I recently built Vocabinet , a Chrome extension for people who read foreign-language content online and want a faster way to translate words or phrases without leaving the page.

The idea came from a small frustration: when I’m reading an article, blog post, or documentation in another language, the lookup flow is usually too disruptive. I either open a new tab, paste text into a translator, or translate the page and lose the original reading context.

I wanted a lighter workflow:

highlight text on a webpage

translate the selected word or phrase

optionally save it to a vocabulary list

search saved vocabulary later

export the list as CSV

What it does

Vocabinet lets you translate selected text directly on the page using Chrome’s built-in Translator API.

The current workflow includes:

selected-text translation

keyboard shortcut support

optional double-click quick translate

local vocabulary saving

search and delete for saved items

CSV export

text-to-speech for source text

The core workflow does…