Translate pages and text

You land on a page in a language you can’t read, or you need one phrase in Spanish for a message you’re writing. Either way, you don’t have to open a translator first.

Translate a page or a selection

Translate Page opens the page you’re on in Google Translate, in a new tab. Translate Selection does the same for text you’ve selected on the page. If nothing is selected, Vokto tells you so.

Google Translate works out the original language itself. The language it translates into comes from the Translate language setting, which is English until you change it in Settings.

Quick translations as you type

For a word or a short phrase, type it straight into the palette, followed by in and a language:

• hello in german
• good morning in japanese
• translate thank you to french

A single row shows the translation. Press Enter to copy it, or ⌥ Option Enter (Alt Enter on Windows and Linux) to open it in Google Translate instead.

Name the language in English, like german or traditional chinese, or in its own words, like español. Everyday phrases that happen to contain “in”, such as made in germany or time in tokyo, still do what you’d expect.

Private, on your computer

Quick translations happen on your computer, using the translator built into Chrome. What you type isn’t sent anywhere, and Vokto only holds the translation until you leave the page. The two commands above are different: they open Google Translate, like visiting the site yourself.

This needs a recent version of Chrome (138 or newer). The first time you translate into a language, Chrome may need to download it once. The row says so, and pressing Enter starts the download. After that, the same row shows your translation.

When Chrome can’t translate on its own, the row offers Google Translate instead. That happens in older versions of Chrome, for language pairs it doesn’t support, and on some pages that block it, including pages without a secure connection.