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bilingual_book_maker: Turn Ebooks into Bilingual Side-by-Side Editions

A command-line tool that uses LLMs to turn epub, txt, srt, and other files into bilingual side-by-side editions, supporting multiple model providers with a session-context mode that keeps translated names consistent across the whole book, plus a free machine-translation path that needs no API key.

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Frontier Now Editorial
Published

Project facts

GitHub Ecosystem
Repositorygithub.com/yihong0618/bilingual_book_maker
License
MIT
Language
Python
Stars
9,809
Data checked
2026-09-25

Snapshot figures reflect the check date and may change over time.

Translating an entire book takes a long time, and feeding it to a chatbot paragraph by paragraph makes it hard to keep names and terms consistent. bilingual_book_maker is an open-source command-line tool that calls LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude to turn epub, txt, srt, and other files into bilingual side-by-side editions you can drop straight into an e-reader. GitHubDaily recommended it in February 2025.

Core features

  • Multiple input formats: covers epub, txt, md, srt, and pdf, outputting a _bilingual file; PDF input will also attempt to convert to EPUB.
  • Multiple model providers: compatible with the OpenAI and Anthropic APIs, plus support for Gemini, Groq, Ollama, OpenRouter, and others; a Codex subscription quota also works.
  • Context-aware translation: session mode shares the whole book’s translation history, compressing it into a handoff summary once it gets too long, and a glossary keeps character names translated consistently.
  • Translation planning: epub tags are classified up front to decide whether poetry, quotations, tables, and similar elements should be translated, with a preview available.
  • Resumable and parallel: interrupted runs can resume, and multiple workers can process chapters and segments concurrently.

Typical use cases

  • Turning public-domain ebooks into Chinese-English or other multilingual side-by-side editions for reading in an e-reader.
  • Batch-translating TXT or Markdown documents, or producing multilingual versions of SRT subtitles.
  • Testing the output first via a free engine — Google, Tencent TranSmart, or the DeepL free tier — with no API key required.

Quick start

pip install -U bbook_maker
cp bbm_providers.example.json bbm_providers.json  # fill in your keys
python3 make_book.py --book_name test_books/animal_farm.epub --provider openai --test --use_context session

Summary

This suits readers, translators, and developers who want to make their own bilingual books, documents, or subtitles. The project is MIT-licensed and actively maintained; the LLM path requires your own API key and Python 3.10 or newer, and a Docker image is also provided. The README includes a disclaimer: only translate content you’re authorized to use or that’s in the public domain.