NowLingo Specification

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NowLingo

Your World, Understood.

Overview

NowLingo is a universal, modular, open source translation platform designed to make communication understandable across every language, dialect, and form of communication. It provides a translation infrastructure that can integrate with virtually any LLM, browser, application, or program, allowing developers and organizations to add multilingual capabilities without depending on a single AI provider or translation service.

NowLingo is designed to support high-resource, low-resource, endangered, indigenous, minority, and regional languages. Its goal is to expand access to translation beyond widely supported languages while preserving linguistic diversity, cultural context, regional expressions, and community-specific terminology.

The platform supports real-time translation across text, conversations, speech, documents, websites, and audiovisual content. It is designed to operate as a standalone translation service or as an integration layer that other applications and AI systems can use.

NowLingo follows a modular architecture. Core modules provide the essential translation infrastructure, language intelligence, communication capabilities, data management, and privacy controls. Optional plugin modules extend functionality through specialized integrations, additional models, media support, and application-specific capabilities.

Core Modules

Universal Translation Engine

Provides the central translation capabilities used throughout NowLingo.

Translate between supported languages without requiring English as an intermediary.
Automatically detect source languages and identify target languages.
Support direct language-pair translation and multilingual translation workflows.
Recognize mixed-language text and conversations.
Support dialects, regional variations, alternative spellings, and different writing systems.
Preserve meaning, tone, context, idioms, slang, humor, and cultural expressions.
Provide transliteration between writing systems where appropriate.
Maintain terminology consistency across documents and conversations.
Support user-defined dictionaries, glossaries, and preferred translations.
Provide alternative translations when wording or meaning is ambiguous.
Identify uncertain translations and communicate confidence limitations.
Preserve original content alongside translated content.
Allow users to compare, edit, and refine translations.

Language Identification and Intelligence

Provides language recognition, classification, and routing capabilities.

Identify languages in text, speech, documents, and supported media.
Distinguish between closely related languages and dialects.
Recognize regional vocabulary, writing conventions, and orthographic differences.
Detect code-switching and multilingual content.
Identify when a language or dialect has limited model support.
Route translation requests to suitable language models, datasets, dictionaries, and translation resources.
Use language-specific rules and community-approved terminology when available.
Track language coverage, quality, and development status.
Avoid presenting experimental language support as fully validated.
Support continuous expansion of language identification capabilities.

Universal LLM Integration

Provides an integration layer that allows NowLingo to work with different AI models and applications.

Support integration with local, self-hosted, and remotely hosted LLMs.
Remain independent of individual AI providers and proprietary model ecosystems.
Expose translation, language identification, transliteration, and interpretation capabilities through standardized interfaces.
Allow compatible LLMs to request translation services as part of their normal workflows.
Support model adapters and provider-specific integration plugins.
Allow applications to select preferred translation models or providers.
Support standalone translation models independently of general-purpose LLMs.
Provide fallback routing when a preferred model is unavailable.
Allow administrators to configure model availability and permitted external connections.
Support compatibility testing and model capability reporting.

Real-Time Text and Chat Translation

Enables multilingual communication across messaging platforms and applications.

Translate incoming and outgoing messages in real time.
Support multilingual group conversations in which participants communicate in different languages.
Allow each participant to select an individual display language.
Preserve original messages alongside translations.
Maintain conversation context to improve translation accuracy.
Preserve speaker identity, names, terminology, and conversational references.
Support browser-based chat overlays and compatible messaging integrations.
Allow users to translate selected text, entire conversations, or individual messages.
Provide alternative translations and explanations for ambiguous expressions.
Allow users to submit corrections and preferred translations.
Support conversation-specific dictionaries and terminology preferences.
Prevent private conversation content from being used for model training without explicit consent.

Speech Translation and Interpretation

Provides real-time multilingual speech communication.

Convert speech into text for translation.
Support streaming speech recognition and real-time interpretation.
Translate spoken conversations between two or more languages.
Support multilingual meetings, calls, presentations, and discussions.
Identify and separate speakers where supported.
Maintain speaker attribution throughout translated conversations.
Support voice activity detection and audio processing.
Preserve conversational context, tone, and meaning.
Generate translated speech through optional text-to-speech capabilities.
Allow users to select translated voices, accents, and speaking speeds where supported.
Display original and translated transcripts.
Provide confidence indicators when speech recognition or translation is uncertain.
Support downloadable transcripts and conversation records when enabled by the user.

Live Video and Closed Caption Translation

Provides multilingual captions and subtitles for audiovisual content.

Generate real-time captions for videos, movies, television, livestreams, webinars, lectures, and presentations.
Capture supported audio sources with appropriate user permission.
Convert spoken content into synchronized text.
Translate captions into one or multiple selected languages.
Display original and translated captions simultaneously.
Support subtitle overlays within compatible browsers and media players.
Maintain caption timing and synchronization with the original audio.
Identify speakers and preserve speaker attribution where supported.
Allow users to customize caption appearance, positioning, size, and language.
Support subtitle exports in SRT, WebVTT, and other compatible formats.
Allow users to edit and correct generated subtitles.
Support post-processing of recorded media.
Preserve relevant timestamps and speaker information in exported transcripts.
Support offline caption generation when compatible language and speech models are available.

Document and Website Translation

Provides translation capabilities for written content and digital publications.

Translate documents, webpages, articles, books, and other supported content.
Support common document and text formats, including PDF, DOCX, EPUB, HTML, Markdown, and plain text.
Preserve document structure, headings, paragraphs, tables, and formatting where possible.
Support OCR-based text extraction from scanned documents and images.
Provide side-by-side original and translated content.
Support batch translation and multi-document workflows.
Translate entire websites or selected portions of webpages.
Preserve links, metadata, and relevant formatting.
Support terminology dictionaries and document-specific translation preferences.
Provide revision history and allow users to review translation changes.
Identify text that could not be reliably extracted or translated.

Language Data and Resource Management

Provides the infrastructure for collecting, organizing, maintaining, and expanding language resources.

Support multilingual datasets, parallel text, dictionaries, glossaries, terminology collections, and linguistic resources.
Track dataset origin, licensing, permissions, and provenance.
Support appropriately licensed public datasets and community-contributed resources.
Normalize, clean, and deduplicate language data.
Identify language, dialect, writing system, and regional characteristics.
Maintain separate resources for distinct languages and dialects where appropriate.
Support high-resource languages through established multilingual datasets.
Expand low-resource languages through community contributions, linguistic documentation, and appropriately sourced materials.
Support oral language collections, transcriptions, and documented vocabulary.
Preserve regional expressions and culturally significant language variations.
Track gaps in available language resources.
Provide tools for reviewing, validating, and maintaining contributed datasets.
Distinguish synthetic data from human-contributed and human-verified material.

Low-Resource and Endangered Language Development

Prioritizes language inclusion and the preservation of linguistic diversity.

Provide dedicated support for languages with limited digital resources.
Support indigenous, minority, endangered, and regional languages.
Enable native speakers and language communities to contribute vocabulary, translations, recordings, and linguistic documentation.
Support community-defined spelling conventions, dialect distinctions, and terminology.
Allow language communities to establish review and approval processes.
Support oral language documentation with appropriate permissions.
Enable the creation of dictionaries, phrase collections, and parallel translation resources.
Support language preservation, education, and intergenerational knowledge sharing.
Track language development and translation quality over time.
Respect community ownership, consent, cultural restrictions, and data governance preferences.

Community Contributions and Language Review

Provides a collaborative framework for improving translation quality and expanding language coverage.

Allow contributors to submit translations, corrections, dictionaries, glossaries, recordings, and language resources.
Support native-speaker review and community validation.
Provide contributor attribution and optional pseudonymous participation.
Support language-specific maintainers and review groups.
Allow multiple translation suggestions for the same expression.
Identify disagreements and preserve alternative interpretations where appropriate.
Provide quality ratings and review status for contributed material.
Track revisions and contributor history.
Support community-defined terminology and dialect standards.
Provide transparent contribution and approval workflows.
Prevent unreviewed submissions from automatically becoming authoritative language resources.

Translation Quality and Evaluation

Provides tools for evaluating accuracy, consistency, and linguistic reliability.

Evaluate translations using appropriate automated metrics and human review.
Support language-specific benchmarks.
Compare translation quality across models, language pairs, and dialects.
Identify omissions, hallucinations, mistranslations, and changes in meaning.
Evaluate grammatical accuracy, terminology consistency, and contextual relevance.
Support native-speaker evaluation and community review.
Track quality improvements and regressions across model versions.
Identify languages with insufficient evaluation data.
Provide confidence indicators and warnings for uncertain results.
Distinguish experimental support from validated translation capabilities.
Maintain evaluation records for models, language packs, and translation resources.

Context and Translation Memory

Maintains relevant context to improve translation consistency.

Use conversation context to resolve ambiguous words, references, and expressions.
Preserve names, pronouns, speaker relationships, and terminology.
Maintain consistency across long conversations and documents.
Support configurable session context and translation memory.
Allow users to define preferred translations and terminology.
Provide controls for clearing or disabling contextual information.
Isolate context between users, sessions, and applications.
Avoid retaining private conversations beyond configured retention settings.
Allow context and translation memory to operate locally where supported.

Continuous Improvement and Model Development

Provides a controlled framework for improving translation models and language resources.

Support model updates, language expansion, and translation improvements.
Allow users to submit corrections and feedback through explicit participation.
Require explicit consent before using private conversations or personal content for training.
Support anonymized feedback submissions where appropriate.
Provide review and validation before contributed data enters training workflows.
Support synthetic data generation, back-translation, and multilingual transfer learning.
Identify synthetic, unverified, and human-verified training resources.
Support fine-tuning, model adapters, distillation, and model optimization where compatible.
Evaluate model updates against existing language benchmarks.
Maintain versioned models and language resources.
Provide rollback capabilities when updates reduce translation quality.
Publish relevant changes and improvements transparently.

API and Developer Integration

Makes NowLingo accessible to external applications, services, and developers.

Provide interfaces for translation, language identification, speech recognition, and text-to-speech services.
Support real-time streaming translation.
Provide integration capabilities for web, desktop, and mobile applications.
Allow external applications and LLMs to request translation services.
Support authentication, access controls, and configurable usage limits.
Provide event-driven integration capabilities.
Support local and remote deployment configurations.
Provide developer documentation, integration examples, and compatibility guidance.
Allow third-party developers to build extensions and specialized integrations.
Maintain consistent interfaces across supported translation providers.

Local-First and Offline Operation

Allows NowLingo to operate without requiring continuous access to external services.

Support local translation models and downloadable language packs.
Enable offline translation for installed and supported languages.
Support local speech recognition and caption generation where compatible models are available.
Allow users to operate without transmitting content to external providers.
Provide configurable local storage and processing.
Support synchronization of language resources and model updates when connectivity becomes available.
Allow administrators to disable external services and network access.
Provide hardware-aware model selection and resource management.
Support reduced-resource configurations for less powerful devices.

Privacy, Security, and User Control

Protects users and the communities whose language resources contribute to NowLingo.

Minimize the collection and retention of personal information.
Encrypt data in transit and at rest where applicable.
Provide authentication and access controls for users and administrators.
Keep private conversations and documents excluded from training by default.
Require explicit consent for optional feedback and training contributions.
Provide controls for data retention, export, and deletion.
Isolate user sessions and private translation contexts.
Protect language datasets and contribution workflows against malicious submissions.
Maintain audit records for administrative and data-management actions.
Clearly identify when external translation providers or services are used.
Provide transparency regarding model limitations, data sources, and processing behavior.
Allow users and administrators to control where translation takes place.

Language Preservation and Cultural Context

Supports the preservation and responsible development of linguistic knowledge.

Preserve regional vocabulary, idioms, expressions, and cultural terminology.
Support community-controlled language archives and documentation.
Allow communities to define appropriate terminology and translation conventions.
Support oral histories, recordings, and educational resources with appropriate permissions.
Preserve distinctions between related languages and dialects.
Provide tools for documenting languages with limited written resources.
Support language learning and intergenerational knowledge sharing.
Respect cultural restrictions and community-defined access requirements.
Avoid treating language communities as interchangeable sources of training data.

Administration and Governance

Provides tools for managing the platform, language resources, integrations, and community participation.

Provide administrative controls for users, models, language packs, and integrations.
Allow administrators to enable or disable individual modules and plugins.
Support configurable permissions and access policies.
Provide monitoring for translation performance, resource usage, and system health.
Support language-specific maintainers and community governance.
Provide transparent processes for language proposals, resource submissions, and disputes.
Allow communities to establish review standards and terminology guidelines.
Maintain records of model, dataset, and language-resource changes.
Support configurable deployment policies and privacy requirements.

Optional Plugin Modules

Optional plugins extend NowLingo without requiring changes to the core translation infrastructure. Plugins should use documented integration interfaces and remain independently installable, configurable, and removable.

Browser Integration Plugins

Chromium-based browser integration.
Firefox integration.
Automatic webpage translation.
Selected-text and contextual translation.
Real-time chat translation overlays.
Live video caption and subtitle overlays.
Per-website language preferences.
User-controlled translation exclusions.

Messaging and Collaboration Plugins

Messaging platform integrations.
Community forum integrations.
Email translation.
Team collaboration and workplace communication.
Multilingual meeting and conference support.
Group conversation interpretation.
Per-user language preferences.

Speech Recognition Plugins

Alternative speech recognition models.
Specialized dialect and accent recognition.
Language-specific speech recognition.
Speaker separation and identification.
Noise reduction and audio enhancement.
Domain-specific speech recognition.

Text-to-Speech Plugins

Multilingual voice generation.
Regional accents and pronunciation support.
Configurable voice characteristics and speaking speeds.
Voice selection and accessibility features.
Speech generation for translated captions and conversations.

Video and Media Plugins

Media player integrations.
Streaming platform integrations where supported.
Live broadcast captioning.
Recorded video transcription and translation.
Subtitle editing and synchronization.
Subtitle conversion and export.
Audio description and contextual media transcription where supported.

LLM and Translation Provider Plugins

Integrations for additional LLM providers.
Local and self-hosted model integrations.
Specialized translation models.
Provider-specific model adapters.
Automatic provider selection and fallback.
Model benchmarking and compatibility testing.
Domain-specific translation capabilities.

Specialized Translation Plugins

Medical and healthcare terminology.
Legal and regulatory terminology.
Scientific and academic translation.
Technical and engineering documentation.
Financial and business terminology.
Educational content.
Government and public-service terminology.
Travel and hospitality communication.
Industry-specific dictionaries and glossaries.

Specialized plugins should communicate their limitations and must not imply professional certification or replace qualified human review where accuracy has significant consequences.

OCR and Image Translation Plugins

Text extraction from images.
Scanned document translation.
Screenshot translation.
Sign and label translation.
Image-based subtitle and caption extraction.
Layout-aware translated image output.

Language Learning Plugins

Interactive vocabulary and phrase learning.
Pronunciation assistance.
Grammar explanations.
Language comparison and contextual examples.
Personalized language practice.
Community-created learning resources.

Linguistic Research Plugins

Language documentation tools.
Dialect comparison and analysis.
Corpus exploration.
Translation alignment.
Vocabulary and grammar research.
Language resource visualization.
Research dataset export and analysis.

Accessibility Plugins

Real-time translated captions.
Speech-to-text accessibility.
Text-to-speech support.
Multilingual screen reader integration.
Simplified language presentation.
Experimental sign-language research and interpretation where validated resources are available.

Specification Branding License (SBL)

Standard

Fully AGPL-3.0+ compliant system
Copyleft enforced for network deployments
Required attribution:
- Roxanne Ardary
- https://www.roxanneardary.com/

Optional

Specification Branding License (SBL)
- Attribution-free commercial deployment
- Pricing based on scale, usage, and deployment scope
- https://roxanneardary.com/nowlingo/

License & Notice Requirements

NowLingo is released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later (AGPL-3.0+).

By contributing to any Open Arsenal project, you agree that your contributions will also be released under this license.

Please note the following:

All contributions must comply with the AGPL-3.0+ terms.
Under Section 7 of the license, all redistributions, forks, and derivative works must preserve attribution to: Roxanne Ardary and roxanneardary.com.
NowLingo specifications are free to use with attribution. A Specification Branding License can be negotiated upon request.
The project’s notice.md file tracks attribution requirements and contributor acknowledgments. Any update that adds new contributors or modifies attribution should also update notice.md.
When submitting a pull request, ensure that any new files maintain the attribution headers where applicable.
Network-deployed versions of this software must also remain fully AGPL-3.0+ compliant, including exposure of source code modifications when applicable under the license.

For full legal details, please refer to the AGPL-3.0+ license and the project’s notice.md file.

Notice – NowLingo

Attribution Requirement: Under Section 7 of the AGPL 3.0+ license, all redistributions, forks, and derivative works, including network-deployed versions of this project, must provide attribution to Roxanne Ardary and roxanneardary.com.

Contributors

This file tracks contributors and their specific contributions to the project.

Roxanne Ardary, roxanneardary.com – October 31, 2026
Created the repository for NowLingo. Developed the project concept and specification for a universal, modular translation platform supporting real-time multilingual translation across text, chat, speech, and video.
Add other contributors here – [Date]
[Describe contribution in one sentence]

License – NowLingo

This repository is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later (AGPL-3.0+).

Key Points:

You are free to use, modify, and distribute the code.
All redistributions, forks, and derivative works or network-deployed versions must also be licensed under AGPL-3.0+ and provide attribution to Roxanne Ardary and roxanneardary.com as required under Section 7 of the license.
The software is provided “as is,” without warranty of any kind.

For the full license text, see GNU AGPL-3.0 License.