Keep translation where reading happens

Poplingo is a browser translation extension. The reason I built it was pretty simple: I spend a lot of time reading in English, from technical docs and papers to product writing and international news. Whenever I hit a sentence I was unsure about, I wanted a quick translation and then to keep moving.

My ideal translation experience is simple. The translation should appear exactly where you are reading, without sending you to another window or breaking your train of thought. You look, understand, and continue.

That is what Poplingo is trying to do. It is not trying to replace everything. It is trying to make reading in another language feel a little more comfortable.

A few product decisions that mattered

Building a product is mostly a series of tradeoffs. Some of the important ones are almost invisible from the outside, but they shape how the product feels. These are a few I spent real time thinking through.

Streaming output

Why I do not wait for the whole translation to finish

Even a two- or three-second wait is enough for attention to drift. So Poplingo streams the translation as it is generated. The text appears progressively, which means you can start reading before the model is done. It is harder to build and the state handling is messier, but the experience is different: you are reading as it arrives instead of staring at a loader.

Layout preservation

Why so much effort goes into keeping the original layout

Headings, lists, emphasis, and spacing already help people understand a page. If translation wipes all of that out, the text may be readable but the page becomes harder to use. Poplingo tries to preserve the original structure so the translation grows into the page instead of rebuilding it from scratch. It is much harder than it sounds, but I still think it is worth it.

Brand color

Why I chose Emerald Green

I tried a lot of directions for the brand color. Blue felt too much like a generic productivity tool. Orange felt too loud. Emerald Green landed in the middle: clean, calm, understated, but still alive. That is also how I want the product to feel. You do not notice it too much, until you realize reading without it is less comfortable.

About the maker

I am an independent developer, and a big part of my work and learning happens through English content. Docs, open source discussions, product essays, and papers are part of my daily routine.

Poplingo started as a tool I built for myself. After using it for a while, I felt it was worth cleaning up and sharing in case other people read this way too.

I do not care about shipping the longest feature list. I care more about whether each feature feels genuinely easy to use. The product is still evolving, but one thing stays the same: every decision starts from real reading habits, not feature bingo.

What I care about when building this

  • Translation should appear where you are reading, not send you somewhere else
  • It should work right after install, but stay configurable when you need control
  • The feature list can stay small. Each feature needs to feel good in practice
  • If something is not good enough yet, say it plainly

If that sounds useful, you can see what Poplingo already does.

Explore the features