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Sponsors

Thank you to PackyCode for sponsoring Wenyi.

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Why Wenyi

Wenyi is designed for long-form texts — novels, social-science monographs, narrative nonfiction, and more.

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Core features

• Local Desktop app — import books, translate, proofread, and save exports in one application. Projects stay in an independent local workspace; packaged releases include the Python engine, with no separate Python, PostgreSQL, Redis, or Docker setup. See the Desktop guide.
• Visual proofreading — English and Chinese interfaces, live translation progress, paragraph editing with revision history, and whole-book review with evidence and publication results. See the interface preview.
• Native file and credential support — drag files into a new project, choose export destinations with the system save dialog, and save API keys in the OS credential store when available.
• Whole-book understanding — prescans the source before translation, creating per-chapter digests and a book-level synopsis injected into every batch
• Real-time glossary — extracts proper names, terms, and recurring expressions as translation progresses; detects conflicting translations and surfaces them for resolution
• Multi-stage quality — optional polishing (strong model) and an evidence-driven whole-book AI review
• Resumability — completed batches and chapter progress are saved; reopen the application and continue from saved checkpoints
• Multiple LLM providers — DeepSeek, OpenAI, OpenRouter, OrcaRouter, Google Gemini, Ollama, vLLM, and generic OpenAI-compatible endpoints; keep three convenient tiers or select models per operation, mix connections, and share request limits. See model routing.
• Native EPUB preservation — writes translated text back into the original XHTML templates and attempts to preserve styles, images, TOC, and anchors
• Bilingual output — optional source-and-translation edition with visually subdued source text, including dark mode support.

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Interface preview

Desktop and Web share these workspace pages. The screenshot below shows the translation overview in the Web Chinese interface; English is available in Settings.

_{Translation overview: usage by step, cache hit rates, and run durations.}

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Quick start

With Python 3.10+ and uv installed, run from the repository root:

uv sync --locked
export DEEPSEEK_API_KEY="YOUR_DEEPSEEK_API_KEY"
uv run wenyi translate book.epub

This shell example uses the default DeepSeek provider. Supply your own key and review config.yaml before translating. For Windows commands, other providers, and resume/export options, see the CLI guide.

Prefer a graphical app? See the Desktop quick start for downloads and setup.

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Supported formats

• PDF input defaults to MinerU and requires its API key for the initial conversion; the resulting HTML is cached and reused. The BabelDOC bridge is optional for layout-preserving PDFs. See PDF configuration.
• EPUB output attempts to preserve the original book's styles, images, table of contents, and anchors. Vertical layout is converted to horizontal for Chinese reading.
• SRT projects use a lightweight subtitle workflow without a glossary, polishing, or whole-book review.
• DOCX uses the full book pipeline. Headings, simple tables, lists, and common run/paragraph styles are preserved where possible; translated Chinese uses Song (宋体).

Language support

Choose languages when creating a project, including directions such as Chinese → English or English → Japanese. Built-in profiles cover Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Vietnamese, and selected variants. Multilingual translation remains experimental; real-model long-form quality needs further evaluation.

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Translation pipeline

Wenyi combines whole-book understanding, batch translation, optional polishing, review, and export. See the translation pipeline for the flowchart and stage details.

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Documentation

Client guides

• Desktop guide — installation/builds, API keys, native import and save, local data, and troubleshooting
• CLI guide — local installation, commands, translation, resume, and export
• Web deployment — optional self-hosted browser workspace with its own project data

Shared reference

• Configuration — providers, languages, pipeline switches, segmentation, paths
• Translation pipeline — whole-book analysis, terminology, context, polishing, review

Development

• Architecture — module responsibilities, shared services, and platform boundaries
• Contributing — development, testing, and contribution guidelines

Public-domain translation examples are shared through wenyi-bookcase. Do not publish copyrighted text, private books, or workspace data containing sensitive information without permission.

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Limitations

• Multilingual translation is experimental. Prompt instructions use English, while generated descriptive metadata follows the translation target.
• Polishing and final review are the most expensive stages. Shadow fixing may trigger multiple full-book review passes and additional Fixer calls.
• PDF input defaults to MinerU and requires an API key for the initial conversion. The BabelDOC bridge is optional for layout-preserving PDFs.
• SRT translation does not include a glossary, polishing, or whole-book review.
• Translation quality is bounded by the capabilities of the chosen LLM model.
• Very long books may produce large workspaces; storage requirements grow with book length.

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Community

• Discord server
• QQ group: 1055065098
• GitHub Issues — bug reports and feature requests
• GitHub Discussions — ideas and questions

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Star history

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License

MIT

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AtomGit (China)

Wenyi is also hosted on AtomGit: https://atomgit.com/BigDawnGhost/wenyi