Inspiration
I was pasting text into a web translator twenty times a day and losing tone and formatting every time. I wanted translation to happen in place, wherever I was already working.
What it does
Linguin is an AI translator that lives on Mac, iPhone and Chrome from one account. Hit a shortcut and it translates selected text in any app, a paragraph on a web page, a document or an incoming message, keeping tone, idioms and formatting. History syncs across devices and answers arrive in about a second.
How I built it
The apps are Swift and SwiftUI on Apple platforms with a TypeScript Chrome extension, all sharing a self hosted Postgres backend. A routing layer picks the best model for each language pair to balance quality and speed.
Challenges I ran into
Instant in place translation across a native app, a browser extension and a phone, all sharing state, meant a lot of platform specific plumbing. Keeping the popup answer under a second while preserving formatting was the hardest part.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
One shortcut translates almost anything you are looking at, and the result keeps formatting instead of dumping plain text. It handles slang and technical language far better than classic translators.
What I learned
Friction is the whole game for a translator. The moment it lives inside the apps people already use, they translate ten times more often.
What's next for Linguin
More document formats, offline modes for common pairs, and shared glossaries for teams.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.