Two Ukrainian IT professionals have developed a free extension for the Google Chrome browser called Lantern. The tool is designed for natural English learning while reading articles online and watching videos on a daily basis.
Two Ukrainian IT professionals have developed a free extension for the Google Chrome browser called Lantern. The tool is designed for natural English learning while reading articles online and watching videos on a daily basis.
This was announced on Reddit and social media by the project's co-founder, CTO of Lihtar Labs Dan Massalitin.
The two co-founders worked on the tool for eight months. At first, it was a simple service with one function, but later it grew into a full-fledged browser application.
The main goal of Lantern is to integrate the learning process into your usual web surfing and eliminate the need for users to separately memorize words from flashcards. The extension allows you to immediately translate and save unfamiliar words on any web page. Saved words are highlighted in subsequent texts you read, which helps you remember them in context.
In addition, the plugin works with subtitles on YouTube: when you hover over or highlight a phrase, the video pauses and the translation appears.
Additional features of the service include:
highlighting idioms and simplifying complex paragraphs;
turning a page into an interactive quiz and creating grammar mini-tasks;
processing of "traps" (interlingual homonyms or chimera words);
immersion mode, in which learned English words can appear even on Ukrainian-language sites to consolidate the material.
For practice, the extension also offers its own news feed with materials from world media (including The Guardian, BBC, and Polygon), divided into thematic categories. The developers emphasize privacy: the plugin analyzes only the text or paragraph with which the user interacts.
"This is still a beta version: there are only English and Ukrainian, a lot is still hidden. Ahead are new features, seven European languages, a personalized AI tutor, mobile applications for iOS / Android, and a Learning Management System for teachers. Lantern has changed the way I read texts in English - I no longer skip an unfamiliar word, guessing the meaning from the context, but save it for further practice," said Dan Massalitin.
The developer added that the application will remain free for Ukrainians. The extension can already be installed from the Chrome Web Store .
