It would be great to have the option of remembering and keeping the highlighted word when turning the page. Maybe make it optional in settings. I find it useful to read a text multiple times when learning a language, like an interlinear text. If it can keep the highlighted words, then I can use this as a version of interlinear text , with the words that don’t know being translated. I can of course tap on them multiple times, but that does slow me down and I’d much rather be reading then tapping words.
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To iterate further on this, how about showing a word every time it comes up after I tap it? That would be trully a custom version of interlinear text. I don’t like doing flashcards. I like reading. Alexander Arguelles has never used flashcards or word lists and is polyliterate in over a dozen of languages. He just reads. He recomends interlinear texts, readers, bilingual editions as ways to build vocabulary. Interlinear texts are the best because it’s easier to find the word I don’t know. If I can tap on a word and it will show every time in all future and past occurences in that text, then I will see it dozen or hundreds of times and I will learn it. And when I think I’ve seen it enough times, I can just long tap again and make it dissapear in the entire text. Or delete it from the vocabulary list and have it dissapear like that.
It would be great to apply this to all the words in all texts. So basically take the entire word list and show it at the top.
Of course if I tap a word, it would be great if the appropriate definition will be applied based on the context. That might require more computing, it might require that the mode analyze each isntance of the word separately, but I would be happy to pay for it. Name your price.
I would recommend long tap to remove it because i might want to do a short tap on a word to see the explanation on the side again, as opposed to just the word up and I don’t want to have to remove it with a tap and then add it again and thus trigger the alghorithm to redo the whole thing.
This would be a killer feature. Welcome to the future! Who needs flying cars?
I would recommend making this available as a toggle in settings. I know there’s some people out there who are not convinced by the power of interlinear texts and they should be allowed to keep it off.
This is a good read on the history of interlinear texts and it’s power. If Ernest Blum could only see Readlang!
Speaking of interlinear texts, how difficult would it be to change the position of the translated words and place them below as opposed to above and also make them smaller. I would make this feature secondary to the one above (showing it every time), but if the one above can be made available, then placing the translation under and making it smaller would bring the experience very close to reading an interlinear, take less space and make all those translated words less visible - they are there if you need them but not in the way.
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Thanks for sharing all these thoughts!
You should definitely check out the Auto Highlight feature: Auto Highlight Words As You Read - Readlang Blog. It’s kinda like what you’re asking for but doesn’t show the translations by default (reason being is that I want to have a chance to try to recall the word myself first which is good practice) and it doesn’t actually re-fetch a new translation given the new context (context-aware translations weren’t available when this feature was added). What it does let you do is mark a word as remembered which will inform the spaced repetition system that you remembered that word without having to do flashcards.
Thanks for the other suggestions too!
I’ll check it out.
I understand the reasoning behind it. But it does slow the reading down having to click on it. There’s different opinions on this. The one you mentioned is one, which is forcing you to recall it. Another is that if you don’t have to spend the time to look the word up, or tap in this case, you can read more, or reread, which means that you see the word more. Even if it’s right there, available, you still see it more often, which reinforces it. That’s the whole philosophy behind interlinear texts (as opposed to having the translation on the opposite page, or in a list at the bottom of the page or end of chapter). If you see a word hundreds or thosands of times, eventually it will stick and eventually you won’t have to look at the translation even if it’s there. And it’s all effortless. It recuires no flashcards, no looking up. This method is thoudans of years old and we lost it. For me it was revolutionary!
The school of though you’re mentioning says that you need to work hard to “memorize” vocabulary. The other school of though I mentioned, based on the link above and interlinear texts is that you don’t have to work at all, you just read and with high frequency you will “acquire” the words, without making an effort to memorize them.
I used to use flashcards. I rarely do now. And that’s because I can acquire vocabulary better in the same time by just reading. And reading is fun. Flashcards are not.
I do recognize that what I’m suggesting requires different assumptions, but I think it would be great to make the tool great for different learnings styles and allow people to experiment. The more use cases, the better.
Doing flascards is not enjoyable. Reading a great text is. And reading is addictive too. You want people to become adicted to reading great texts. That will also make them more likeley to stick with the language and keep using the tool.
Great work!
Just to add more to this. Having a popup up with the word in a different context breaks the flow of reading even more than just tapping on it. This is the exactly opposite of the experience of an interlinear text. The main feature of an interlinear text is that it allow me to read in the target language the most. If my goal is to read in the original as much as I possibly can, nothing comes close to an interlinear translation. Not tapping, not bilingual, not vocabulary at the back. This is worse than just tapping on a word to display it because I now have to intrerupt my reading and read this other context. By the time I’m done, I’ve forgot what I just read in the text. I can see how this can be an effective study tool, but it’s not an effective reading tool which is what I use Readlang for. What I suggest is a way to make reading even faster and seamless and pleasurable. Take the work out of it and let us read the actual texts. That way we not only enjoy them more, but spend more time with them and acquire the vocabulary more. That’s the goal.
I understand that Readlang was developed as a hybrid reading and studying tool. What I’m suggesting is to make a few small changes that would make it even more suitable for actually reading long texts at an advanced level and being able to enjoy them, as opposed to study them with flascards, intrerupt the reading with context windows, etc.
It’s almost there and it can get fully there with small tweaks like having monolingual one word translation and having the translated word show up every time.
I do recognize that that would expand the vision of the tool slightly. But it would also make reading more enjoyable and maybe with that expand the appeal of acquiring languages to more people. I could spend 12 hours per day “reading” in multiple languages. I couldn’t not spend 12 hours per day doing flascards. It’s not even close. Yet all the tools out there are for the second method and there’s virtually none for the first even though this techique has been used for thousands of readers, while the second for a few decades. Why do something I don’t enjoy when I can do something I trully enjoy and that works even better?
I appreciate all the good work!
That all makes sense. Thanks for sharing, I’ll bear this in mind. (Not making any promises though.)
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