PaneTrans · local translation

A Chrome extension. You box off a patch of a page and a little draggable window pops up next to it; when the text inside changes, the translation changes with it — a bit like sticking a live subtitle onto a chat box, a comment stream, or a video. The translating runs in your own browser, the free tier works fully offline, and not a word of the original is sent anywhere.

Highlights

• Box a region and it translates live, following the text as it changes
• Bilingual YouTube subtitles
• Whole-page translation, and it can read text baked into images too
• All the translating happens in your browser — nothing uploaded
• Want sharper translations? There’s a cloud tier too

Stack

Doing the translating locally is the part that’s hardest to copy — people who care about privacy like it, and it’s exactly what the big players are reluctant to do.

Private project — intro only.