PaperDuet
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PaperDuet

A lightweight AI paper translator built for researchers!

PaperDuet is a lightweight AI mirror translator for papers that keeps the original layout.
Five open-source AI translation models to choose from. No sign-in, no fees, fully local!

Download for Mac View on GitHub

Free · macOS 13.3 or later on Apple silicon

PaperDuet translating Attention Is All You Need from scratch: the outline in the sidebar turns Chinese first, then the title and the abstract appear on the right page, in the same place as on the original

Translating Attention Is All You Need (15 pages) into Traditional Chinese, from scratch.

PaperDuet is a lightweight AI mirror translator for papers. It lays out the original and the translation as mirror images, with formulas, figures and tables corrected and aligned page by page. No sign-up, no API key, no fees, and it runs entirely on your Mac!

Mirror layout

Every page, made easy

The original paper is on the left and its translation on the right, and both sides scroll and zoom together. Columns, headings, captions, footnotes and references are recognised automatically, and paragraphs that run across columns or pages are joined up. The two sides line up exactly, so comparing them is easy.

Scrolling through pages 3 to 5: the Transformer diagram, the attention diagrams and the formulas sit in the same place on both sides, with the English text replaced by Chinese on the right

Priority on double-click

Fast! Fast! Fast!

Headings are translated first, so you can see how the paper is structured; the title, abstract and introduction come next, so you get the key points quickly. Want to read a later section first? Just double-click its paragraph in the original and it starts right away!

On page 9, section 6.3 is not translated yet; a double-click on its first paragraph moves the section to the front, the status bar says so, and its paragraphs appear in Chinese one after another while the rest of the page waits

Notes on both sides

Notes? Just make them on the translation!

Highlight, underline or add a note on either side, and the matching sentence on the other side is marked too.

Two sentences of the abstract are selected on the original and highlighted yellow; the same sentences turn yellow in the translation. Then part of the last Chinese sentence is highlighted green, and the matching English sentence turns green on the left

Done, then saved

Progress? Speed? No problem!

The toolbar shows the translation progress. When the whole paper is done, the ring turns into a green check and a bubble pops up: one click saves the translation as a PDF next to the original. You can also choose from five models to suit your Mac and your needs!

The last paragraphs of the paper come in, the progress ring in the toolbar turns into a green check, a bubble offers to save the translation as a PDF, and one click saves it next to the original

And there's more

Five models, all on your Mac

Pick a model the first time you open PaperDuet, and switch anytime in Settings › Model › Change Model. Every one of them is built for translation and runs fully offline once it is downloaded.

With the recommended model, a 15-page paper takes about 2 minutes on an M5 Pro, or about 1 minute with "Paragraphs at Once" set to 2 or 3 in Settings › Model. Already have one of these models from LM Studio, llama.cpp or Hugging Face? PaperDuet finds it and uses it where it is, with no second download.

Private by design

Get started

You need a Mac with Apple silicon (M1 or later) and macOS 13.3 or later.

  1. 1

    Download the latest .dmg from Releases.

  2. 2

    Drag PaperDuet into Applications and open it from there.

  3. 3

    First launch only: PaperDuet isn't notarized by Apple yet, so macOS asks you to confirm. Open System Settings › Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway. (Or run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/PaperDuet.app in Terminal.)

  4. 4

    Pick a model. PaperDuet downloads it, or finds the copy you already have, and starts translating right away.

That's all. The translation engine is built into the app, and updates take one click.

FAQ

Which model should I choose?

Start with Index-Translate-2B. For more speed, pick Hy-MT2-1.8B. For the most fluent Chinese on a Mac with 16 GB of memory or more, pick Hy-MT2-7B.

Is it free?

Yes, for personal study and research, and for universities, schools, research institutes and other non-profits. Using PaperDuet at or for a company needs a commercial license: write to [email protected].

No sign-in, no fees, fully local!

Five open-source AI translation models to choose from.

Download for Mac

macOS 13.3 or later on Apple silicon