Hackathon app / PennApps build
Manga Translator
A Chrome extension and FastAPI backend that translate manga pages and overlay English text back onto the page.
Pipeline view
Browser page to translated overlay
- 01Detect
Extension finds large manga images on the active tab.
- 02Read
Backend runs OCR and groups nearby text regions.
- 03Translate
Cerebras or Gemini handles batched text translation.
- 04Overlay
English text boxes render back over the source page.
Problem
Reading untranslated manga in-browser usually means leaving the page, running separate OCR or translation tools, and losing the layout context.
Approach
We built a Manifest V3 extension that finds large page images and sends them to a FastAPI backend for OCR, text grouping, translation, and overlay rendering.
Result
The MVP runs locally, supports optional Google Cloud Vision, Cerebras, or Gemini integrations, and falls back gracefully when external services are unavailable.