General
Does anything bug you about using Readlang? Add or vote on suggestions to improve it!
423 results found
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Youtube phrase listening option
The texts with youtube from my opinion have quite different goal from plain texts. They are mostly for long term work such as listening many times a phrase or a part of a text. In this case it would be great to save in a saparete word list the words(phrases to listen) and when clicking them it will be sincronized with the text and sound.
3 votes -
Team up with duolingo! (or do a similar approach)
This is probably one of the best language learning sites I've ran into. I couldn't find a single thing to complain about, and then I noticed something. Some features cost money, and I get it. You guys need money to maintain this site, but charging money from it's users would only hinder it.
I'm sure you've guys have heard of duolingo. It one of the most well known language learning tools out there. Why? Because it's free!! Users on duolingo provide a service by translating the internet while learning a language for free. Everybody wins! I was thinking either you…
4 votes -
What if I want to practice the same words again?
I've done my first 19 words, and now they're listed in the magic machine area. But, what if I want to practice them again? I go to Learn, and it doesn't offer me a flashcard quiz.
I should be able to review flashcards whenever I want to.
4 votesThese words are now scheduled for the future (for tomorrow if this is your first time testing yourself). This is done according to a spaced repetition system designed to optimise your learning. Basically, it would probably be more beneficial to learn some new words now and come back to those words tomorrow.
I can understand the desire to re-test yourself on words earlier than scheduled though and will consider adding this feature, thanks.
(Note that it’s best to translate a lot more than 19 words, even if you don’t have time to test yourself on all of them. The reason is that Readlang prioritises based on the word frequency so it will try to show the most useful words first. If you have lots of words then you will never run out of words to practise on.)
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Suggestion--hide context tip by default
Just a quick suggestion -- when using flashcards, the context sentence is given at the top of the cards. This often makes it too easy, and is an irresistible temptation. It would be best if it was hidden, and the user had to click the field to reveal it.
1 voteNote that after you guess a flashcard’s meaning, all subsequent times the flashcard is shown will include the word you are trying to guess blanked out. So now you need to guess the word in your target language which is a bit more difficult.
The context is often necessary since it may affect the exact form of the word you are try to guess. e.g. in Spanish you may need the context to know whether an adjective applies to a male or female noun, and there are plenty of other examples.
The context can also affect the meaning of a word, e.g. in English “poker” can be a card game or a stick, and the context helps clarify this.
I do understand your complaint, but for the above reasons, I think that a context should always be visible.
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Video window on top
I think that having the youtube window below the text is useful only when listening to audiobooks with no relevance on video images.
1 voteYes, originally the idea was to add an audio player, but YouTube proved simpler to implement. I agree for watching videos the layout is far from ideal. Perhaps in future I’ll experiment with a different layout more suited to video.
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just letting you know that I like Readlang
Hi Steve,
I don't have any urgent suggestions at the moment. I just wanted to express my support for your site. I think it's great work that you've done, and I hope you continue to develop it. Respect.
If I did have a suggestion, it would be that I quite enjoy the feature of different word colors in LWT. If you were able to add that type of feature, and any other features that make LWT desirable as recommended by others, then you would totally destroy LWT. I feel like your site has greater potential due to its superior interface…
1 voteThanks very much, I’m very glad you like it!
LWT style highlighting is currently the top voted feature actually: https://readlang.uservoice.com/forums/192149-general/suggestions/4013704-highlighting-saved-words
So I’ll definitely look into it, can’t say exactly when at the moment but stay tuned.
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allow the user to select a block of text for to save for study
the user is able to select a large block of untranslated text to be sent to readlang learning mode.
Essentially, if there's a section that's difficult and the user wants to study it in context, they'll be able to select whatever quantity of text they like and sent it off to be studied without translating.
I like this idea for moving readlang beyond translation. Breaking down texts and studying difficult passages with a little more context than is already provided for in the system
3 votes -
add some more trainings to learn section
Not only guessing word, but many different trainings such as word-translate, translate-word, audio-writing, crossword. Watch on this site http://lingualeo.ru/ It's russian but you can switch it to English. It really helps you to memorise new words, believe me.
3 votesI’m working on an API to allow anyone to create training games. There’s an early alpha version here in case any developers want to try it out:
https://github.com/SteveRidout/readlang-api
Here’s a basic game to demonstrate it:
http://steveridout.github.io/readlang-api/
I don’t plan to create games myself any time soon, since I want to concentrate on the other core features of Readlang, but I hope that other developers may be tempted to try.
UPDATEThere is now a typing mode for Readlang’s flashcards that you can enable from the preferences page, see this blog post for details:
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better support high-latency connections
I'm using your site from Bangladesh, and my connection to the States is fairly high-latency (320-340ms to readlang.com right now, 150-200 to Google's 8.8.8.8). Unfortunately, one effect of this seems to be that I can sometimes (not always) wait a long time for a word to appear. (I just had it happen w/ এইভাবে; it took 23 seconds!) I clicked on a number of words before that one, and most took 4 seconds. If there's any optimization you can do for high-latency connections, it would be most appreciated.
2 votesSometimes google translate itself can take a few seconds to respond, but it certainly shouldn’t take 23 seconds!
There’s not that much I can do to improve things if the latency and/or bandwidth of your connection is slow. The request and response when doing a translation are quite small already, so the only way I can think to speed things up would be to pre-fetch translations for every word in the text you are reading, and that would only work for individual words, not phrases. This is something I’ll consider when looking into offline usage in future, no promises on when that’ll be though.
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Sinc Mp3 files from google docs or box
Would be really nice to sinc mp3 files from google docs/play or box, the idea is listening while reading...
Almost the same as Youtube videos.
Thanks
13 votesYes, I’d like to support mp3 files. It’s not an immediate priority but I hope to add this at some point.
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Last line does not display sometimes.
I encountered this behaviour when the text was only one page long and there are only a few words on the last line. I have been having issues as well with longer texts like the line displaying twice, on the old and on the new page.
1 voteI’ve just fixed a bug where this could happen if translated words were present when chnaging page. Please give the site another try and let me know if you encounter this or any other problems.
Thanks,
Steve -
Allow import and use of EPUB documents directly.
If you allow import and use of EPUB documents, i.e. give Readlang the function to be an e-book reader for EPUB format (as well as text format). This would save having to convert to text in Calibre (not an onerous task admittedly).
I think what lies behind my thinking is more that the user will benefit from the look and feel of the e-book he may be used to already, and also have benefit of any chapter-headings or illustrations.
I notice that for example Calibre does not have support for foreign language dictionaries (it does allow English language lookup in…
2 votesThe reason ePubs can be smaller than txt files is that they are compressed. If you rename an ePub file to .zip you can look inside :)
If I support ePub it will certainly be DRM free books only to start with. Savy technical users can easily remove DRM for their personal books using Calibre.
To support DRM ePub books seems to be very expensive. I looked briefly and it costs $10,000 upfront for Adobe Content Server plus a charge for each book distributed. So I’d need to be very confident that Readlang could make money before going down this road.
Don’t want to promise a timeframe, but I’m going to start working on DRM free ePub support soon.
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modify it so teachers can use it.
This seems to be a marvelous site. I would love to use it for my class and it would be great to be able to share a text with the students.
1 voteYou can create texts and make them public using the “Share” button from the Library. This means that anyone will be able to see them, not only your students. Would this be suitable for you?
I’d love to make the site more usable for teachers. Please let me know what features you would need to use the site as a teacher.
Also, once the site is out of beta I plan to offer paid subscription options to make the site sustainable, do you think teachers would be willing to pay a small fee for features to manage a group of students?
Thanks,
Steve -
Make it teacher-friendly
In terms of functions such as managing and sharing content make it so that teachers can recommend it to their students, use to add content for their sts, etc. I will post a video on YT explaining what I mean in more detail in the next few days.
1 voteI’m looking forward to your YouTube video to understand exactly what features you would like to see.
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What happened to the scroll option?
I remember I once used the scroll option, but now I don't see it. I prefer to scroll.
1 voteSorry, I removed this for now because it didn’t seem polished enough, e.g.:
- The setting wasn’t remembered like the other formatting options
- Possible confusion when it’s not available for longer texts (with long texts, scrolling through the entire text causes the browser to slow down and struggle)I’ll work on it a bit more and put it back. I may even may it the default option for shorter texts.
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Use Google Translate Audio for Portuguese
The audio for Portuguese is different from Google Translate, and sometimes mispronounces, eg., ç is pronounced as /k/. The quality in G Translate is better: slower, brigher and clearer.
1 voteI’m using the Microsoft Translate Speech API for this, which is actually better for Spanish pronunciation than Google Translate IMO. It’s a shame the Portugese isn’t so good.
Unfortunately Google don’t provide an official API to allow other developers to use their text-to-speech service. I could look into other services. but I’m not prioritizing this for the time being.
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1 vote
Thanks. Currently all articles are plain text only.
Long term I’d like to include HTML markup to make things look prettier with headings, images, etc. But at the moment this isn’t a high priority to be honest.
Editing existing documents in plain text is more likely to happen in the short term.
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9 votes
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Contact NYCDOE to let them know about Readlang and form an "alliance" or connection
Contact the NYC DOE and let them know about Readlang because you would have so many teachers, students, and schools using Readlang and you could even bring back "Classroom". There are so many English Language Learners trying to read the Gettysburg Address and "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" in mainstream classes with varying knowledge of English ranging from high-level to only ten words! ESL and content teachers struggle to scaffold texts, teach English, help students. But with Readlang, students can access many more texts, thereby learning content and English at the same time, faster. A principal (I showed…
0 votes -
youtube
youtubeunblock
0 votes
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