You read after work — Spanish news, French tech longform, German essays. Some words slow you down, but you don’t want a textbook; you want to finish what you started. Krendo translates each word where you met it, saves it with the sentence, and stays out of your way. Built by someone who knows what it’s like to read in a second language after a long day at work.
About
A quiet hand on the page, in any language you read.
Krendo is for readers — people who pick up a book, an article, or a paper in a language they’re still growing into. It translates the words that stop you, holds them with the sentence they came from, and gives you a quiet way back to them when you have five minutes. No streak. No quiz. No account.
It’s your first article in a new language. Half the page is new. A textbook would tell you to come back when you’re ready; the article is already in front of you. Krendo holds the words you don’t know yet, one at a time, so you can finish what you started — not as practice, but as reading.
You’re reading academic French, German philosophy, or Spanish papers for a real test. You’re not here for cute streaks. Krendo saves every word you actually met with the passage it came from, so the next pass through your library is grounded in where you first met them — and the ones that matter for the exam keep surfacing in context.
Two languages already in your head, and a third — Portuguese, Italian — that you read comfortably but not perfectly. You skim past the words you’d be embarrassed to ask about. Krendo catches them quietly, with no pressure to act on them today. They wait until you’re curious.
Why it exists
The mainstream translation tools fall into two camps. The big ones (Google Translate, DeepL) translate brilliantly but break your reading flow — you copy, paste, switch tabs, lose the sentence you were in the middle of. The vocabulary apps (Anki, Quizlet, Memrise) make you build decks by hand from words you’ve already forgotten the context of. Neither one meets you at the moment a word actually mattered.
Krendo lives in that gap. The translation arrives in place, without a panel takeover. The word goes into a personal library together with the sentence it came from and a link back to the page. Later, when you have five minutes, you review — spaced repetition, recall prompts, and the original context one click away.
What you can rely on
Krendo is independent and patient. There’s no roadmap driven by quarterly targets and no growth funnel pressuring decisions. That gives the project room to make commitments that hold over years, not quarters:
- The core experience — translating in place, saving words with context, reviewing on one device — is free, and stays free.
- Your vocabulary lives in your browser’s IndexedDB. There is no Krendo database somewhere holding a copy of what you’ve been reading.
- No account required. No analytics SDK. No email-capture wall before you can try it.
- If paid tiers ever exist, they cover features that genuinely cost money per user — cloud sync across devices, hosted backup. They won’t gate what’s free today.
What it won’t become
Krendo will not get an analytics SDK, an AI tutor or chat sidebar, a social feed of what your friends are learning, or a streak-shaming notification. Those product anchors were decided up front and pre-date every feature on this page — they’re the filter every new idea passes through, including ones the maker himself catches himself wanting.
Who maintains it
One developer who reads in four languages, none of them well enough to skip a translator. If you find a bug, want to suggest a feature, or just want to say hi, email is the only channel. I read everything.