Babel v1.10.8

Babel is engineered around keyboard-first, zero-friction interaction. All hotkeys are registered using physical hardware key codes (KeyboardEvent.code), meaning they work identically regardless of whether your operating system keyboard layout is currently English, Russian, Ukrainian, German, or any other language:

Unlike legacy translation services that force you to copy drafts, open another browser tab, paste text, copy the output, and navigate back, Babel operates directly within the browser's Document Object Model (DOM):

1. Click into any text field, textarea, contenteditable box, or chat interface (Telegram Web, WhatsApp Web, Gmail, ChatGPT, Slack, Discord, Reddit).
2. Type your thoughts in your native language naturally without worrying about foreign phrasing.
3. Press Alt + T.
4. Babel's 4-tier DOM injection engine swaps your draft with natural, context-aware translation in under 300 milliseconds.
5. Cursor focus is preserved at the end of the line, allowing you to immediately hit Enter to send the message.

Alt + P is designed specifically for editorial polish in your current language:

• Zero Language Conversion: It strictly preserves the source language (English remains English, Russian remains Russian, Spanish remains Spanish).
• Comprehensive Correction: Corrects grammatical errors, typos, awkward comma placement, run-on sentences, and irregular capitalization.
• Stylistic Consistency: Smoothes rough phrasing into clean, authoritative, and natural prose while retaining your authentic voice.
• One-Stroke Replacement: Operates in-place within the same field with a single keystroke.

If you've ever typed an entire sentence only to realize your keyboard was in the wrong layout (e.g. ghbdtn? rfr ltkf& instead of привет, как дела?), Babel eliminates the need to delete and re-type:

• Leave your cursor in the input field (or highlight the mistyped phrase) and press Ctrl + Shift + F.
• Babel instantly swaps characters into the correct layout in approximately 1 millisecond.
• 100% Offline: Operates locally via deterministic character mapping tables without sending network packets or consuming translation quota.
• Wide Layout Support: Bi-directional QWERTY conversions for Russian (ЙЦУКЕН), Ukrainian, Belarusian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Georgian, and Armenian.

Yes. If you frequently use web applications with reserved keyboard shortcuts (such as browser-based IDEs, Figma, or web terminals):

1. Right-click the floating mascot and select "⚙️ Settings" (or open extension options via your browser toolbar).
2. Scroll to the "Keyboard Shortcuts" section.
3. Click into the target input box and press your desired shortcut combination (e.g., Alt + Shift + T or Ctrl + Alt + Space).
4. Changes are stored in chrome.storage.local and applied immediately across all active tabs without restarting.

The mascot is rendered inside an isolated Shadow DOM container to prevent host website CSS from interfering with its appearance:

• Hardware-Locked Drag & Drop: Click and hold the mascot avatar with the left mouse button, then drag it freely to any corner, edge, or workspace zone on your screen.
• Automatic Coordinate Sync: The exact screen coordinates are saved immediately to local extension storage. Whenever you navigate to new pages or relaunch the browser, the mascot stays right where you left it.
• Non-Intrusive Presence: The mascot stays quietly in the background until hovered, clicked, or summoned via keyboard shortcuts.

If changing display resolutions or aggressive website layout shifts push the mascot off-screen:

1. Right-click anywhere on the mascot (or right-click the central hub if HUD is visible).
2. Select "📍 Reset Position" from the context menu.
3. The mascot will smoothly animate back to its default bottom-right anchor and display a confirmation thought bubble: "Position reset 📍".

As illustrated in the interactive preview above, left-clicking the mascot or pressing any rotation shortcut (Alt+Q/W/A/S) deploys the dual-ring radial HUD centered on the mascot:

• Outer Ring (Neon Cyan): Controls Target Translation Languages. Features dynamic sector slicing based on your active favorites (from 3 languages up to all 23). Rotate with Alt + Q (↶) / Alt + W (↷), mouse wheel, or direct click.
• Inner Ring (Neon Magenta): Controls Conversation Tones (Natural, Friendly, Slang, Business, Brief, Vivid, Prompt, Base64). Rotate with Alt + A (↶) / Alt + S (↷), mouse wheel, or direct click.
• Hub Center: Shows the chameleon avatar and current status (e.g. 🇬🇧 EN • ⚡ Slang). Clicking the center or pressing Escape closes the menu instantly. It also auto-closes after 3.5 seconds of inactivity.
• Bottom Hint Strip: Displays hardware key hints (Alt+Q/W Language, Alt+A/S Style, Alt+T Translate).

For users who prefer a minimalist, completely clean web interface without floating overlays:

1. Right-click the floating mascot avatar to open its glassmorphic context menu.
2. Click "🙈 Hide Mascot".
3. The mascot will show a quick farewell cloud and unmount from the DOM (display: none; pointer-events: none). It will never block web elements, chat send buttons, or scrollbars.

Yes, 100% of Babel's functionality remains active in Stealth Mode:

• Alt + T, Alt + P, and Ctrl + Shift + F continue translating and proofreading without interruption.
• When a translation completes, the mascot briefly fades in for 2 seconds to show a confirmation thought bubble, then smoothly vanishes.
• Restore Method 1 (Directly on Page): Press Alt + W to temporarily summon the HUD → click the "👁️ Show Mascot" button on the bottom HUD hint strip.
• Restore Method 2 (Settings): Open Babel Settings → under "Mascot & HUD" switch Mascot Visibility back to "Always Show".

The thought bubble provides glanceable real-time feedback without modal interruptions:

• ⏳ "Translating to English..." — Active sub-300ms model inference in progress.
• ✨ "Done! [English • Business]" — Translation replaced successfully with target language and tone confirmed.
• 🌐 "Language: Deutsch" / 🌿 "Tone: Friendly" — Instant rotation status indicator.
• 🔄 "Keyboard layout fixed!" — Offline layout conversion completed (Ctrl+Shift+F).
• 📝 "Please select text first!" — Warns if Alt+T was pressed outside of an active input field or selection.
• ❌ Clear error notifications with actionable recovery steps for network issues, quota limits, or DLP alerts.

You can translate foreign messages, tweets, blog articles, and documentation in-place without opening separate translator tabs:

1. Highlight any text passage on the page using your mouse cursor.
2. Press Alt + U (or Alt + T).
3. The highlighted segment transforms in-place into your target language with an indicator badge.
4. Revert anytime: Press Escape or click anywhere on the page to instantly restore the original text.

Yes. Traditional extensions fail on modern Web Components because text encapsulated inside shadow roots (#shadow-root) is hidden from standard DOM selection APIs:

• Babel integrates an advanced Shadow DOM Piercing engine utilizing getComposedRanges() and composedPath() standards.
• Accurately reads selections across Reddit post feeds, YouTube comments, Lit elements, and custom design systems.
• Extracts pure text cleanly without capturing hidden template metadata or internal <slot> tags.

Babel gives you 8 tailored voice styles to match any communicative context:

• 🌿 Natural: Fluid, contemporary native speaker phrasing. The default setting for daily browsing, forums, and friendly comments.
• 😊 Friendly: Warm, upbeat, and encouraging tone with pleasant conversational manners.
• ⚡ Slang: Authentic youth slang, colloquial contractions (gonna, tbh, fr), and modern vernacular for Discord and gaming.
• 💼 Business: Formal corporate tone with polished vocabulary for client proposals, executive emails, and partner discussions.
• ✂️ Brief: High-density executive summarization that condenses meaning with zero conversational fluff.
• ✨ Vivid: Expressive, sensory, and evocative prose with rich descriptive vocabulary.
• 🤖 Prompt: Specialized AI prompt engineering mode for Midjourney, Higgsfield, Flux, and Sora that injects camera lenses, cinematic lighting, and artistic direction. Beta
• 🔒 Base64: 100% offline local Base64 string encoder/decoder with zero network calls.

Generic AI translation frequently translates or mangles usernames, web links, and code syntax. Babel avoids this through its pre-flight tokenization engine (mentions.js):

• User Handles: @alex_dev, @durov and localized Cyrillic handles are isolated.
• Web URLs: Hyperlinks (https://...) are masked and left untouched.
• Hashtags: #startup, #crypto are fully preserved.
• Code Variables: Placeholders like {userId}, %path%, and {{template}} remain unaltered.

After translation, all tokens are deterministically reconstituted back into their precise structural locations.

In digital chat applications (Telegram, Slack, WhatsApp), heavy typographic em-dashes (—) can look robotic and signal AI-generated text. Babel applies intelligent Dash Normalization:

• Spaced em-dashes are converted into natural conversational hyphens with spaces ( - ).
• Words accidentally joined by dashes are cleanly separated.
• Dialogue dashes at the start of dialogue lines are preserved as standard punctuation.

Never. Babel enforces a strict Zero Data Retention policy:

• Requests are processed in volatile server RAM over encrypted TLS 1.3 connections exclusively for the lifespan of that specific inference call.
• Drafts are never written to disk, never recorded in relational databases, and never used to train or fine-tune AI models.
• Babel operates with zero-account privacy — you never need to connect personal social identities or email accounts.

Before any text packet leaves your browser, Babel's local DLP regex engine validates your text locally to prevent accidental leaks of credentials or financial data:

• 🔑 API Keys & Tokens: Detects OpenAI (sk-...), Groq (gsk_...), GitHub (ghp_...), JWT tokens, and database credentials.
• 💳 Credit Cards: Verifies 13–19 digit sequences using the Luhn checksum algorithm to intercept real card numbers while avoiding false positives on random digits.
• 🛂 PII & Passwords: Flags sensitive credential markers.
• Configurable Modes:
  • Strict (Default): Blocks the request completely, keeps your text in the input box, and alerts you via a thought bubble.
  • Mask: Automatically redacts the token (e.g. [CARD REDACTED]) and translates the safe remainder.
  • Off: Disables local checking (recommended only for local developer testing).

If your personal or corporate security guidelines require Babel to execute only on authorized portals:

1. Open Babel Settings → enable "Domain Whitelist".
2. Specify your approved domains (e.g. web.telegram.org, mail.google.com).
3. On all non-whitelisted websites, Babel completely unmounts its content script and mascot, ensuring zero code execution.

Babel offers a transparent capability model for every workflow:

• Free Tier: 20 daily translation units, 300 maximum characters per request, 7 core styles, zero registration required.
• Pro Tiers (Monthly / Monthly Power): 200 to 800 daily translations, 3,000-character allowance (handles full emails and articles), AI Prompt Mode, priority cloud queue, and activation on up to 3 personal devices.
• Activation Steps:
  1. Open Babel Settings → click the "Account / Plan" tab.
  2. Paste your license key received from Lava.top or Gumroad into the license field.
  3. Click "Activate". The extension verifies the license key with the server and instantly unlocks all Pro capabilities.

A single Pro license includes 3 simultaneous device seats (e.g. desktop PC, work laptop, and secondary browser):

• Each browser installation generates an anonymous, hardware-bound Device ID.
• If you format your computer, switch to a new machine, or re-install your OS, open Babel Settings → Account tab → click "Reset Device Bindings" to release older slots and register your current device.

Run through this quick 6-step checklist:

1. Reload the Tab (F5): If the tab was open prior to installing or updating the extension, the browser has not yet injected the Babel content script.
2. Check Cursor Focus: Ensure your typing cursor is actively blinking inside the target text box or textarea.
3. Look at the Mascot Thought Bubble: If you exceeded the 300-char free limit or daily quota, the bubble will state the exact issue.
4. Check Domain Whitelist: In Babel Settings, ensure the current domain is not blocked by an active whitelist.
5. Canvas & Custom Editors: In non-standard editors (such as Google Docs canvas or custom WebGL inputs), highlight the text with your mouse and press Alt + T to invoke Selection Translation.
6. Test Connection: In Babel Settings, click "Test Connection" to verify server connectivity with our Fly.io cloud gateway.