Translation helps people understand each other across languages, making content, software, and knowledge more accessible worldwide. As more open-source projects grow globally, having reliable, cost-free translation tools is essential. These tools help volunteers, professionals, and everyday users contribute to and benefit from multilingual content—without needing expensive software.
Whether you’re translating software strings, documents, or websites, there are excellent free tools that support collaboration and improve quality through community feedback. If you’d like to give back, you can support some of these tools through
Besides, what makes Kivach special is its ability to share those donations across connected projects automatically if the recipients decide so, benefiting not just one developer, but potentially many. It’s a simple and impactful way to help sustain the free tools that make global communication possible. This being said, let’s explore some free translation tools ahead.
Aegisub
This software was built for editing and timing subtitles, and it’s especially used in the fansubbing community for translating and styling subtitles for anime, films, and other media. It was first developed by Niels Martin Hansen, Rodrigo Braz Monteiro, Thomas Goyne, and others, and released
What makes Aegisub stand out is its powerful set of features. It supports styling, karaoke effects, and detailed timing synced to both audio and video. Users can preview subtitles on video frames, adjust timings with waveforms or spectrums, and apply visual effects to match on-screen text. Aegisub works primarily with the Advanced SubStation Alpha (ASS) format, which allows rich formatting, positioning, and animation of subtitles. It also integrates tools like FFmpeg and AviSynth and can be customized with Lua or MoonScript scripts for automation and advanced tasks.
As an open-source and free project, Aegisub is maintained by volunteers and developers who contribute in their spare time. Anyone can support it by reporting bugs, suggesting features, or submitting code via GitHub. Monetary support is also welcome through donations, which help maintain its development. If you want to support them, you can also
OmegaT
OmegaT is a tool designed to assist professional translators in managing their work more efficiently. It was first released in 2002, originally developed by Keith Godfrey. Since then, it has grown into a community project, currently led by developer Aaron Madlon-Kay, with contributions from several other programmers. The main goal of
By using this software, professionals and beginners can handle complex translation projects by breaking text into manageable segments. It uses translation memory (TM) to suggest past translations that match the current sentence, saving time and ensuring consistency. Built with Java, it works across different operating systems like Windows, macOS, Linux, and Solaris. Users can translate multiple file types, consult glossaries and dictionaries, and even connect to machine translation services like DeepL or Google Translate if desired. It also supports regular expression-based text segmentation and has built-in spell-checking.
OmegaT is maintained by volunteers and contributors around the world. Its development benefits from a wide community that helps with coding, testing, documentation, and translating the interface. Rather than relying on corporate funding, OmegaT thrives thanks to community involvement and optional donations from users who appreciate its value. To send some crypto to them, you can find them on Kivach as
This software package was released in 2002 by Translate.org.za, a South African non-profit organization, with early development led by David Fraser. Its main purpose is to help translators and localization engineers work more efficiently by providing tools that handle a wide range of file formats used in software and document translation.
The package is written in Python and is compatible with various operating systems. It allows users to convert files into industry-standard formats like Gettext PO and XLIFF, ensuring consistency in translation workflows. It supports dozens of file types—from Mozilla DTDs to OpenOffice SDF files—and includes tools like pocount for word counting and pofilter for quality checks. It also integrates Enchant for spellchecking. Thanks to its modular API, developers can expand the toolkit to suit their needs, adding custom tests, format converters, or even support for new languages.
Translate Toolkit has been integrated into popular translation platforms like Pootle, Weblate, and Virtaal, and is often used behind the scenes in projects like LibreOffice and Ubuntu. Its development has been supported by community contributions and funding from organizations such as the NLnet Foundation. Further monetary support can be sent with cryptocurrencies,
Weblate
Yes, we mentioned this one above. First released in March 2012 by Michal Čihař, and implementing features from Translate Toolkit,
One of Weblate’s strengths is how it integrates tightly with Git repositories, making it easy for translations to stay in sync with source code updates. It runs on Python and Django, and supports a wide range of localization file formats like Gettext PO, XLIFF, and JSON. Weblate includes tools for quality control, such as customizable checks for errors, and supports automatic translation using services like Google Translate and DeepL. Its interface is user-friendly, making it accessible for both experienced developers and beginner translators.
The tool is trusted by many open-source projects like LibreOffice, Monero, Fedora, Kodi, and Godot Engine. Weblate is funded through donations, sponsorships, and optional paid hosting plans. Support comes from individual contributors and organizations via platforms like Open Collective and Liberapay, ensuring the project remains sustainable and community-driven. If you want to send them some crypto, they appear on Kivach as
Hunspell
Hunspell is a spell-checking and word analysis tool first released around 2003. It was created by László Németh, a Hungarian biologist and software developer who has long been active in the free software community. Initially built to support the Hungarian language and its complex grammar,
This software is designed to recognize and correct words based on customizable dictionaries, supporting Unicode (including UTF-8) and advanced rules for word formation. Its capabilities go far beyond simple spellchecking—it can handle complex affixation, word compounding, stemming (getting the root form of a word), and even morphological generation. Developers can integrate it through various APIs and command-line tools, and it’s compatible with multiple platforms, including Linux, Windows, and macOS.
Many well-known applications rely on Hunspell for their spell-checking needs. LibreOffice, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Adobe InDesign, and even macOS include it. Contributions to Hunspell have come from various sources over time: early backing came from Budapest Technical University’s media center, with continued support from the FSF.hu Foundation. Now, if you want to contribute with cryptocurrency, you can
Donate with Kivach!
To support an open-source project on GitHub with cryptocurrency, Kivach makes the process simple. Just install the
You can donate to any public repository—millions of them—without needing the developer’s prior approval. The funds remain safe and reserved for them until they take action. To claim the donation, the developer just needs an Obyte wallet and to complete a
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