Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 4101 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes Speaks: English Studies: German
| Message 113 of 131 15 January 2014 at 11:52pm | IP Logged |
I like the site, will definitely use it!!!
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SteveRidout Diglot Groupie Spain readlang.com Joined 4301 days ago 65 posts - 121 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish
| Message 114 of 131 23 March 2014 at 9:58am | IP Logged |
Thought you might be interested in this blog post about Readlang:
Readlang - My Language Learning Web-App
Warning, it's pretty long, and details the story of how I spent the last 16 months developing it, including the first round of feedback which I received on this forum, and how after all that time it's earned a grand
total of $1045. Nevertheless, I still haven't given up, and continue to work full time on improving it.
Edited by SteveRidout on 23 March 2014 at 11:27am
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Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5884 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque
| Message 115 of 131 23 March 2014 at 8:17pm | IP Logged |
Cool, i just read through the entire blog post (and a good portion of the comments at the Hacker News site). It is a bit depressing to see that your total revenue barely breaks $1,000. I definitely think even $19.99 is pretty low (less than $2 a month) and as someone mentioned in the comments a donate button might be worth implementing.
I have fallen away from the site a bit as it was just hard to read longer texts on the computer, but going back to my account it still feels really fast and makes me wish i had a tablet. I'm still not completely sold on the google translations, but for the languages where it's available, the dictionary in the sidebar is nice. Btw, is being able to add new dictionaries a recent addition? It's a nice feature, i just wish more dictionaries like Wordreference that could break down words (for example, pulling "hablar" from "hablas").
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SteveRidout Diglot Groupie Spain readlang.com Joined 4301 days ago 65 posts - 121 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish
| Message 116 of 131 23 March 2014 at 11:53pm | IP Logged |
Thanks, yeah it's not much I know, but then again 16 months ago it didn't even exist, and there's a lot I can still do
to make it better and get more people using it.
I agree Google Translate isn't always perfect, and this is more of a problem for beginners who may get confused.
Once you're at a intermediate level, which you currently need to be to get the most from Readlang, you can usually
tell when the translation is wrong and you need to check the sidebar. I find that I often read whole chapters without
ever having to check the sidebar though, so for Spanish at least Google is pretty good. One caveat is that Google
sometimes doesn't seem so great at translating verb conjugations, so if you don't know your verb forms it helps to
check the WordReference sidebar regularly.
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Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5554 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese
| Message 117 of 131 24 March 2014 at 1:57am | IP Logged |
I rather like the Chrome/Chromium extension (better than some of the other translator
extensions I've tried), but it doesn't seem to work on Twitter (which is one of the places I'm
most likely to use it). You click the icon and nothing opens (no drop down or anything). It
seems to work fine on other sites so far.
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Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5884 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque
| Message 118 of 131 24 March 2014 at 4:44am | IP Logged |
When reading novels in Spanish i often find that it gives weird translations for more literary words. For Catalan and Basque, it's pretty awful all around. I imagine the Spanish, French, and German translations are generally pretty good though.
In the article you linked to, you mentioned something about scrolling through the wordreference definitions one by one. Was that ever implemented?
EDIT: I would also like to reiterate my desire to be able to send a donation (or perhaps buy someone else a year's subscription?)
Edited by Crush on 24 March 2014 at 4:45am
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SteveRidout Diglot Groupie Spain readlang.com Joined 4301 days ago 65 posts - 121 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish
| Message 119 of 131 25 March 2014 at 2:02pm | IP Logged |
Hi Crush. Thanks for offering to donate, that's very generous! Here's the old donations page from back before I'd added subscriptions which is no longer linked to, and the text is out of date, but the button still works:
Donate Page (the value there is in UK pounds, and at the moment £1 is about $1.65, just warning in case you mistake it for USD and accidentally give more than expected!)
I should probably add a page for people who wish to help in various ways, whether donating, spreading the word, giving advice, etc.
I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to by scrolling through the WordReference definitions, but it could be this:
Readlang For Teachers
This is a set of features I implemented for teachers and includes a presentation mode where a teacher can go step by step through each of the top 20 most translated words to review them in front of their class. Were you referring to this?
Edited by SteveRidout on 25 March 2014 at 2:03pm
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Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5884 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque
| Message 120 of 131 25 March 2014 at 5:26pm | IP Logged |
SteveRidout wrote:
I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to by scrolling through the WordReference definitions, but it could be this:
Readlang For Teachers
This is a set of features I implemented for teachers and includes a presentation mode where a teacher can go step by step through each of the top 20 most translated words to review them in front of their class. Were you referring to this? |
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Ah, i misread it the first time thinking that it was the first 20 definitions given at WordReference or something like that. Now i see.
Anyway, do you have any ideas what will come next? New features? Marketing?
EDIT: Also, what about perhaps offering "lifetime" subscriptions for, say, £50 (or £100)? Personally i much prefer paying once to a monthly or yearly plan, though i can see that in the long run it might not be sustainable. But still, £50 is currently two and a half years' subscription, i'm not sure if people are renewing their subscriptions or not.
Edited by Crush on 25 March 2014 at 5:32pm
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