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I built a tool[0] that gives you constant input at your level as you browse the web, so you don't need to take time out of your day. You can just learn a little

I built a tool[0] that gives you constant input at your level as you browse the web, so you don't need to take time out of your day. You can just learn a little as you browse, and let it compound over time. It works by estimating the difficulty of English sentences, then translating ones at your level into your target language. [0] https://nuenki.app https://nuenki.app

czbond 1y ago
I like your approach here, thanks for posting
koreth1 1y ago
This looks really useful! Wish I'd had something like this when I was learning Mandarin. I'm curious what determines whether or not you add a given language to the list. DeepL and Claude, at least, have usable translation ability in more languages than the app currently supports. Is there a lot of manual effort required for each language, or do you want to keep the list limited just to avoid overwhelming users?
- Alex-Programs 1y ago
  Thanks! I'm glad people like it; I'm hopeless at marketing it to Language Learners:tm:, but programmers seem to love it and it's nice to get some positive feedback. DeepL is actually pretty limited in what it supports. Unless I've missed a new language, Nuenki supports all of DeepL's languages. Some of the additional ones are supported via Claude only and, where permitting, Groq. Groq is far faster than Claude; in languages that DeepL supports, DeepL handles visible text and Claude handles text that you haven't scrolled to yet. Claude-only languages are a bit of a worse experience. It's pretty easy for me to add a language. It's all stored in a centralised toml file, which happens to be open source - https://github.com/Alex-Programs/nuenki-languages/blob/master/languages.toml https://github.com/Alex-Programs/nuenki-languages/blob/maste... - and it's about a 20 minute job to add a language, test it, etc. Then it's about half an hour and 5 USD to benchmark whether Llama is any good at it, and if so enable Groq and make the experience a bit more pleasant. I'm currently working on improving the translation quality benchmark (https://nuenki.app/blog/the_best_translator_is_a_hybrid_translator https://nuenki.app/blog/the_best_translator_is_a_hybrid_tran...), because people seem to like it and there's definitely a lot of room for improvement. That 20 minute number is without updating the big language cloud on the website, which is a bit finicky; iirc I haven't added Vietnamese to it yet. If anyone here has any requests, I'd gladly add them!
  - foolinaround 1y ago
    A request to add Tamil, a widely spoken and one of the earliest classical languages! Thanks!!
boriselec 1y ago
Good tool, I like it so far. My biggest progress in English was when I started to read the English internet (HN, Reddit, etc.). I used an browser extension to translate words that I didn't know. I'm learning Spanish now, but there is no content that interests me. Maybe the Spanish Wikipedia sometimes. So this extension gives me that language exposure.
foolinaround 1y ago
this tool is really nice... Suggestions: Can I get some transliteration when I hover over it, rather than translation? Maybe a Alt+ ?
- Alex-Programs 1y ago
  You can get definitions when you hover, but it depends on the language - it uses Wiktionary. For some languages it's available but disabled by default. You can change it in the extension popup under "Hover Behaviour".
sehansen 1y ago
Cool idea, unfortunately the example on the front page has errors in both Danish and French. In Danish the third line is translated as "Du kan vende tilbage til oversættelser ved at holde musen over dem." which means "You can return to translations by hovering over them." i.e. the opposite of what happens. As a native Danish speaker I'd write "Du kan vende tilbage til originalerne ved at holde musen over dem.". I've had a hard time finding a translation that more accurately matches the wording of the original. The best I could come up with is "Du kan reversere oversættelserne ved at holde musen over dem.", but that just sounds like you're speaking English with Danish words to me, so I don't know if it's useful. In French the second line is translated as "Plus la difficulté augmente, plus la traduction est importante" which means "As the difficulty increases, translation becomes more important.". Kagi Translate proposes "Plus la difficulté augmente, le volume de traduction augmente" and a few other things that don't look quite right to me. I don't know how much this matters, since you'd probably end up exposed to a lot of different translations of many different sentences with this tool. Statistically, most of those will be correct and so you'll end up good enough understanding of the other language anyway. In any case, you'd probably want to make extra sure that the examples on the front page are absolutely correct, so I hope you find my two corrections useful. Oh! One more thing... when you select Japanese it says "Supports Furigana", but there's no furigana shown in the example. It would've been cool to see that on the example page as well.
- Alex-Programs 1y ago
  Thanks for letting me know. The front page items are translated with DeepL, which is used for text that's currently visible. My benchmark claims that it's actually pretty good at French (I haven't got data for Danish) - one of the reasons I'm currently remaking it! I hadn't heard of Kagi Translate; I'll add it to the benchmarking I do. And I'll see about adding Furigana there.
  - endofreach 1y ago
    What's your benchmark? How many paid subscribers do you have that actually use it while browsing? And why do you think did duolingos competitor "toucan" not take off? How does nuenki do the job better? Seriously interested and happy to read more insights. Disclaimer: i did create an MVP of this exactly. But it was just to try and generate some cash quickly to finance my main project (dumb idea, of course). I did get some signups but never even launched the app (and not planning to). Just curious what your experience is.

czbond 1y ago

I like your approach here, thanks for posting

koreth1 1y ago

This looks really useful! Wish I'd had something like this when I was learning Mandarin. I'm curious what determines whether or not you add a given language to the list. DeepL and Claude, at least, have usable translation ability in more languages than the app currently supports. Is there a lot of manual effort required for each language, or do you want to keep the list limited just to avoid overwhelming users?

Alex-Programs 1y ago
Thanks! I'm glad people like it; I'm hopeless at marketing it to Language Learners:tm:, but programmers seem to love it and it's nice to get some positive feedback. DeepL is actually pretty limited in what it supports. Unless I've missed a new language, Nuenki supports all of DeepL's languages. Some of the additional ones are supported via Claude only and, where permitting, Groq. Groq is far faster than Claude; in languages that DeepL supports, DeepL handles visible text and Claude handles text that you haven't scrolled to yet. Claude-only languages are a bit of a worse experience. It's pretty easy for me to add a language. It's all stored in a centralised toml file, which happens to be open source - https://github.com/Alex-Programs/nuenki-languages/blob/master/languages.toml https://github.com/Alex-Programs/nuenki-languages/blob/maste... - and it's about a 20 minute job to add a language, test it, etc. Then it's about half an hour and 5 USD to benchmark whether Llama is any good at it, and if so enable Groq and make the experience a bit more pleasant. I'm currently working on improving the translation quality benchmark (https://nuenki.app/blog/the_best_translator_is_a_hybrid_translator https://nuenki.app/blog/the_best_translator_is_a_hybrid_tran...), because people seem to like it and there's definitely a lot of room for improvement. That 20 minute number is without updating the big language cloud on the website, which is a bit finicky; iirc I haven't added Vietnamese to it yet. If anyone here has any requests, I'd gladly add them!
- foolinaround 1y ago
  A request to add Tamil, a widely spoken and one of the earliest classical languages! Thanks!!

boriselec 1y ago

Good tool, I like it so far. My biggest progress in English was when I started to read the English internet (HN, Reddit, etc.). I used an browser extension to translate words that I didn't know. I'm learning Spanish now, but there is no content that interests me. Maybe the Spanish Wikipedia sometimes. So this extension gives me that language exposure.

foolinaround 1y ago

this tool is really nice... Suggestions: Can I get some transliteration when I hover over it, rather than translation? Maybe a Alt+ ?

Alex-Programs 1y ago
You can get definitions when you hover, but it depends on the language - it uses Wiktionary. For some languages it's available but disabled by default. You can change it in the extension popup under "Hover Behaviour".

sehansen 1y ago

Cool idea, unfortunately the example on the front page has errors in both Danish and French. In Danish the third line is translated as "Du kan vende tilbage til oversættelser ved at holde musen over dem." which means "You can return to translations by hovering over them." i.e. the opposite of what happens. As a native Danish speaker I'd write "Du kan vende tilbage til originalerne ved at holde musen over dem.". I've had a hard time finding a translation that more accurately matches the wording of the original. The best I could come up with is "Du kan reversere oversættelserne ved at holde musen over dem.", but that just sounds like you're speaking English with Danish words to me, so I don't know if it's useful. In French the second line is translated as "Plus la difficulté augmente, plus la traduction est importante" which means "As the difficulty increases, translation becomes more important.". Kagi Translate proposes "Plus la difficulté augmente, le volume de traduction augmente" and a few other things that don't look quite right to me. I don't know how much this matters, since you'd probably end up exposed to a lot of different translations of many different sentences with this tool. Statistically, most of those will be correct and so you'll end up good enough understanding of the other language anyway. In any case, you'd probably want to make extra sure that the examples on the front page are absolutely correct, so I hope you find my two corrections useful. Oh! One more thing... when you select Japanese it says "Supports Furigana", but there's no furigana shown in the example. It would've been cool to see that on the example page as well.

Alex-Programs 1y ago
Thanks for letting me know. The front page items are translated with DeepL, which is used for text that's currently visible. My benchmark claims that it's actually pretty good at French (I haven't got data for Danish) - one of the reasons I'm currently remaking it! I hadn't heard of Kagi Translate; I'll add it to the benchmarking I do. And I'll see about adding Furigana there.
- endofreach 1y ago
  What's your benchmark? How many paid subscribers do you have that actually use it while browsing? And why do you think did duolingos competitor "toucan" not take off? How does nuenki do the job better? Seriously interested and happy to read more insights. Disclaimer: i did create an MVP of this exactly. But it was just to try and generate some cash quickly to finance my main project (dumb idea, of course). I did get some signups but never even launched the app (and not planning to). Just curious what your experience is.