NoaLingua Feature
Four ways to study a page that is not a video
On any web page you can select text for the same translation box the video gives, hold Alt and click a paragraph to place a translation underneath it, or press Alt+Shift+W to highlight every word your deck has never seen. None of it runs until you start it, and nothing on the page is replaced.
How to use it
Step by step
- 1
Select text to translate it
The same box the subtitles give: a translation, with every word clickable. Esc closes it.
- 2
Alt-click a paragraph to translate it in place
The translation appears underneath, in the flow of the page. The original stays exactly where it was. Alt-click again to remove it.
- 3
Press Alt+Shift+W to see what the article will cost you
Every word your deck has never met is highlighted. Click any of them for the usual card. Press it again to restore the page exactly.
- 4
Right-click where scripts cannot reach
Chrome’s built-in PDF viewer, chrome:// pages and strict-policy sites are off-limits to any extension. The context menu forwards your selection instead.
Mechanism
Why it behaves this way
Why the selection box refuses to appear sometimes
A box that jumps out at every selection is the single most common reason this category of extension gets uninstalled. So the rules are deliberately strict: nothing under 2 characters, nothing over 600, nothing inside an input field, nothing inside our own box, nothing inside a video player, and nothing without a letter in it.
Each of those is a case where a person is doing something other than reading — copying, writing, or missing a click.
Why nothing on the page is replaced
Alt-click adds a translation below the paragraph rather than substituting it. The original text stays exactly where it was, which is what makes the feature safe to use on somebody else’s site: nothing about the page’s own content or layout is destroyed, and undoing it is the same keystroke.
The unknown-word highlighter has the same discipline. It never touches input fields, contenteditable regions, code, pre, kbd, samp, svg, canvas or iframes, and it stops at 4,000 words per page — and says so, because a page marked halfway with no explanation looks like a bug.
Why the right-click route sends text in the URL fragment
For pages a content script cannot enter, Chrome itself passes the selected text through the context menu, and NoaLingua opens a small window on its own origin to display it.
That text travels in the fragment of the URL — the part after the # — specifically because a fragment is never sent to a server, never written into logs and never appears in a referrer header.
Limitations
Common questions
Will it break the sites I use?
It is written not to. Nothing is replaced, input fields and code blocks are never touched, and every action is reversible with the same keystroke that started it. Nothing runs at all until you start it.
Does it translate the whole page automatically?
No, and that is deliberate. Full-page automatic translation is a different product — it optimises for understanding, this optimises for learning. You choose the paragraph or the passage.
Can I save words from a web page into the same deck?
Yes. There is one deck per language, and a card saved from an article records the page title instead of a video title so it never claims to come from a video it does not.
Read next
Any web page is on the free plan. So is everything else.
Free, with every feature. No account, nothing to cancel, and your deck stays on your machine.
Add to Chrome — Free Add to Chrome The Chrome Web Store still lists this as LinguaCue — same extension, rename in progress.- Free, and not a trial Every feature on the free plan — both PDF modes, shadowing, all 30 practice formats.
- No account, no email Nothing to sign up for and nothing to cancel. There is no login screen at all.
- Two dropdowns to set up Pick what you are learning and what you want translations in. That is the whole setup.
- Your words stay yours Export to Anki, CSV, a spreadsheet or a full JSON profile — free on every plan.