Using ChatGPT to Extend Lingq via Chrome Extension

Hi All!

While LingQ excels at tracking my progress in language learning, I’ve noticed it struggles with pronunciation and sentence translation. Over the last 6 months, I’ve found myself constantly copying and pasting content into ChatGPT. Particularly since GPT-4, I’ve found its translations generally handle context much better than LingQ’s default translators. However, this process became tedious, so I developed a Chrome extension to streamline it.

For example, ChatGPT provided a much clearer translation and a natural, fluid pronunciation of the sentence. This has significantly increased the efficiency of my study time, allowing me to tackle more complex content that I would have otherwise avoided.

Here’s the link to the extension and the github repo (for anyone who might be interested in contributing).

How have you been using ChatGPT? Would integrating native features like this into LingQ enhance your learning experience?

Thanks!

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This seems like a pretty good general GPT extension and open source which is fantastic for anyone wanting a look at a nice manifest 3 extension setup or a base to build off.

There has obviously been a good amount of work to create the structure here and it is very well presented. Saying that, the beef is missing. Having read through the code quickly, there doesn’t appear to be any LingQ integration. It’s just for general use highlight and translate accross the internet that uses your own key and is hard set to model 4o and alloy voice.

Some additions would be some GUI for a model and voice selector and to have some sort of LingQ integration.

This picture I found here

Some things to know:
LingQ does have a GPT sentence translate option built in but I believe it uses the 3.5 model. They also have GPT translations and hints for words on IoS also using 3.5 model. They are not using GPT voices of any kind to my knowledge.

There is also a more detailed GPT extension by another user which has several customization options. There is a monthly fee (After 30 day trial), no key required and the processes happen backend.
Lingq ChatGPT chrome extension

Overall, Good job. Thanks for sharing

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Thanks for the feedback Rooster!

I appreciate that. The goal here is for this to remain open-source and flexible. My hope is that people outside the LingQ world will use this tool on their own journey. For this reason, I focused on getting the MVP out, seeing how it’s used and then building features from there.

As far as keys go, you really have two options.

  1. Charge users and don’t require a key.
  2. Don’t charge users and make them provide their own key.

In keeping with the goal of this project remaining open and free, I opted for the second choice.

Adding the option to change models / voices is on the roadmap of features I plan to release next month. So expect that update soon.

Are there other features that you think this could use?

3 Likes

I like the idea and I installed and am trying to use it, but I can’t get it working. I
I get an error dialog box that says:

"www.lingq.com says

Error fetching translation."

I have created an OpenAI key, actually tried both the deprecated ‘User key’ and a ‘project key’.

Not sure where problem is.

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Hey there @hesitz ! Sorry for the inconvenience here. Would you mind sending a screenshot? The error message seems a little odd. If something was broken I would expect for the plugin not to respond.

Thanks!

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Yes, thanks! Maybe I’m doing something wrong. I have the ChatGPTTranslate icon pinned to toolbar, but it’s grayed out. It does say it has access to the site and it is enabled. When I highlight text I get the same globe icon next to highlighted text, but it remains grayed out on toolbar. I click on the icon near highlighted text and get the error. Thereafter if I highlight text I don’t even get the icon button to come up again until I reload the page.

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That’s odd. Do you see this error when the plugin is disabled? The way it works currently, if you select a short sentence, it will default to Lingq’s translator. If the text is longer, it will use the plugin.
behaivior

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Thanks for your help. I’ve got it working now, and I think the problem was just that I hadn’t used the ChatGPT API before and didn’t understand how it worked.

I subscribe to ChatGPT Plus, and somehow it let me create a ChatGPT API Key without me having signed up for that service. So there was $0 balance for ChatGPT API and it was rejecting requests. Does that sound right? It seems it also didn’t work after I funded ChatGPT API, until I logged into ChatGPT API in the Chrome browser where I was using Lingq. Not sure, I’ll recheck on that.

So I have two questions. One, funding ChatGPT API is required, right? And two, is there any need to be logged in to ChatGPT account in the browser where you’re using the Chrome plugin?

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Glad you got it sorted out! So your two questions are…

  1. Do I need to have my account funded?
    Answer: Yes. The alternative is that I pay for it, or charge for the plugin (which I may offer in the future).

  2. Do I need to be logged into ChatGPT?
    Answer: No. As long as you are using your OpenAI API Key and everything is paid for there, you should be all set.

Thank you for your feedback here. Super helpful :slight_smile:

2 Likes

ChatGPTranslate v1.0.1 - Major Update!

Hey all! We’re excited to announce a significant update to ChatGPTranslate with several new features to enhance your translation experience:

New Features

  • Custom GPT Model Selection: Choose your preferred GPT model for translations
  • Target Language Dropdown: Select your preferred translation language from a comprehensive list
  • Detailed Translation Mode: Get in-depth explanations and examples for short phrases (hover for an additional translate icon)
  • Customizable Token Usage: Control the length and detail of translations by adjusting maximum tokens
  • Smart Language Detection: Improved language detection from page context
  • Technical Details Toggle: Option to display model and token usage information
  • Enhanced HTML Formatting: Better formatted responses when translating longer texts
  • Improved UI: Cleaner interface with better organization of settings

Check it out on either the Chrome Store or [Github] (GitHub - johnlewissims/ChatGPTranslate: A Chrome Extension to make translating via ChatGPT seamless.)

Special thanks to @KBobovskiy for contributing these improvements!

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This is definitely a step forward. It’ll be nice to have the AI figure out from the page that I’m learning German rather than have it make translation decisions from the word alone (which is what it seemed to be doing before).

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Ah thanks for the feedback! Yeah, you’ve spotted something interesting about language detection. We actually thought about using the page’s language settings, but it turns out that would be more trouble than it’s worth - lots of websites mess up their language tags, and with modern sites pulling content from all over the place, you can’t really trust what the page says about its language.

That’s why we currently just look at the text you select primarily. But you’ve given us a good idea - we’re thinking of adding a simple override option so you can manually tell it “this is German” when you want to. Should make things way smoother, especially when you’re focusing on learning a specific language.

Want to help us test it out when it’s ready? Sounds like you’ve got exactly the kind of use case we want to get right.

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Sure - I’ll help test it out. Sounds like fun.

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