I got sick of the pricing of tools that let you track Japanese vocabulary while reading texts of your choice, so I built this WordPress plugin. It lets you paste Japanese text from the WP admin dashboard and track which words you know and don’t know.

Here’s the plugin version with Google Translate TTS:

jlingq-with-tts

Here’s the version with no TTS:

jlingq-no-tts

The reason I provide a no-TTS version is that Google Translate TTS might break at any time, since it’s based on a workaround and relies on an external library. The plugin will still work without TTS, but if you want something cleaner, then use the no-TTS version.

Documentation

Here’s a .docx file with some AI-generated documentation for the plugin, but the TL;DR is:

jlingq-docs

You create a “lesson” by pasting Japanese text. Then you get the post ID and plug it into this shortcode:
[japanese_reader id="POST_ID"]

The post ID is the number in the URL when you edit a lesson.
For example:

https://animelit.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=2175&action=edit

The post ID would be 2175.

So if you paste:
[japanese_reader id="2175"] into a WordPress page and publish it, you should see the reader. The interface is fairly self-explanatory.

Key features

• 5 vocab status levels — New (blue) → L1 / L2 / L3 (gold → amber → orange) → Known (no underline) → Ignored (faded)
• Jisho.org integration — proxied through WordPress AJAX to avoid CORS; returns readings, JLPT level, common-word flag, and part of speech. Jisho is an online Japanese dictionary.
• Progress bar — tracks percentage of words marked as “Known” per lesson
• Keyboard shortcuts — 1–4 set status, K = Known, I = Ignore, Esc = close panel
• My definition — Let’s you set your own definitions for words if they are unsatisfactory
• Personal notes per word — to add things like cultural references if they help you remember vocabulary
• Vocabulary list — [jlingq_vocab] with filtering by status, search, and word card grid
• Lesson listing — [jlingq_lessons] shortcode
• Admin stats — per-user word counts by status level

About the footer

Add this in the WordPress Customizer if you want to hide the footer on lesson pages to prevent accidental scrolling. It makes more sense in practice.

If it doesn’t work, inspect your site and find the correct footer <div> for your theme.

/* Hide theme footer when reader is active */
body:has(.jlingq-reader) #footer,
body:has(.jlingq-reader) .footer,
body:has(.jlingq-reader) footer {
  display: none !important;
}

Use AI-sidebar

Using an AI sidebar to translate sentences and look up individual words when jisho.org fails to get the right word isn’t a bad idea. As of now Firefox, Brave and Opera web browsers come with one by default.

Demo

For a demo visit my Japanese Lessons page

Japanese Lessons