Translation
Comments and published lessons can be translated into your language right in the page. The translation happens on your own computer: nothing is sent to a server, and nothing is saved. A translation lasts until you leave the page, and the original is always one click away.
Translations go into the language the app is set to (see Language in Settings).
Translating a comment
On a lesson's Discussion tab, every comment with text has a Translate action next to Reply and Edit. You don't need to be signed in, since anyone can read comments.
Press Translate and the comment is swapped for its translation, with a line saying "Translated from (language) on your device." Under it, Show original brings the real comment back, and Show translation switches again. The translation is plain text: bold, lists and other formatting come back when you show the original.
If the comment is already in your language, a message says so and nothing is translated.
Translating a lesson
On a published lesson's Lesson tab, press Translate above the lesson.
A long lesson is translated a part at a time, in reading order: the title first, then one section after another. Each part shows as soon as it's done, so you can start reading from the top while the rest is still arriving. A line above the lesson counts the parts ("3 of 12 parts done"), and Cancel stops and puts the lesson back the way it was before you pressed Translate.
What is translated, and what isn't
| Translated | Left as written |
|---|---|
| The lesson's title | Spelling words |
| The text, paragraph by paragraph | Names of the sites a VAKT activity links to |
| Footnote notes | Source citations and the Sources list |
| Questions, their answers and their worked steps | Picture credits (photographers' names, licenses) |
| Picture captions | |
| VAKT activity text |
Spelling words stay as they are because they are the material being spelled: a translated word list would be a different lesson. A note under a translated lesson says so. Like comments, translated paragraphs show without their bold or italics; Show original brings them back.
Translation only changes what you're reading. The Practice tab, printing, exports and forking always use the lesson as it was written.
When it guesses the language wrong
The original language is worked out automatically, and short or mixed-language text can fool it. You can always choose it yourself:
- If it can't tell, a language menu opens straight away: "Couldn't tell what language this is in. Which is it?"
- If the translation came from the wrong language, press Wrong language? next to Show original.
- If it says the text is already in your language and it isn't, or that it can't translate from the language it found, the message has a Pick language button.
Picking a language translates from that language instead. Cancelling puts back whatever was there before.
The first time
Chrome and Edge can translate with the browser's own built-in translator, which downloads a small language pack the first time you use each pair of languages.
Every other browser (and Chrome or Edge, for a pair their translator doesn't offer) downloads a translation model to run in the page instead. It works in any browser, but the first time takes a while:
- Translating into English from one of about twenty common languages uses a small model for that language, roughly 110 to 140 MB.
- Everything else uses one larger model of about 600 MB that covers every language Spelling Creator can translate.
- Browsers without a built-in way to tell languages apart also download a language detector of about 280 MB.
A progress bar shows the download, once per computer. To free the space, go to Settings, find Downloaded AI models and press Delete models. Your lessons aren't affected; the models download again next time you translate.
Spelling Creator can translate between around forty widely used languages.
For how translation works in the code, see the developer notes for comment translation and lesson translation.