You have an EPUB or a PDF in a language you read slowly — or do not read at all — and you would rather listen to it in your own. Not a bilingual course, not a vocabulary trainer: the book itself, translated and read out loud, so you can follow it while you walk or cook.
In 30 seconds: most read-aloud apps speak the language the file is already in. To hear a foreign book in your language you need an app that translates the text first and then reads the translation. Auris Reader does both in one step: pick a voice in your language, turn translation on, and it translates each page as it reads, keeping your place to the sentence. It runs on Windows, Linux and Android and costs €4.99/month after a 14-day free trial.
Why most apps cannot do this
Text-to-speech and translation are two different jobs, and almost every reading app does only the first. Speechify, NaturalReader, Voice Dream, Moon+ Reader and the read-aloud built into Microsoft Edge all take the text as it is and speak it. If the book is in English, you get an English voice. Choosing a Spanish voice does not translate anything — it hands English words to a Spanish speaker, and what comes out is unintelligible.
The apps that do combine both are usually built for learning a language rather than for reading a book: they show the original and the translation side by side, sentence by sentence, so you can compare them. That is a different goal. If you just want to get through the book, stopping at every sentence is the opposite of what you need.
What is missing in between is simple to describe and rare to find: translate the page, then read the translation aloud, and keep doing it page after page without asking anything.
How to do it in Auris Reader
Four steps, once. After that the app remembers your choice and every book you open behaves the same way.
- 01
Install the app and open your file
Download Auris Reader for Windows or Linux, or get the Android app from Google Play. Open any EPUB or PDF from your own device — nothing is uploaded to us, the file stays where it is.
- 02
Choose a voice in your language
In the sidebar, pick the language you want to listen in and then the voice. Spanish and English are built in; French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Swedish, Romanian, Bulgarian and Hungarian arrive as free voice packs you install from inside the app. The voice you choose is what tells the app which language you want to hear.
- 03
Turn translation on
Set the translation engine to Google in the sidebar. It ships switched off on purpose — with it off, nothing you read ever leaves your computer — and you can turn it off again at any point. Most apps make that decision for you and do not mention it.
- 04
Press play
The app translates the page into the language of your voice and reads it aloud, highlighting each sentence as it goes. Turn the page and it does the same again. Close the book and reopen it tomorrow and it picks up where you stopped.
If you open a book in another language and the voice changes on its own, that is the app telling you it could not serve the combination you asked for. A Bulgarian voice cannot read an English book unless something translates it first, so with translation off it switches to an English voice instead. Since version 1.1.3 it says so, and offers to turn translation on for you in one tap.
How good is the result
Honest answer: good enough to follow a novel or a report, not good enough to quote. The translation is machine translation — the same quality you would get from Google Translate, because it is Google Translate. Names, jokes and wordplay suffer. Technical prose and narrative do well.
The voice is a separate matter and it is where the experience is won: these are neural voices, not the robotic system ones, so an hour of listening does not become tiring. Auris keeps a small sliding memory of what it has just translated so that pronouns and recurring names stay consistent from one paragraph to the next, which is the usual weak spot when a machine translates one sentence at a time.
What you should not expect: a published translation. If you need accuracy for study or for work, read the original and use this to get through the first pass.
What leaves your computer
Your books never do. They are not uploaded, not indexed and not stored on our servers — your account only knows which plan you are on and which devices you signed in from. That is worth saying because it is not how most of this market works: the big cloud readers need your document on their servers before they can read a word of it.
Two things do travel, and only these two. The sentence about to be spoken goes to Microsoft’s voice service, which turns it into audio and returns it — that is how neural voices work in every app that has them. And, if you turn translation on, the text of the page being read goes to Google’s translator so it can come back in your language.
That second one is a real trade, which is exactly why it is yours to make: it ships switched off, the app names the service in plain words when it offers it, and one click turns it off again. Reading without translation sends nothing but the sentence being spoken.
If you want something else
If your goal is to learn the language rather than to get through the book, apps such as duoBooks, Linga or Bilingual Books show the original and the translation in parallel and let you tap any word. They do that better than we do, because it is what they are for.
If you only need the book read aloud in the language it is already written in, and it is a one-off, you do not need translation at all: Microsoft Edge reads EPUB and PDF aloud at no cost. What it will not do is remember where you stopped, keep a library or follow you to another device — which is what starts to matter around the third session with the same book.
And if you are on a Mac or an iPhone, we cannot help yet: Auris Reader runs on Windows, Linux and Android, and there is no macOS or iOS version.
Questions
Which languages can it translate into?
Into any of the 12 languages Auris Reader has voices for: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Swedish, Romanian, Bulgarian and Hungarian. The source language can be almost anything — Google’s translator covers over 50 — but you can only listen in a language that has a voice.
Does it work without an internet connection?
Reading aloud needs a connection for the neural voices; if it drops, the app falls back to the voices installed on your system, so you can keep listening. Translation always needs one, because it goes through Google’s service — there is no offline translation in the published versions. Note that needing a connection is not the same as uploading your file: what travels is the sentence being spoken, never the document.
Can I save the result as an audiobook file?
No. Auris Reader plays your documents, it does not export MP3 files. If what you want is a file to keep, look for an EPUB-to-audiobook converter instead — that is a different tool for a different job.
Does it keep my place between sessions?
Yes. It reopens the last book where you left it, down to the sentence, and it does the same on each device you sign in on.
Try it with your own book. Auris Reader reads EPUB and PDF aloud with neural voices in 12 languages and translates as it reads. Windows, Linux and Android.
Download Auris ReaderSee pricing
14-day free trial, cancel anytime. €4.99/month afterwards. No macOS or iPhone version yet.
Prices and third-party features are those published on 4 September 2026. Auris Reader is our own product: see the comparison guide for how we place it against other apps.