Dictionary with Word Reference/Nightly not working?

Bugs
1

Hello, the dictionary stopped working for me a couple days ago. I have a Pixel 5a, and I tried it on Chrome, Firefox, and Kiwi Browser. On Firefox it shows a different message that nightly isn’t working with word reference when embedded. I included screenshots of what I see when I try to use the dictionary on all 3 browsers.

Any ideas? I can’t think of anything I’ve changed but it seems like a api issue.

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2

Same here, and i’m not using it on a phone. Just regular chrome 133.

3

Sorry about this. It seems that many of the dictionaries that Readlang uses—notably wordreference.com but also some others—have added security policies to stop themselves being embedded within websites on other domains.

I’ll work on cleaning up the default dictionary URLs to remove the ones that no longer work and replace them with others which still do allow themselves to be embedded, for example https://www.wiktionary.org/.

In the meantime, here are some things you can do:

  • Click the “Open in new window” button which will open the dictionary in a separate window. If you leave this window open next to your Readlang window it will update as you click on new words in the text you are reading:
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  • You can try other dictionary URLs from the settings page as described here to see if you can find a good alternative that works: Customisable Dictionaries - Readlang Blog
  • Rely more heavily on the Explain tab instead of the Dictionary tab
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4

For now I’ve removed Word Reference as the default dictionary for all languages where it was. In most cases Wiktionary will be used as the fallback.

If you want to continue using Word Reference using the “Open in new window” button, you can add the following URL in the Custom Dictionary section of the Settings page:

https://www.wordreference.com/esen/{{query}}

The one above is for translating Spanish words to English. For other languages, edit the two language codes (the “esen” part) as appropriate. e.g. the URL for German to English would be:

https://www.wordreference.com/deen/{{query}}

I’ve also contacted Word Reference support to ask if they could make an exception for Readlang so that it can continue to display their definitions within a panel (an iframe) on readlang.com. If they respond I’ll let you know here.

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5

That’s a real shame - Word Reference is my dictionary of choice so would be good to have that back embedded.
I have tried changing the setting as advised which sort of works OK with a new window on Windows (though - separate question - is there a way to control where that window pops up? - at the moment it pops on the left side of the screen rather than the right as when embedded )…

but on Android phone it’s a bit of nightmare as in portrait mode the ‘Open in New Window’ is off the side of the display…going into landscape reveals it but then getting back out of WordRef back to Readlang is a bit of a faff to say the least.

Is there anyway in the short term I could have different Windows vs Android settings, i.e. WordRef on Windows, Wiktionary on Android?
Otherwise I’m into changing the setting each time I use Readlang depending on the platform I’m using.

I know this is outside of your control, Steve, but it’s really affected the usability for me as I refer to WordRef quite often when reading.

Cheers

6

I’ve been experimenting with using AI to write basic dictionary entries. Right now it works for English speakers learning Spanish or French. To try it out please enter one of the following URL templates as your custom dictionary on the Settings page:

For French learners

https://readlang.com/api/dictionary/fr/en/{{query}}

For Spanish learners

https://readlang.com/api/dictionary/es/en/{{query}}

This is just an experiment. If you have any feedback please let me know. (Right now it’s a bit slow since it needs to generate each entry using AI, but this could potentially be sped up by pre-fetching all the common words in each language.)

7

Thank you for trying to come up with solutions. I appreciate the AI dictionary. I don’t know if this is how others used word reference, but the most valuable thing I would use it for is the verb tense summary at the top shown in the screenshot attached.

It’s very annoying when you see a verb you recognize but you aren’t sure which tense it is and you have to search through the conjugation list to find which one or ones it is.

I don’t know if it’s possible, but this feature in the AI would make me need word reference or any dictionary on in the rarest of cases rather than constantly like I do now.

Thanks! Love the app!

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I tried it out and I really like it. I don’t remember the last time I used wordreference on readlang, for me the AI explanations made it unnecessary. But this seems like a really good idea.From what I remember wordreference sometimes lacked when it came to specialized vocabulary e.g. medicine,law ECT. I’d think AI wouldn’t have the same problem.

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For me AI is interesting, but does not cover the main advantage of wordreference, which is the input on collocations. For instance: if in a text I have “corredores de seguros”, then as a translation “insurance brokers” appears, but the collocation does not appear in the dictionary entrances with AI, but it does with wordreference; if you don’t have premium, which is the case of my students (I have but I can’t ask them to have it too), only a limited set of collocations are translated directly, but with wordreference they still have the right collocations in the dictionary. For me the reference to dictionaries such as wordreference is one of the main reasons to teach my students at university to use Readlang (and to give lectures about it).

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