Read novels in French, Spanish and other foreign languages — and actually understand them. Hard words are translated right above the line, a tap on any word explains it in context, and every book can be listened to as well as read.Britain still measures itself by its bookshelves, and reading a novel in the original — Molière in French, Cervantes in Spanish — has always been the real test of a language you thought you'd let go after your GCSEs.
BOOKS THAT TALK. AUDIOBOOKS YOU CAN READ.
Focus mode turns any book into a listening lesson — no audio edition needed. It reads any e-book aloud sentence by sentence and highlights each word as it's spoken. For supported language pairs on compatible devices, it shows full-sentence subtitles; otherwise, word translations remain available. Tap any word for the dictionary without stopping the audio. On compatible devices and systems, where the book's language and speech model are supported, on-device transcription turns audiobook speech into word-synced text with translated subtitles; otherwise, the audiobook still plays normally. Listening time counts towards shared time, streak and goal totals.
YOUR BOOKS, MANY FORMATS
No locked-in library — import what you already own or picked up on your travels: a paperback from Nice, a scanned recipe book from a second home near Málaga, a charity-shop French classic.
- Books: EPUB, FB2, MOBI, AZW3, TXT, Markdown and more
- Research & scans: PDF and DjVu — scanned pages read with on-device OCR
- Comics: CBZ, including right-to-left manga
- Audiobooks: m4b, mp3 and more
TRANSLATIONS ABOVE THE LINE — ONLY WHERE YOU NEED THEM
Tell Reader IQ your level, or take a two-minute test if your GCSE French has gone quiet, and it translates only the words you don't know yet. You read for the story, not the decoding, and the crutches come away as you improve.
A DICTIONARY THAT UNDERSTANDS CONTEXT
Tap any word: an on-device model reads the sentence around it and selects the most likely meaning — the French avocat who argues in court, not the one mashed on toast. Pronunciation, word forms, example sentences, conjugation tables for 8 languages, kanji/hanzi breakdown with stroke order. Once downloaded, the dictionaries live on your device and work offline.
A GRADED PATH FROM YOUR FIRST 10 WORDS
Adapted books and a graded path of short stories take you from your first words to longer texts, each step adding just a few new ones. The gentlest way back in since your last school exchange trip. Read-along speech, quizzes and spaced re-reads make it stick.
SPACED REPETITION, STRAIGHT FROM YOUR BOOKS
Every word you tap is saved with its sentence, which becomes your flashcard. Four modes — recognition, fill-in-the-blank from your own books, listening, typed recall — on a spaced-repetition schedule with honest next-review dates. Meet a saved word again while reading and it advances itself: reading is the review. See how much of each level, A1–C2, you've met, and export anytime.
GOALS, STREAKS AND 40 AWARD LADDERS
Set a daily reading goal and keep the streak alive with a weekly ring and calendar heatmap. Set a mastery goal — a number of words by a date — and watch it close in. Around 40 awards mark how learning really happens: first book, longest run, coming back after a break.
10 READING LANGUAGES
French, Spanish, Italian, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Chinese, Thai and English — from old school subjects to your next holiday. Pinyin with tone colours, furigana and vertical Japanese, Thai tone marks, and beginner modes if you don't know the script yet. Translations into 30+ languages.
Reading in the original is the most natural way to learn a language, more than any worksheet ever managed. Reader IQ clears away what made it hard: dictionary detours, books that were always too difficult, words you meet once and never see again. Dig out that half-read French novel, or start tonight with something new.
