Show HN: Zenòdot – Find if a book has been translated into your language

3/9/2026 at 8:17:06 PM

Do you know https://annas-archive.gl/isbn-visualization/? And https://search.worldcat.org/? They could probably help you with your dataset.

by zufallsheld

3/9/2026 at 8:26:09 PM

Yes! Both are excellent resources.

Anna's Archive ISBN visualization is fascinating; it really shows how fragmented and incomplete the ISBN landscape is. We don't use their data directly (licensing concerns), but it confirmed what we were seeing: massive gaps in non-English coverage.

WorldCat is great for library holdings but harder to use for translation discovery specifically, it tells you "this library has this edition" but doesn't easily answer "has this book been translated into Basque?" across its whole catalog. We'd love to integrate it eventually, though.

Right now Wikidata turned out to be the secret weapon: it has structured translation relationships that none of the others provide.

by AusiasTsel

3/9/2026 at 4:27:52 PM

wow, ok. I definitely need this! This is my life now with French, Russian, German and whatever language of the moment I am messing around with.

However, it stills looks like it's tied to localhost? I get a web socket error (to localhost:8081) and when I type the name of the title into the search title. Nothing happens and the button doesn't look like I can click it (no highlighting)

by MonkeyIsNull

3/9/2026 at 4:37:39 PM

Thanks for trying it! The localhost:8081 websocket isn't from Zenòdot, that's likely a browser extension (React DevTools, a proxy tool, or similar). Could you try in an incognito/private window with extensions disabled? The search button activates once you've selected at least one language from the selector below the search bar. If you haven't picked any languages yet, it stays inactive... that might be what you're seeing. Let me know if that helps!

by AusiasTsel

3/9/2026 at 4:44:07 PM

ahh right, wrong error. This is the one I get: Uncaught Error: Minified React error #418; visit https://react.dev/errors/418?args[]=HTML&args[]= for the full message or use the non-minified dev environment for full errors and additional helpful warnings.

That's from an incognito window on Chrome

by MonkeyIsNull

3/9/2026 at 4:47:08 PM

That's a React hydration mismatch. I'm aware of it but hadn't seen it block functionality before. Thanks for flagging that it does for you. Can I ask: when you load the page, do you see the language selector (a dropdown/search where you pick languages like English, French, etc.)? The search button only activates after selecting at least one language — if the hydration error is breaking the selector, that would explain why the button seems unclickable. I'm looking into it right now. What Chrome version are you on?

by AusiasTsel

3/9/2026 at 4:54:40 PM

> Version 145.0.7632.160 (Build officiel) (arm64)

Yeah, I've tried switching the languages, not ALL the text on the page changes from the default language and I've tried not changing the lang. Same thing.

by MonkeyIsNull

3/9/2026 at 5:00:53 PM

Thanks for the details — that's very helpful. Chrome 145 on Mac, got it. The fact that text doesn't fully change when switching languages confirms the hydration error is breaking React's event handling. I'm actively debugging this right now. I'll reply here when I have a fix deployed. shouldn't be long. Really appreciate your patience.

by AusiasTsel

3/9/2026 at 5:50:35 PM

Update: The hydration bug has been fixed and deployed. The search should now work correctly. Thanks for the report, it helped us catch a real issue. Would love to hear if it works for you now!

by AusiasTsel