TranslationForFree: the first tool out of NorTex Labs

NorTex Labs is our internal R&D sandbox. It’s where we build with the same AI-era tooling we bring to client work, with the freedom to move fast and ship something useful to the public. The first thing out of the lab is TranslationForFree, a free translation toolkit. No signup. No paywall. Open the page and use it.

What it is

TranslationForFree started with one job: translate a subtitle file without mangling the timestamps. It grew into a small set of focused tools.

• Text translation across 50+ languages.
• Subtitle translation for SRT and VTT files, with the timing left intact.
• A set of supporting tools around that: convert between subtitle formats, strip subtitles down to plain text, shift subtitle timing, detect a language, transliterate, clean up messy text, and compare two translations side by side.

Each tool does one thing and does it on a single page. No account, no hidden upload limits, no email wall before you see the result.

Under the hood it runs on Gemini for the translation, a Python API on Google Cloud Run, and an Astro and React front end on Netlify. That’s what fit this job and let us move fast. It isn’t a house default. On client work the stack follows the problem, and we build with whatever that calls for.

Why we build it

Two reasons.

First, a real product with real users keeps the lab honest. It’s easy to claim you ship fast. It’s harder to keep a live thing running, watch what people do with it, and fix the rough edges. TranslationForFree gives us that pressure on our own terms before we bring it to someone’s production system.

Second, it shows the velocity we sell. A lot of the value in AI-era engineering is how quickly a small team can take an idea to a working, deployed tool. The lab is where we prove that to ourselves, and the codebase that comes out of it is the kind we’d be comfortable handing to a client.

It stays free because that’s the point. The lab isn’t a revenue line. It’s how we keep our hands on the tools and show what fast, careful shipping looks like.

Where this is going

TranslationForFree keeps getting tools as we find gaps worth filling, and the lab keeps shipping. This is the first output, not the last.

If you have a subtitle file or a block of text that needs translating, try it at translationforfree.com. It’s free, and there’s nothing to sign up for.