Bilingual Footnotes

Read in another language with the translation close at hand.

Align parallel editions and add translation footnotes to the book you want to read. Your books stay on your computer.

Read the Alice example See how it works

Local by designYour text stays on your machine.

Built for booksTwo editions become one reading copy.

Open and inspectableReview every artifact in the pipeline.

Open Alice and follow the footnotes.

Read the original text, open a translation note, and judge the experience before installing anything.

Explore aligned passages Download sample EPUB Inspect alignment JSON

How it works

  1. 1

    Bring parallel editions

    Choose DRM-free editions of the same work in two languages.

  2. 2

    Align locally

    Multilingual embeddings match corresponding passages on your computer.

  3. 3

    Read one new EPUB

    Your reading edition stays primary and the other language becomes linked notes.

Use only the layer you need.

Alignment is independent from EPUB rendering. Each command does one job and leaves an inspectable artifact.

01

Text alignment

text + text → mapping

Align two UTF-8 texts into a monotonic JSON mapping with explicit gaps and reproducible model metadata.

bilingual-align first.txt second.txt \
  --footnote-source second \
  --output alignment.json
02

EPUB footnotes

EPUB + EPUB → EPUB

Keep the first edition as the reading copy and add aligned text from the second as linked translation notes.

bilingual-footnotes french.epub english.epub \
  --footnote-source second \
  --output french-with-notes.epub

Your books do not leave your computer.

After the one-time model download, extraction, alignment, and EPUB rendering happen locally. There is no account or hosted conversion service.

Alice, measured end to end.

Source hashes, model revision, parameters, and artifact hashes are retained with the build notes.

1,540Reading units
1,393Translation units
1,267Alignment links
1,232Rendered notes

Install the part you need.

The packages are being prepared for their first public release. These commands document the intended interface.

Text onlyuv tool install bilingual-text-align
EPUB workflowuv tool install epub-bilingual-footnotes
Semantic setupbilingual-align-setup

Before you build a book.

Does Bilingual Footnotes upload my books?

No. Alignment and EPUB rendering run locally on your computer.

What does the EPUB tool change?

It creates a new copy of the first EPUB and adds linked notes from the second. Source files are not overwritten.

Will every reader show popup footnotes?

Compatible readers may show popups; others navigate to notes appended to the chapter.

Can alignment quality be guaranteed?

No. Parallel editions can differ. Inspect a representative passage before relying on a new pair.