7 comments

  • Aachen 18 minutes ago
    I thought it would be some sort of scheduler (spaced repetition) based on the title, but putting in a word I just learned in German (hinfaellig), it shows what looks like a Wiktionary page. Except of course it took idk how much energy to generate instead of serving static content that already exists

    It gives a different definition as what I just learned from a native speaker (was literally just watching a German ~lesson: https://youtu.be/6QA7YBhnU0I 2:45). They said obsolete or no longer valid. The bot says frail, dilapidated, decrepit. This sounds to me like another valid translation, but I had to check to make sure, and yep it's valid, just incomplete. Not sure why I would use this instead of the place I'd check anyway (https://de.wiktionary.org/wiki/hinf%C3%A4llig)

    I like the UI theme and that the only animation, around the search box, is subtle enough not to distract from reading but still look cool. UI-wise one thing I'd improve is being able to copy text from the page instead of having to type things over

  • NarcisMirandes 23 minutes ago
    I have tried and it works well. I bookmark it to use it in next days.

    What I do now: I am in a small country in Europe and I use translations a lot, every day literally. I am in a Mac and I have a "space" dedicated to that with three things:

      - dictionary and Tesaurus. Free app in all Macs
      - translation. https://translate.google.com/
      - a Excel file where I save and review the new words
    
    My first impressions:

      - Your tool could be useful as it groups all three in one place.
      - I have checked that it works well and it is nice and well designed.
      - I would have to spend time to reorganize myself, try a new way. There is and investment in time and the fear that it is not clear that that new way is much, much better. Perhaps it is only a bit better and I am not sure it is worth the time.
    
    Why?:

      - Why do you do that?
      - Will it be premium layer later? What will happen with the people who has "invested" time and effort in your project?
      - What is your revenue model?
  • anon1094 32 minutes ago
    Anyone who's learned a language to an advanced level knows that after a while you have to use the language itself to learn the language. You can't keep relying on translations because there are so many language-specific and culture-specific nuances that translations can't quite capture.
    • bunderbunder 17 minutes ago
      That said growing vocabulary is widely regarded as one of the most important steps towards being able to interact with the language in a more authentic way.

      My concern is that AI-generated translations and example test still tend to get the subtleties wrong. I’ve seen that cause a lot of confusion for beginning learners who don’t know their target language well enough to know when something isn’t quite right. The help forum on a learner community I’m in is full of cases where the answer is, “You’re confused because what the AI told you is incorrect.”

      And that’s a big part of why I still prefer a good old fashioned keyword search over GenAI when I’m looking for more examples to help me understand a new word.

    • ivansavz 25 minutes ago
      You can choose English -> English in the UI for explanations in English.
  • theSherwood 14 minutes ago
    Interesting concept. But you might want to ditch the pronunciation audio. At least for Welsh and Spanish, the pronunciation audio is pretty far from the mark. I would guess that is the same for many other languages.
    • Aachen 7 minutes ago
      Two German sentences are good. It picks a regional variant and sticks with it

      Putting a whole sentence in the search field makes it just echo the input back to you. If you then ask it to pronounce that, it does it in English but with a strong accent (Turkish maybe, hard to say) :D

      Edit: ok I tried some more in Dutch and it's hit and miss even within one language. Indeed not ready for language learning... better just read IPA or visit a site that has a traditional pronouncer or even human recordings (e.g. dict.cc for German, Wiktionary for various languages, Merriam Webster for English, etc.)

  • FuturisticLover 10 minutes ago
    How exactly it is different from Google translate?
  • timeattack 12 minutes ago
    It doesn't really check that word really exist, and instead it hallucinates slop definition, usage examples and memory tip.
    • Retr0id 9 minutes ago
      Putting in made-up words leads to some rather amusing results, though.

      Fortunately I can't paste any here because they block text selection...

      Looks like they cache the results globally, so here are my favourite non-words it's defined so far: extranguate, volupinous

  • Paaul01 46 minutes ago
    Great Concept, Kudos!