Install Web Reader
(These instructions were written for Chrome 50.0.2661.89 on Android 6.0.1)
- 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 Web Reader
- 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.
Alternative: Kiwi Browser + Readlang extension
One user let me know that it’s very easy to install the Kiwi browser on Android and this will let you install the Readlang Web Reader Chrome Extension, which both avoids the hassle of installing the bookmarklet and offers support for more websites. If you try this, please comment to let me know how it goes.
UPDATE: Unfortunately Kiwi Browser has been discontinued. I plan on looking into other browsers which support extensions on Android.