Highlight any word or sentence to get a context-aware translation, grammar breakdown, furigana for Japanese, and natural pronunciation — without leaving the page.
The exhibition's curators argue that the modern ephemeral nature of digital art forces a re-evaluation of what permanence means in creative work.
Some critics, however, have suggested that this framing flattens decades of conceptual practice into a marketable narrative.
Word Analysis
English → 中文
/ɪˈfɛm(ə)rəl/ · adjective
短暂的、转瞬即逝的 — describing things that exist only briefly.
Adjective from Greek ephēmeros ("lasting only a day"). Modifies nature here — referring to digital art.
Built for learners studying
Features
LingoContext reads the sentence around your selection, so it knows whether crane is the bird, the construction vehicle, or a Japanese fold. Then it explains why.
Reads the surrounding sentence and page so meanings fit the actual passage — not the dictionary default.
Short selections get word-by-word grammar breakdowns. Long passages get a clean contextual summary.
Local kuromoji tokenization renders furigana on kanji in under 300 ms — long before AI even responds.
Edge Neural voices in 14 languages, with the Web Speech API as automatic fallback. Optional autoplay.
Server-sent events stream the analysis in. The first words land in the popup almost instantly.
Switch between Gemini and DeepSeek from the dashboard. Same prompt schema, your choice of speed vs depth.
Save words as you read. Search across meanings, filter by language, and track an activity heatmap.
AI analysis, TTS audio, and quick definitions are all cached, so common lookups feel instant.
Draggable, pinnable, resizable popup with shadow-DOM isolation — never breaks the page you're reading.
How it works
Select on Wikipedia, NYT, a Japanese novel, a Twitter post — anywhere. A little paw icon appears next to your selection.
A draggable popup appears with quick definition, full translation, and grammar — streamed in as it's generated.
Tap Listen for neural pronunciation, Save to add it to your vocabulary list, then keep reading.
Showcase
From a Japanese essay to an English think-piece — the popup adapts to the language and the length of what you select.
Built for Japanese learners
LingoContext bundles a real Japanese tokenizer in the backend, not a wrapper around the dictionary. Furigana is aligned per-kanji and rendered before the AI even finishes thinking.
<ruby> alignment via kuromoji
ja-JP-NanamiNeural pronunciation
to eat — present continuous, casual
Under the hood
A Manifest V3 extension, an Express backend, and a pluggable AI layer — all open source.
Extension
Manifest V3
Styling
Tailwind CSS
Server
Node + Express
Streaming
SSE
AI
Gemini · DeepSeek
JP
kuromoji
FAQ
Yes. The extension is free on the Chrome Web Store and the entire stack is MIT-licensed. If you want to bring your own API key or self-host the backend with Docker Compose, you can.
Source text can be any language Gemini or DeepSeek understands. Target explanations work in 14 languages including English, 日本語, 简体中文, 繁體中文, Español, Français, Deutsch, 한국어, Português, Русский, العربية, हिन्दी, Tiếng Việt, and ไทย.
Right now LingoContext is a Chrome / Chromium extension (Edge, Brave, Arc, Vivaldi all work). Safari and Firefox ports are on the roadmap — star the repo to follow along.
Only your selection and a short context window are sent to the AI provider you choose. Saved vocabulary lives in your account on the LingoContext server. If you self-host, nothing leaves your machine.
Yes — self-host the backend with Docker Compose, drop your Gemini or DeepSeek key in server/.env,
and point the extension's BACKEND_URL at your instance.
Install LingoContext and turn every webpage you read into a study session.