Detailed Guide to Installing and Using BothLang

The first time I tried to read a foreign-language thread on Reddit, I had three tabs open: the post, Google Translate, and a notes app where I was pasting fragments back and forth. It worked, technically, but by the time I'd pieced a comment together the conversation had moved on. BothLang exists so you never have to do that again, and getting it running is genuinely a two-minute job.

Here's the whole process, start to finish, with no surprises.

Getting the extension installed

Head to the Chrome Web Store and search for BothLang, or just follow the install link directly. You'll see an "Add to Chrome" button — click it, confirm the permission dialog that pops up, and that's the install done. The same flow works on Edge, Brave, and most other Chromium-based browsers, since they all share the store.

Once it's in, the BothLang icon shows up in your toolbar. I'd recommend pinning it. Browsers tuck new extensions away behind a little puzzle-piece menu by default, and you'll want this one a single click away rather than buried two menus deep.

Telling it what you want

Click the icon and you'll get a small setup panel. The one setting that actually matters is your target language — the language you want everything translated into. Pick your native tongue here, whether that's Spanish, French, Vietnamese, or anything else on the list.

The other choice worth making early is how you want translations to appear. Translation-only mode swaps the foreign text out and shows you just your language, which is cleaner if you're reading for information. Bilingual mode keeps the original and stacks the translation underneath it, which is what you want if you're using Reddit to actually learn the language rather than just get past it. You can switch between the two whenever you like, so don't overthink it.

Reading your first thread

Open any Reddit post and BothLang goes to work. Depending on your settings you'll either see translated text right away or a small translate control you can trigger yourself. Either way, the post body and the comments both come through — and the comments are the part people underestimate. That's where the arguments, the jokes, and the real opinions live, and BothLang handles entire comment threads so you can follow a back-and-forth instead of just the top-level post.

A couple of features are worth knowing about once you've got the basics down. You can highlight any specific phrase and translate just that, which is handy when most of a post is in your language but one sentence isn't. And there are keyboard shortcuts for toggling translations on and off, so you can flip between original and translated text without reaching for the mouse.

If something isn't working

Most installs go smoothly, but if you hit a snag — the icon not appearing, translations not triggering — the FAQ covers the common cases, and you can always reach the support team by email. We'd genuinely rather hear about a problem than have you quietly give up on it.

That's everything. Open a thread in a language you don't speak and see how it feels to just read it. 🌐