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Duolingo: Translate the Internet | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Links & Internet Resources |  | |
| SueK Groupie United States Joined 4749 days ago 77 posts - 133 votes  Studies: Mandarin | Message 9 of 55 20 December 2011 at 10:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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I just signed up for Chinese, when it comes out. Really fascinating stuff.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5781 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 10 of 55 21 December 2011 at 7:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think it'll still work with more different languages, they'll just have to combine the
attempts of more users, perhaps even an order of magnitude more...but it'll work (at least for pairs like English - Mandarin that are popular enough to attract enough users). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6907 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 11 of 55 21 December 2011 at 7:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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I signed up for Spanish (or if it was German) but haven't got any response. For those who are already using the system, how long did it take after signing up?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5379 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 12 of 55 21 December 2011 at 8:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've got better things to do than translate into my L1 things I already understand. I can sort of see how it could help you with vocabulary, but since I already translate all day long... I'll pass. For now.
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| mikonai Diglot Senior Member United States weirdnamewriting.bloRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4927 days ago 178 posts - 281 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Swahili, German | Message 13 of 55 21 December 2011 at 8:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's an interesting concept, though I'm still a little skeptical about how well it'll
work. I signed up for Italian when it rolls out, and I'll just have to see how useful I find it. Translating a sentence is actually a reasonably good way for me to pick up vocabulary. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| a3 Triglot Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 5254 days ago 273 posts - 370 votes Speaks: Bulgarian*, English, Russian Studies: Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish, Norwegian, Finnish | Message 14 of 55 21 December 2011 at 9:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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How long does it take to recieve the invitation?
I'm a bit sceptical it'd work for translating the web, but it'd be great for lang l'ing 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5864 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 15 of 55 21 December 2011 at 11:54pm | IP Logged | ||
For me, it was about two weeks for Spanish. Now that I am registered, I can also do German which I may do. But I plan to concentrate on Spanish first. According to the DuoLingo Wiki, they currently have a waiting list of 100,000 and have already translated 10,000 sentences, whatever that really means. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duolingo I have completed seven lessons of Spanish Basic 1 and earned 60 Skill Points. Not sure what that means except it must be a long way from starting actual translation. There is a separate count of Sentences Translated and of course, that is still at zero. DuoLingo has a very good tracking system, with an automatic log and a graphic map of progress and the way ahead. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4863 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 16 of 55 22 December 2011 at 12:21am | IP Logged | ||
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On Second Thought....
Now that I got past the simple three and four word sentences, the biggest problem I'm having with it is the robotic synthesized voice. It asks you to type what you've just heard, but the robot voice fails to distinguish very well between words like "nosotros" and "nosotras", so sometimes you just can't tell. Never mind that both translate into English as "we", the software demands that you type "nosotras" if that's what the voice supposedly said. The there was the sentence: "Tú lees un libro y yo leo el diario." But the robot voice crammed the syllables too close together and there was no way to tell if it was saying "un diario" or "el diario". I played it over and over and all I could tell was that there was some smooshed syllable just before "diario", so I guessed which it was, and of course, it turned out to be the other. So it marked me wrong. Again. Then there's the fact that it will not accept an answer of "you (plural)" even though that's the way it presents it itself. It wants "you all". Yet for ¿Quiénes...?" it won't accept "Who all...". Or situations where a sentence could be indicative or imperative. If you give the indicative translation and it wanted the imperative one, you get marked wrong. Again. And, no, there was no exclamation mark to indicate that it wanted the imperative. Then there's the issue of minor typos. With a human at the other end if we type "teh book" it's obvious it was just a typo for "the book", but the software interprets typos as ignorance. It's very insulting, when after typing a long complex sentence, and getting every article gender and verb conjugation correct, except for some minor typo (say "deurmo" instead of "duermo") the software essentially tells me "You're wrong again, you ignorant fool. You don't know crap about Spanish, do you?" It seems to me the real failings come down to the same single issue. Never trust a robot to do what it takes a human to do right. A native, or at least very skilled, human should be speaking the sentences, not a robot. You can't learn correct pronunciation from a robot that doesn't pronounce correctly, and you can't train your listening skills on a robot that doesn't speak like a human. AND you can't ask a computer to grade answers where human judgement is necessary to result in anything other than a flat "right" or "wrong", and insulting slap-downs for answers that any human teacher would consider correct, or close enough to correct. Maybe I'm just in a bad mood after being told I was wrong every time the robo voice couldn't pronounce words clearly enough to make out. But I think I've reached the limit of my frustration tolerance for Duolingo. I'm going back to the old fashioned way of reading, writing, and listening to movies and podcasts. I'm about to start reading the third Harry Potter novel in Spanish, and believe me, it's going to be a LOT more fun that the systematic frustration that is Duolingo. (<<-- Notice that this whole sentence is proof that I'm a complete failure at learning English. See that "t" where there's supposed to be an "n"? Duolingo would see that and mark the whole sentence WRONG. Grrrrr.) Duolingo's mechanical robo voice and robo grading is just to hard to deal with for me. It's less about learning Spanish and more about guessing what the robot said, and, of course, about being a flawless typist. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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