Translate selected text on any web page

Most of the time you don't need a whole page translated, just one word or one sentence in a comment, a tweet, a forum thread or an email. Mate's extension gives you four ways to do that without leaving the page. They work in Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Opera.

1. The floating button

Select text. A small Mate button appears next to the selection for two seconds. Click it and the translation opens in a tooltip right there. Click anywhere outside the tooltip to close it.

You can switch this off in Settings › On-page › Select to translate.

2. Shift+T

Select text and press Shift+T. Same tooltip, no mouse needed.

In Settings › On-page, you can change the key combination and, with Mate Pro, add more combinations that translate into different languages, for example one shortcut for German and one for Spanish. Up to 21 combinations are possible.

3. Double-click

Turn on Settings › On-page › Double-click translation, and double-clicking any word shows its translation. It's off by default because double-click is also how you select words.

4. Right-click

Select text, right-click, and choose the Mate item such as English into French. This also works in PDFs in Chrome, where the other three methods don't.

Inside the tooltip

The tooltip shows the translation, up to three synonyms, and, with Mate Pro, phonetic transcription and noun genders. You can play the pronunciation, copy the translation and save it to the Phrasebook.

Tooltip size

Settings › On-page › Tooltip size offers small, medium and big. Changing it requires Mate Pro.

Sites where it doesn't work

• PDFs: only the right-click route works, and only in Chrome. See Translate text in PDF files with Mate's Chrome extension.
• Browser pages such as the new tab page, the Chrome Web Store and settings pages: extensions aren't allowed to run there.
• Text inside images: select-to-translate needs real text. Use the camera in Mate for iPhone for that.

If the button doesn't show up on a normal web page, see The translation popup doesn't appear.