Kites: Local-First Manga Translator

Translate manga and images with spatial awareness with zero-cost

Read raw manga, comics, and webtoons in your language directly on the page. 100% free, unlimited, and private. No subscriptions. No token caps. No wait time. Kites is a local-first manga translator built specifically for comic readers. Powered directly by your computer’s graphics card (WebGPU), Kites detects speech balloons, cleanly erases foreign text without blurring the artwork, and typesets beautiful translations right inside the comic panels. Whether you are reading raw chapters on manga sites, scrolling long webtoons, or browsing artists on X (Twitter) and Pixiv, Kites translates everything seamlessly in place. ★ Why Kites Is Different Most translator extensions treat manga like standard text: they slap clunky popups over the art, blur the drawings, lock you behind $10/month paywalls, or enforce daily page quotas. Kites runs cutting-edge AI directly inside your browser: • 100% Free & Unlimited Local AI: Run on-device WebLLM or free web engines with no subscriptions, no paywalls, and no wait times. • 100% Private On-Device AI: Your images never touch a third-party server. All OCR detection and background cleaning happen locally on your GPU. • Opt-in 100 Free Community Translations/Day: Sign in with Google to get 100 free high-speed cloud translations daily from our shared AI pool—zero setup, no API key required. • Seamless In-Panel Lettering: No floating white boxes. Text replaces the original dialogue naturally with balanced comic fonts and contrast-aware colors. ★ Frictionless Reading Experience • Distraction-Free Chapter Reader: Read entire manga or webtoon chapters in one full-screen view. Seamlessly switch between continuous vertical webtoon strips, single-page, and double-page spread layouts. • Auto Fast-Scan: No more scrolling manually to trigger lazy-loaded images. Kites auto-scans down the chapter, discovering and queueing all panels in seconds. • In-Page Hover & Auto-Translate: Translate panels effortlessly as you read. Use the unobtrusive floating hover badge, keep persistent controls visible, or turn on Auto-Translate to translate new panels as you scroll. • Extreme Webtoon Strip Support: Translates stitched long-strip manhwa taller than 14,000 pixels with automatic in-memory tiling at full resolution. • 1-Click Chapter ZIP Export: Download complete translated chapters as clean, ordered, numbered image archives. Take your favorite manga anywhere for offline reading on your phone, tablet, or ereader. ★ AI Quality & Artwork Preservation • Smart Speech Balloon Fit: Vertical Japanese and Chinese text creates narrow columns that ruin English font size in ordinary tools. Kites uses Heuristic whitespace expansion and YOLO vision AI to expand text into the full bubble chamber, eliminating tiny, unreadable fonts. • Artwork Preservation Inpainting: Cleanly removes foreign text along the actual character strokes. Screentones, hatching, complex line art, and colored backgrounds remain intact without ugly blur boxes. • Next-Gen Translation AI: Enjoy 100 free daily translations from our community shared pool, run private on-device WebLLM (Qwen 3.5, Gemma 3, Llama 3.2) locally on your GPU, or connect private API keys (OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek) whenever you prefer. • Custom Translation Glossary: Lock character names, attack moves, and honorifics so your translations stay consistent across whole series. ★ Built-in Studio Editor • Direct Inline Editing: Double-click any speech bubble to edit dialogue directly on the canvas with live font reflow. • Localized AI Inpaint Brush: Cleanly erase artwork defects, character strokes, or untranslated sound effects with brush-level precision. • High-Resolution Export: Download clean, edited pages at original 1:1 image resolution. ★ Supported Languages • Automatic Source Detection: Detects and translates Japanese, Chinese (Simplified & Traditional), Korean, English, and dozens more. • 50+ Target Languages: English, Vietnamese, Spanish, French, German, Indonesian, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Arabic, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Thai, Tagalog/Filipino, Polish, Turkish, Hindi, Dutch, Swedish, Czech, Romanian, Ukrainian, and many more. ★ How to Use 1. Click "Add to Chrome" above. 2. Open any comic, manga, or art page (Twitter/X, Pixiv, MangaDex, Reddit, raw reader sites). 3. Click the Kites button on any panel or turn on Auto-Translate. 4. Enjoy reading raw manga instantly in your native language. ★ Privacy First • No account required to read locally. • Optional Google sign-in only to claim your 100 daily community pool translations. • Zero telemetry, zero tracking scripts, zero ads. • Your reading history and images stay safely on your local machine. Open source under GPLv3. Install Kites today and start reading without language barriers!