Simply Fluent

Simply Fluent is a reading app for language learners, on iPhone, iPad and Android. You read the books you want to read in the language you're learning, and you translate any word or phrase on the page and get the meaning it has in that sentence.

Import your own books as EPUB, TXT or Markdown, or as PDF with Premium, or paste a text. Until you're ready for your own books, start with the short stories and classics in the library, graded from A1 to C2. Books can be in any of 45 languages, and translations are in 134.

When you translate a word or phrase, you get all its meanings, with the one it has in that sentence highlighted. If the word is part of an expression or an idiom, the expression is detected and you get the meaning of the whole expression. With the lightbulb you get an insight on the word: pronunciation, grammar, false friends, common word combinations and examples.

When you save the translation of a word or phrase, the translation is shown above that word or phrase every time the word or phrase comes up again, in any book. Every translation you save becomes a flashcard, and every saved translation is in your Dictionary. When you mark a word as learned, the label above the word is hidden.

You can listen to any book read aloud, and read-aloud works offline. Once a book is on your phone, you can read the book offline too, with page turns, chapters and search. If a translation is wrong, give the translation a thumbs down and I fix the translation for everyone.

For Russian, Hebrew, Greek, Ukrainian and Korean there are letters courses, and for 12 language pairs there are the 100 most common words as flashcards. There are also reading stats, daily goals and challenges.

You can try Simply Fluent without making an account. Premium has a 30-day free trial, then costs $6.99 a month or $49.99 a year, and there's also a limited free version.

I'm Marco, and I started building Simply Fluent in 2018, after I tried to read Harry Potter in Dutch with Google Translate on my phone and gave up after a couple of pages.

What problem it solves

Reading a book in the language you're learning means stopping at every word you don't know: unlocking your phone, typing the word, and finding your place on the page again, and a page later you look up the same word again. In Simply Fluent you translate any word or phrase on the page and get the meaning it has in that sentence. When you save the translation, the translation is shown above that word or phrase every time the word or phrase comes up again, in any book.

Alternatives & competitors

LingQ, Readlang, Beelinguapp