The words you're learning, in the articles you already read.
LinguaLens is a browser extension. As you read web pages and watch YouTube with captions, some of the words from your deck appear in the language you're learning. Hover one to see the original. If LinguaLens isn't sure which meaning a sentence uses, it leaves the word alone.
No account needed to start
Sends short fragments of visible text · No URLs or browsing history · Privacy Policy
How it worksWorld
Spain's Solar Boom Reaches Forgotten Villages
Across the southern campo, decades-old fábricas sit silent while new solar fields take their place. Young trabajadores who once left for the ciudades are coming home to take jobs at the panels and substations. Local officials say the installations now support new schools, a clinic, and the rhythm of a weekly mercado.
How it works
Set up a deck once. After that, it works in the background while you browse.
Build a deck or import one
Pick a starter deck, upload an Anki .apkg, connect Skritter, or add words yourself.
Browse normally
Read and watch the way you already do. When you spot a swapped word, hover it to see the original.
Rate words as you read
The same hover card has Forgot, Hard, Knew it, and Easy buttons. Your rating schedules the word's next review, the same way a flashcard review does.
YouTube captions work too
When a video has captions in the language you read, some words from your deck appear in them as it plays. LinguaLens turns the captions on for you, and you can hover a word to see the original, the same as on a web page.
heading toward the distant montañas.
The same deck on web pages and YouTube
Add a word once and LinguaLens looks for it in both.
Web pages
News articles, blogs, Wikipedia, and most other sites with ordinary page text. Hover a swapped word to see the original.
nytimes.com
Across the southern campo, new solar farms bring hope to forgotten pueblos.
YouTube captions
Videos on youtube.com with captions in the language you read. Words swap in as the video plays.
youtube.com
It keeps going on the days you skip studying
Courses, apps, and flashcard decks all need you to sit down and open them, and that's the session that gets skipped. LinguaLens runs while you do things you'd do anyway: read the news, watch a video, look something up on Wikipedia. Some words from your deck turn up in those sentences. There's no session to schedule.
What LinguaLens does with your deck
Discovery Mode: new words just past your deck
Discovery Mode will point out words a little less common than the ones in your deck, shown inline as “word (translation)”, and let you add them with a click. It isn’t available yet.
When in doubt, it leaves the word alone
“Bank” next to a river and “bank” in a finance story translate differently. LinguaLens uses the sentence around a word from your deck to choose the meaning and the grammatical form. If it can’t tell which meaning the sentence uses, the original word stays.
Only words from your deck
Words you haven’t added stay in their original language. LinguaLens doesn’t swap every match, either. It favors new words and the ones you’re closest to forgetting. You choose how many it swaps (light, medium, or heavy) in the extension popup.
What you read shows in your reviews
LinguaLens counts how often each swapped word is on your screen and saves a sentence you saw it in. When that word comes up for review, the card shows that sentence and how often you saw the word in the past week. The next review date comes from your ratings. FSRS, a spaced-repetition scheduler also available in Anki, calculates it.
21 languages, including Chinese and Japanese
Simplified and Traditional Chinese are separate languages here, each with its own vocabulary, and so are Brazilian and European Portuguese. If you read in Chinese, Japanese, or Korean, LinguaLens uses language-aware tokenization to find word boundaries.
Show all 21 languages
Free for up to 200 cards. No credit card needed.
Upgrade if you need more cards or more translations a day.
Free
- 200 vocabulary cards
- 500 new translations per day
- Essential starter decks
- Anki import · Skritter sync
Pro
- Unlimited vocabulary cards
- 10,000 new translations per day
- Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced starter decks
- Discovery Mode (coming soon)
- Priority support
- Early access to new features
FAQ
Does LinguaLens see what I’m browsing?
Not the whole page. When LinguaLens needs a translation, it sends a short fragment of visible text around the word from your deck. It does not send URLs, full pages, browsing history, screenshots, form values, or page metadata.
The fragment is real text from the page, so it can contain incidental personal information if that’s what surrounds the word. Fragments can stay for a while in temporary translation jobs and quality checks. A limited number are kept as examples that aren’t linked to any account. If you’re signed in, your review examples and feedback are kept for the periods listed in our Privacy Policy.
How accurate are the translations?
LinguaLens uses the sentence around a word, when there is one, to choose the meaning and the grammatical form. That’s how “bank” next to a river and “bank” in a finance story come out differently. On YouTube, it also lines the captions up with YouTube’s own translation into the language you’re learning, when YouTube offers one. If it isn’t sure which meaning fits, it leaves the word alone instead of guessing.
It still gets words wrong sometimes. If one looks off, use the flag button in its hover card to report it.
Which sites and videos does it work on?
Most websites, as long as the text is in the language you read. It skips search boxes, form fields, editors, and code blocks. It also skips anything inside an embedded frame, such as a comment widget or a video player from another site. To turn it off on a site, use the extension popup.
On youtube.com, it works on videos that have captions in the language you read, or captions YouTube can auto-translate into that language. It turns captions on for you. Live streams and YouTube videos embedded on other sites aren’t supported.
Will it slow down my browsing?
LinguaLens doesn’t block the page from loading. It starts once the page has loaded, handles the text on your screen first, and gets to the rest as you scroll. Swapped words can take a moment to appear. How long depends on the page, your device and connection, and whether the translation is already cached.
What languages are supported?
21 languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, European Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Polish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, Thai, and Vietnamese. You can pick the one you read in and the one you’re learning from that list.
For Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, LinguaLens uses language-aware tokenization to find word boundaries. Chinese is written without spaces, so LinguaLens matches the longest word from your deck it can find. When the word boundaries are ambiguous, it may skip that spot or match shorter words from your deck instead.
How do the Anki and Skritter integrations work?
For Anki, sign in first. Upload an .apkg file on the web app’s Import page. Or connect the free AnkiConnect add-on in the extension’s settings and import from there. If you turn on review sync, your LinguaLens ratings are sent back to Anki too.
For Skritter, paste your Skritter integration token on the same Import page. With the extension installed, LinguaLens checks Skritter for changes about every 30 minutes and sends the reviews you do in LinguaLens back to Skritter. The Import page also takes CSV files.
What’s the difference between Free and Pro?
Free includes every language, Anki import and Skritter sync, the Essential starter decks, up to 200 vocabulary cards, and up to 500 new translations a day. No credit card needed. Without an account, the extension gets 50 new translations a day.
Only new translation work counts toward the daily limit. If LinguaLens has already translated a word in the meaning and form a sentence needs, it doesn’t count toward the limit. Those translations keep working after you reach the limit. The same word in a new meaning or form can count again. The count resets at midnight UTC.
Pro removes the card limit and raises the daily limit to 10,000 new translations. It adds the Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced starter decks, and includes priority support and early access to new features.
Try it on the next article you read
It's free, and you can start without an account.