Install Web Reader on Android
By far the easiest method is to install the extension for the Firefox for Android browser. Here it is: Readlang Web Reader for Firefox
After installing, to use it you need to:
- Ensure you’re signed in at readlang.com
- Open a webpage you want to read in the language you’re learning
- Tap here in Firefox to access the menu:
- Tap here to see your extensions
- Click Readlang from the list of extensions, and then once it’s loaded, click words on the webpage to translate them:
Known Issues
Although compatible with more webpages than the old bookmarklet based Web Reader, the Firefox extension may still fail on certain webpages. In particular it doesn’t work on any dynamic content which appears on the page after the Readlang extension loads.
Old method (bookmarklet)
These instructions were written for Chrome 50.0.2661.89 on Android 6.0.1. This method is discouraged now that the Readlang Firefox for Android extension is available.
- Select this text instead, ensuring that you select all the text within the box:
javascript:var readlangHostname='readlang.com';document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0].appendChild(document.createElement('script')).setAttribute('src',window.location.protocol+'//readlang.com/src/translatorBookmarklet.js?bust='+new Date().getTime());
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Tap “Copy” to copy the text to your clipboard.
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Open the menu at the top right of the screen, it’s the one that looks like 3 vertically aligned dots.
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Tap the star button to bookmark the current page.
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Open the menu again and click the star button a 2nd time (it should be blue this time)
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In the “Edit bookmark” page, edit the name to read “RL Web Reader”
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Tap to edit the “URL” field, then tap and hold to select the entire URL, then tap on the “Paste” button which appears.
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Tap the left arrow button at the top of the page.
That’s it, you now have the Web Reader bookmarklet installed!
Use Bookmarklet
- Browse to any webpage you’d like to read.
- In the address bar, start typing “RL Web Reader”, before you finish typing you should see the bookmark you just created.
- Tap the bookmark to open it on the current page.
The green Readlang Web Reader toolbar should now load at the top of the current page, after it finishes loading you can start tapping words or swiping across phrases to translate them.
Compatibility With Different Websites
Unfortunately, the bookmarklet doesn’t work on all websites. Some websites have security policies which prevent it from running. In this case you could try using the Readlang Web Reader Chrome extension for desktop Chrome instead.
Other cases in which the bookmarklet doesn’t work are:
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when new content appears with a website dynamically after the page has already loaded (e.g. subtitles on a YouTube video, new posts appearing in a social media feed)
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when the website contains an iframe (technical term for a website within a website), which is commonly used for the comments section on a blog post.