You should not have to read in English to read us.
We used to translate this site with a WordPress plugin. It was slow, it cost money, and keeping every page current in every language was endless work. So we retired it.
Your browser already does this, for free, and it does it on every site you read — not only ours. Here is how to turn it on.
The fastest way
In most browsers, on a computer:
- Right-click anywhere on the page.
- Choose Translate to [your language].
That is the whole thing. The page reloads in your language, and a small control appears in the address bar so you can switch back.
If you do not see that option, find your browser below.
If your browser never offers to translate
Browsers offer to translate a page when the page’s language does not match the language your browser is set to.
That works well for some people and not at all for others. If you are reading on a shared computer, a school computer, a library computer, or a work computer, the browser is often set to someone else’s language. Then no offer ever appears, no matter how much you need one.
You can always ask for the translation yourself. You do not have to wait to be offered.
If you dismissed an offer once, your browser may have saved that choice as “never translate this language.” The steps below include how to undo that.
Google Chrome
To translate the page now: right-click the page and choose Translate to [your language]. You can also click the translate icon in the address bar.
To choose a different language: click the three dots in the translate box, then Choose another language.
To fix “never translate”: go to Settings → Languages. Add your language, then turn on Offer to translate pages in this language. Remove any language listed under the “never translate” setting.
Microsoft Edge
To translate the page now: right-click the page and choose Translate to [your language], or click the translate icon in the address bar.
To change the setting: go to Settings → Languages and turn on Offer to translate pages that aren’t in a language I read.
Firefox
Firefox translates pages on your own computer. The text of the page is not sent to a translation company. This is different from every other browser here, and it is the reason we mention Firefox first when people ask.
- Click the translate icon in the address bar. Firefox also shows a small panel on its own when it detects another language.
- Choose the language you want.
- The first time you use a language, Firefox downloads a small language file. After that it works offline.
To manage it: Settings → General → Translations. You can set a language to translate always, or never.
Recent versions of Firefox can also translate just the text you select. Highlight a passage, right-click, and look for Translate selection.
Safari
On a Mac: look for the translate icon at the right end of the address bar. Click it and choose Translate to [your language]. The icon appears when Safari detects a language it can translate.
On iPhone and iPad: tap the page menu — the aA icon at the left of the address bar — and choose Translate to [your language].
Safari follows your device’s language settings rather than a setting of its own. Change your language in System Settings → General → Language & Region on a Mac, or Settings → General → Language & Region on a phone or tablet.
On your phone or tablet
iPhone and iPad
Safari translates whole pages using the page menu, as above.
To translate a piece of text in any app: select the text, then choose Translate from the menu that appears. This works in your email, in messages, in an ebook — anywhere you can select words.
Android
In Chrome: tap the three dots and choose Translate. A bar appears at the bottom with your language options.
Anywhere else: install the Google Translate app and turn on Tap to Translate. You can then copy text in any app and translate it without switching apps.
Translating only part of a page
Sometimes you only want one paragraph, not the whole site.
- Chrome and Edge: select the text, right-click, and choose the translate option.
- Firefox: select the text, right-click, and choose Translate selection.
- Mac: select the text, right-click, and choose Translate. This works in most apps, not only the browser.
- iPhone and iPad: select the text and choose Translate.
A note on privacy
Most browsers translate by sending the text of the page to a translation service over the internet. Chrome, Edge, and Safari all work this way.
Firefox does not. It translates on your own device, and the page never leaves your computer.
We are naming this because of what people read here. If you are reading about disability, neurodivergence, or your own diagnosis, on a computer that belongs to your school or your employer, you may want that reading to stay on your machine. Firefox is the option that keeps it there.
An honest caveat
Machine translation is good at ordinary prose and unreliable at ours.
Much of our vocabulary is young, contested, and community-made. Words like neurodivergent, stimming, masking, and monotropism often have no settled equivalent in another language. Automatic translation tends to reach for the nearest clinical term instead — and the nearest clinical term is frequently the deficit-framed language we write against. It can turn “Autistic person” back into “person with autism,” or translate an identity into a disorder.
So read a translated page knowing that. Where a word looks strange or sounds colder than the rest of the paragraph, the translation may have flattened something. Our glossary is the place to check what we actually meant.
We would rather give you an imperfect translation you control than no translation at all, or a plugin that quietly did the same flattening while charging us for it.
Why we hand you your own tools
We don’t run a translation widget on this page, for the same reason we don’t use accessibility overlays and don’t bolt on an audio player: the tools already on your device work everywhere, cost nothing, and answer to you instead of to us.
Our job is to get out of the way and point you to the switch.