The translation popover
Wherever you're reading on Yalango - a text, study mode, or a sentence or text block in a notebook - you can tap a word to work with it.
Opening it
Two ways:
- Click or tap a single word. In Chinese this selects one character; in other scripts it takes the whole word.
- Select a phrase by dragging across it. Selections longer than 200 characters are ignored.
What you can do
- Translate - translates from the text's target language into your source language.
- Save to deck - pre-fills the word and its translation, lets you pick a deck or Create new deck, and saves the card. This is the feature that makes reading productive rather than passive.
- Mark as known - records that you know the word without creating a card, so it stops being highlighted as unknown.
- Copy the word.
You need an account for translating, saving and marking known. Signed out, the popover offers a login link instead.
Translation quota
Translations use Google Translate and count against your monthly allowance: 50 per month on the free plan, unlimited on Premium. Single requests are limited to 1,000 characters.
If you run out, you'll see a message saying the free translation quota has been exceeded for the month. Marking words as known and saving cards you type yourself both still work, so reading isn't blocked - only the automatic translation is.
Fifty goes further than it sounds if you only translate the words that actually stop you.
If your language pair isn't supported
If Google Translate doesn't cover your source language, the popover says so and hides the Translate button, but adds that you can still type the meaning yourself and save it to a deck.
This is worth knowing if you're studying through a less widely supported language - the reading tools all still work, you just supply the meanings.
No audio here
The popover doesn't play audio. Pronunciation is available on cards with generated audio and on notebook sentence blocks.