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I built a tool to translate and declutter articles for my immigrant mom

I built a tool to translate and declutter articles for my immigrant mom

by dh2013·Feb 28, 2026·6 points·10 comments

AI Analysis

●●SolidSolve My ProblemCozy

Article cleanup + translation + TTS for non-English speakers; solves real friction for aging parents.

Strengths
  • Fire-and-forget link design removes setup friction entirely — no extension, no signup.
  • Semantic HTML preservation (headers, lists) + audio for aging readers shows user-centric design thinking.
  • 11 languages + TTS accessibility addresses genuinely underserved use case.
Weaknesses
  • Article extraction and translation are commoditized; Google Translate and browser built-ins do similar work.
  • No evidence of better accuracy or coverage than existing tools; reliance on LLM translation may hallucinate.
Category
Target Audience

Multilingual families, aging parents, international readers

Similar To

Google Translate · Pocket · Instapaper

Post Description

Hello HN,

I built DuLink to solve a personal problem: my primary language is English, but my mother’s primary language is Mandarin Chinese. I often find articles on health or current events that I want to share with her, but the friction of copy/pasting and Google Translate meant she rarely read them.

What it does:

DuLink takes an article URL, extracts the core content to strip out clutter, and then generates a static, translated reading view. It preserves the semantic HTML structure (headers, lists) but removes the original site's JS and ad tracking.

The "Why":

Existing tools either translate the entire messy page (including nav menus/footers) or require the recipient to install an extension. I wanted something truly simple. A "fire and forget" link that removed every obstacle. No setup, no extra tools, just open and understand. I also added audio playback because reading dense text on a phone can be tiring, especially for aging eyes. Sometimes listening is simply easier.

I built this for a personal use case, but I'm sharing it here for anyone who wants to share something meaningful across languages. If it helps you bridge that gap, I'd love to hear about it.

Any feedback is welcome.

https://dulink.click/

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