, which helps subtitle-style capture regions.

OCR Modes

Standard works for most cases, Pixel Text improves game-font detection, and Manga mode targets harder vertical Japanese layouts in real-time mode.

Real-time OCR Auto-crop

Enable auto-crop when the capture area is larger than the subtitle line and empty margins make OCR less reliable. Disable it for bright visual novel backgrounds or carefully tuned manual regions.

OCR Preprocessing Profiles

Use Off, Auto-crop only, Light subtitles, Yellow subtitles, or Custom color depending on what the current game, anime, manga page, or video subtitle style needs.

Low CPU Mode

Reduces OCR refresh pressure for weaker systems or when you are running other heavy applications.

Auto-Pause

Pauses OCR after static text remains unchanged for a while, helping reduce unnecessary CPU usage.

OCR Device

Choose Auto, CPU, or GPU for OCR recognition.

Translation Device

Choose Auto, CPU, or GPU for built-in local translation models. This does not affect Ollama or OpenRouter, which run externally.

OCR preprocessing profiles

Off: closest to raw OCR behavior.
Auto-crop only: conservative default for focusing the text area without aggressive cleanup.
Light subtitles: helps white or bright text on darker backgrounds.
Yellow subtitles: targets yellow/orange subtitle styles common in anime and some games.
Custom color: lets you tune OCR for a specific subtitle or UI text color with preview support.

Use Preview Current Capture when tuning these profiles. It shows the processed OCR image so you are not guessing only from translation output.

11. Audio Translation (BETA)

Audio Translation settings menu in Thaluna — Audio Translation settings include the enable toggle, loopback device selection, source language, STT model, and latency preset.

When to use Audio Translation

Audio Translation lets Real-Time mode use live system audio transcription instead of screen OCR. It is useful for anime, videos, streams, voice-acted visual novels, and situations where subtitles are unavailable or hard for OCR to read.

Beta note: speech recognition quality depends on source audio, background music, overlapping voices, source language, selected STT model, translation backend, and audio device configuration.

Loopback / System Audio

Select a proper loopback device such as Speakers or Headphones loopback so Thaluna can hear the application audio.

OpenRouter STT

Audio Translation uses OpenRouter Speech-to-Text, so you need a valid OpenRouter API key, available credits, and a supported STT model.

Source Language

Choose the source language when possible. Auto-detection can work, but explicit language selection is usually more stable for anime and voiced content.

Latency Presets

Use the Stable preset first. Lower-latency modes can feel faster, but they may produce more unstable partial transcripts.

Volume Matters

If audio activity is detected but no text appears, raise the source application or system volume and verify that the selected loopback device is the one actually playing audio.

Translation Backend

The STT step only creates source text. The final translation still uses your selected backend: built-in models, Ollama, Custom Local API, or OpenRouter translation.

12. Ollama / Local API / Cloud Settings

Custom Local API settings in Thaluna Ollama and Cloud settings — Configure Ollama refresh, Custom OpenAI-compatible Local API, and OpenRouter cloud translation from the same settings page.

Refresh Ollama Models

Refresh the list of available local Ollama models after starting Ollama or downloading new ones.

Custom Local API

Set the base URL for an OpenAI-compatible local server, usually http://127.0.0.1:8080/v1, and keep the model ID matching your server setup.

Custom API Key

Only fill this if your local endpoint requires one. Most localhost llama.cpp setups can leave it empty.

OpenRouter API Key

Paste your OpenRouter API key carefully, with no extra spaces, and keep it private.

Model Selection

Choose the OpenRouter model used for translation. Models differ in speed, cost, and quality.

Custom ID

Manually specify a model ID when you want to use something not listed in the dropdown.

Update Mode

Instant gives the fastest cloud responsiveness, while Economy reduces request frequency to save tokens.

Economy Controls

Adjust request timing, ignore very short text, and skip highly similar OCR lines to reduce unnecessary API usage.

Ollama first request delay

When you select an Ollama model, the first translation can take longer because Ollama often loads the model only after Thaluna sends the first OCR text line. During that warm-up, Thaluna may look like it is not showing anything yet. Wait for the first response; later lines are usually faster once the model is loaded.

Recommended llama.cpp baseline for Thaluna

Use OpenAI-compatible server mode.
Base URL: http://127.0.0.1:8080/v1
Context: 4096-8192
Temperature: 0.1-0.3
Max tokens: 512-2048

Example: llama-server -m model.gguf --port 8080 --ctx-size 8192

Thaluna sends short OCR translation requests, so very large context windows are usually not needed. If a model generates very long nonsense responses, lower temperature or set a stricter max token limit in your local server/client configuration.

13. Session Recording

Session recording settings in Thaluna — Automatically save a session transcript to TXT while Thaluna is running.

Automatic Saving

Enable or disable automatic transcript recording for the current session.

Save Folder

Choose where the TXT transcript files should be written.

Save Mode

Choose between translation-only output or original-plus-translation output.

Duplicate Filtering

Repeated duplicate lines are filtered to keep the transcript readable over long sessions.

14. Real-Time TTS

Real-Time TTS settings in Thaluna — Optional Real-Time TTS can read OCR lines aloud using your existing OpenRouter API key.

Optional Feature

Real-Time TTS is optional and does not affect the rest of Thaluna if you leave it disabled.

Read Mode

Choose whether TTS reads translated text or the original OCR text.

Voice and Speed

Select a supported voice from the list and adjust speech speed to fit your preference.

OpenRouter Requirement

TTS uses your configured OpenRouter API key. Audio is AI-generated, and you are responsible for the text you choose to send.

Need a narrower guide instead?

If you only need one specific part of the workflow, use the dedicated guides for Local API setup, OpenRouter setup, display scaling, hardware compatibility, or the changelog.

Translation Quality Guide Local API Guide OpenRouter Guide Display Scaling Guide Hardware Compatibility Changelog