Arabic Reader + YouTube CC Box

About

This Chrome extension is a powerful learning companion for anyone studying Arabic, especially those interested in bridging the gap between Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Levantine dialects. At its core, it automatically extracts subtitles from YouTube videos—whether they are in MSA, dialectal Arabic, or auto-translated captions—and displays them inside a clean study panel. Once in the panel, the text becomes fully interactive: every Arabic word or phrase is clickable, highlighted, and connected to built-in definitions, roots, and text-to-speech playback.

The standout feature is the integrated Levantine Arabic vocabulary database, which offers accurate, context-sensitive translations for everyday colloquial terms that standard dictionaries often overlook. Expressions like شو، ليش، كيفك، بدي، فيني، معليش، يلا appear with concise, learner-friendly definitions. This makes it ideal for students who want to understand how people actually speak across Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan, while still grounding their learning in MSA. The extension intelligently checks for both single words and short phrases, ensuring that colloquial expressions are captured correctly before falling back to Google Translate’s glosses.

For immersive practice, the extension includes an autoplay mode: it steps word-by-word through the transcript, reading aloud in Arabic first and then English. Learners can set the delay—even to 0.0 seconds—for rapid drills or slower paced study. The interactive card displays definitions, roots, and the source of each gloss (Levantine DB or Google Translate), giving students clarity and confidence.

Highly customizable, it features toggles for autoplay, English TTS, and the Levantine DB, as well as options to move or collapse the definition card. It works not just on YouTube, but across webpages with Arabic text, turning the web into a language classroom.

In short, this extension combines automation, dialect-awareness, and interactivity into one seamless tool. It makes learning Arabic smarter, faster, and far more engaging.