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Hmm, sorry if I'm misunderstanding, but from your suggestions it's not clear if you realise that the extension is intended for reading in your target language a

Hmm, sorry if I'm misunderstanding, but from your suggestions it's not clear if you realise that the extension is intended for reading in your target language and translating occasional words to your native language. e.g. > ...and in subsequent pages will display them in the target language without the user doing anything. They will no longer be displayed in the user's language. The idea is that to learn Spanish, you read Spanish webpages, so everything is displayed in the target language at first, and you click to get the English translation. Detecting words which are unusually frequent in the page you're reading, and automatically adding a translation to the first instance is a cool idea. > The first message it displayed was that I had to drag some link, etc.. Why is that? I think you're referring to the bookmarklet that needs to be installed to translate webpages, this is an alternative to the Chrome extension and works on almost all browsers. > I had a message saying "This is a very large page" Yeah, this is pretty ugly, should think of a nicer solution.

Jugurtha 11y ago
>Hmm, sorry if I'm misunderstanding, but from your suggestions it's not clear if you realise that the extension is intended for reading in your target language and translating occasional words to your native language. I think the idea is that to learn Spanish, you read not only Spanish webpages, but even the webpages you read that happen not to be in Spanish can become so. The way you intend your extension to work assumes the user is already on a Spanish webpage. This assumes the user has overcome procrastination and reads pages in his target language often. Now, as a language learner yourself: What percentage of all people who want to learn a language does that case represent? How many overcame procrastination and practice everyday? These are the users who don't need help and would be fine. The biggest problems in language learning are two: - Procrastination. - Weak, infrequent and/or sporadic exposure. Just imagine if in addition to catering to those serious users the way you do now, you can annihilate learners' worst problems and serve the whole 99% of people who've had "I want to learn X" on their mind for 5+ years but have been too intimidated, or think it's too hard.. They're on a page in English sprinkled with foreign words in context. They get value with every single page they read. If they don't understand a word, the only effort they make is click on it. If they somehow read a sign in the streets or see something in TV in the target language and they recognize it, they will have a smile and that will be a turning point. This is where they'll feel "It works". It has more significance because they've tried to learn that language years ago with a bunch of arcane methods, and weren't even able to do the smallest things with it. Discomfort threshold to the prospect of reading pages in the target language is decreased by the page. Your extension isn't one that translates words on a webpage, it is as an extension that minimizes friction to learn a langue. It can do it in a variety of ways and already does a great job with the flash-cards. Everybody hates doing the legwork and you're getting them to "Read it and it gets saved". >I think you're referring to the bookmarklet that needs to be installed to translate webpages, this is an alternative to the Chrome extension and works on almost all browsers. It's just a guess, but I think a lot of people would benefit if this step gets streamlined. It's already cool that it doesn't require restarting the browser, and making it even more seamless would be awesome. A user has only to click on the install button on the Chrome extensions pages and that's it. No further intervention. This is for more accessibility. There a lot of people who don't know what a bookmark is, or bookmarklet for that matter. All the best,
- steveridout 11y ago
  Turning English websites into a Spanish learning experience is a neat idea, because as you say it fits into peoples current habits. It's definitely worth exploring but currently Readlang's focus is learning from real native texts. I'm trying not to lose focus and to Do One Thing Really Well (TM). I agree that procrastination is a huge problem. I'd prefer try to tackle this by introducing more opportunities for learners to encounter Spanish texts, one way to do this would be to create a browser homepage with recommended Spanish websites, texts, videos, and practice exercises. > It's just a guess, but I think a lot of people would benefit if this step gets streamlined. It's already cool that it doesn't require restarting the browser, and making it even more seamless would be awesome. A user has only to click on the install button on the Chrome extensions pages and that's it. No further intervention. It's already very simple to install the Chrome extension, and once installed I think it's correct that it requires a click to activate on a webpage since it does take resources and slow down the page, so I wouldn't want it working on every web-page. For the bookmarklet - I completely agree that it isn't intuitive, the experience on mobile browsers is particularly horrible, but web-developers have limited control over this without better support from the browsers.

Jugurtha 11y ago

>Hmm, sorry if I'm misunderstanding, but from your suggestions it's not clear if you realise that the extension is intended for reading in your target language and translating occasional words to your native language. I think the idea is that to learn Spanish, you read not only Spanish webpages, but even the webpages you read that happen not to be in Spanish can become so. The way you intend your extension to work assumes the user is already on a Spanish webpage. This assumes the user has overcome procrastination and reads pages in his target language often. Now, as a language learner yourself: What percentage of all people who want to learn a language does that case represent? How many overcame procrastination and practice everyday? These are the users who don't need help and would be fine. The biggest problems in language learning are two: - Procrastination. - Weak, infrequent and/or sporadic exposure. Just imagine if in addition to catering to those serious users the way you do now, you can annihilate learners' worst problems and serve the whole 99% of people who've had "I want to learn X" on their mind for 5+ years but have been too intimidated, or think it's too hard.. They're on a page in English sprinkled with foreign words in context. They get value with every single page they read. If they don't understand a word, the only effort they make is click on it. If they somehow read a sign in the streets or see something in TV in the target language and they recognize it, they will have a smile and that will be a turning point. This is where they'll feel "It works". It has more significance because they've tried to learn that language years ago with a bunch of arcane methods, and weren't even able to do the smallest things with it. Discomfort threshold to the prospect of reading pages in the target language is decreased by the page. Your extension isn't one that translates words on a webpage, it is as an extension that minimizes friction to learn a langue. It can do it in a variety of ways and already does a great job with the flash-cards. Everybody hates doing the legwork and you're getting them to "Read it and it gets saved". >I think you're referring to the bookmarklet that needs to be installed to translate webpages, this is an alternative to the Chrome extension and works on almost all browsers. It's just a guess, but I think a lot of people would benefit if this step gets streamlined. It's already cool that it doesn't require restarting the browser, and making it even more seamless would be awesome. A user has only to click on the install button on the Chrome extensions pages and that's it. No further intervention. This is for more accessibility. There a lot of people who don't know what a bookmark is, or bookmarklet for that matter. All the best,

steveridout 11y ago
Turning English websites into a Spanish learning experience is a neat idea, because as you say it fits into peoples current habits. It's definitely worth exploring but currently Readlang's focus is learning from real native texts. I'm trying not to lose focus and to Do One Thing Really Well (TM). I agree that procrastination is a huge problem. I'd prefer try to tackle this by introducing more opportunities for learners to encounter Spanish texts, one way to do this would be to create a browser homepage with recommended Spanish websites, texts, videos, and practice exercises. > It's just a guess, but I think a lot of people would benefit if this step gets streamlined. It's already cool that it doesn't require restarting the browser, and making it even more seamless would be awesome. A user has only to click on the install button on the Chrome extensions pages and that's it. No further intervention. It's already very simple to install the Chrome extension, and once installed I think it's correct that it requires a click to activate on a webpage since it does take resources and slow down the page, so I wouldn't want it working on every web-page. For the bookmarklet - I completely agree that it isn't intuitive, the experience on mobile browsers is particularly horrible, but web-developers have limited control over this without better support from the browsers.