Translext is a Chrome extension that listens to the audio playing in a browser tab and turns it into live captions in the language you choose, with optional spoken translation on top. It works on whatever is making sound in that tab — a video call, a recorded lecture, a podcast, a live stream — because it reads the tab's audio rather than integrating with any single service. There is no bot to invite into your meeting, no file to upload, and no recording kept once you stop a session.
Install the extension and pin it, open the tab you want to follow, then click the Translext icon and pick your language. Captions appear in an overlay on the page within a second or two and scroll as people speak. You can move the overlay, resize it, or switch to translated audio if you would rather listen than read. Everything runs while the tab is playing; closing the tab or stopping the session ends it immediately.
Live speech translation is genuinely hard, and being honest about it is more useful than a marketing claim. Clear speech on a decent microphone — a prepared talk, a one-on-one call, most streamed content — works well. Accuracy drops with heavy background noise, several people talking over each other, very fast unscripted speech, and specialised jargon or proper nouns the model has not seen. Because translation happens as the words arrive, languages that put the verb late can lag slightly before a phrase resolves. It is built to help you follow a conversation in real time, not to produce a certified transcript.
Live captions and translated audio for anything playing in your browser tab. No bots to invite, nothing to upload.