Read the original and its translation together

How does bilingual display work?

It's one toggle. Open Options via the gear icon in the toolbar popup, go to Other Settings, and switch on Bilingual display. From that moment, every translation — whether you press Ctrl + E for the quick popup or Shift + E for the full panel — shows two labeled, color-coded blocks: the text you selected on top, its translation underneath. (Without the toggle you still see the original in compact form above the translation; bilingual display gives both texts equal weight, built for reading them against each other.) The step-by-step walkthrough is in the bilingual display help article.

Who is bilingual reading for?

Language learners first. When the source and its translation sit stacked in one view, you stop reading translations and start comparing sentences: which word maps to which, where the word order flips, which phrase is an idiom rather than a literal statement. That side of learning — vocabulary and grammar intuition — comes from seeing both versions at once, and it's exactly what a translation that replaces the original takes away from you.

It's also for readers who simply don't want to lose the original. If you half-know the language, the translation becomes a safety net under the real text: you read the Spanish, glance down when a sentence loses you, and keep going. The original stays in front of you the whole time.

A learning loop: bilingual display + text-to-speech + dictionary

Bilingual display gets stronger when you combine it with the rest of the extension. A natural loop for a study session:

1. Read both blocks. Select a sentence, press Ctrl + E, and compare the original with its translation line by line.
2. Listen to both. Each block has its own speaker button, so you can hear the original pronunciation and the translation using your browser's own voices — which languages speak depends on the voices installed on your system.
3. Dig into single words. Open the full panel and use the built-in dictionary: every definition and reverse translation is clickable, so you can chain from one word to the next without retyping anything.

How is this different from dual-language page tools?

Tools like Immersive Translate take a different approach: they insert translations into the webpage itself, so every paragraph of an article appears in two languages as you scroll. That's genuinely useful if your goal is to read entire articles bilingually, and if that's what you want, a page-overlay tool — or your browser's built-in page translation — serves you better.

Sonic Translate deliberately never touches the page. You select the sentence you care about, and both versions appear in the popup or panel, leaving the article exactly as its author published it. It's the right fit when you read mostly in one language and want a focused bilingual view of specific passages — not a rewrite of the whole page.

Frequently asked questions