As well as undermentioned. I’ve been trying to find a service that offers multiple definitions of words just by clicking/tapping on them on mobile, but if you make a quick google search trying to find something like that, you will encounter countless mentions of LingQ or some other app that doesn’t do it/doesn‘t do it right. For example, LingQ, from my limited understanding (and this understanding is only limited due to the lack of a proper trial - they offer like 20 words for free), is heavily focused on flashcards instead of frictionless reading.
I kid you not, it took me no less than two hours to find the first mention of Readlang. And turns out it offers something I didn’t even know I needed: context-aware translation. This use of LLMs is just… wow. It seems like such an obvious use case in retrospect, but I’ve yet to come across such a beautiful implementation anywhere else. To be concise, I sincerely think that this right here is the most powerful tool for language learning.
My question is: How come Duolingo dominates the market with millions of users and a pricy subscription, while Readlang is barely mentioned? It’s gotta be marketing, right?
Sorry if I’m not supposed to post something like this here, but I just love this website. I don’t want it to shut down because not enough people use it. I think that the more popular a service is the likelier it is to continue operating.
You are very welcome to post this. I’m not complaining!
There’s not much risk of the service being shut down unless something very unexpected happens. The biggest risk right now is if anything happened to me since I run it completely on my own! But it’s true that the more popular it is the easier it will be for me to invest more in it. Since revenue has grown over the past couple of years I’m toying with the idea of looking for another developer to help out next year (within Spain, ideally Madrid, so that we can collaborate in person). I do zero marketing at the moment since I figure the best long term investment is to keep making the product better. For now I rely totally on word of mouth, so if you like Readlang please let other people know!
Thank you for your amazing work, Steve! I’ve already recommended Readlang to a couple of fellow language learners.
From a layman’s point of view: Your product deserves a team of people who are dedicated to it just like you are, with a good marketing department. By spreading the word intentionally you are going to help more people. It’s good that you’re considering expanding - there is only so much a single person can do.
Only a fraction of a fraction of language learners are committed enough to switch tabs every 10 seconds to look up a word in multiple dictionaries. Moreover, and I’ve seen this plenty of times in my friends, absolute beginners are awfully resistant to the idea of the same word having a different meaning in a different context (at least in their target language), so even if they do look up a word, they expect the correct interpretation to land right into their lap; but more often than not you have to infer the correct translation yourself.
And this is not to throw shade at them, this constant back and forth is indeed tedious! So after a while, even if they’ve tried dipping their toes into the actual language, as it is in the wild, they stop because of the friction. Then they go back to Duolingo, which doesn’t help to develop the feeling necessary to engage with languages fluently (but it’s great for the first couple of weeks admittedly). Readlang alleviates these problems. If only beginners knew about your website…
Furthermore, I actually believe that the idea of frictionless reading is powerful enough to propel Readlang to the level of popularity of, let’s say, Anki. Fundamentally, I think, language learners find great use of frictionless reading because they consume difficult-to-comprehend bodies of text. And so do medical students, regular people who engage with legal documents… You get where I’m going with this. A lot of people need contextual explanation.
I imagine that most people (and most people are not tech-savvy) find Anki confusing. Still, videos about it on YouTube gather hundreds of thousands of views, the most popular one has 1.6 million views.
Readlang is more straightforward than Anki. But your video from 2013 is the most popular video about Readlang to date, and it only has 73k views.
Anyway, excuse me for this wall of text. I hope I don’t come off as pushy or anything like that; Readlang is your baby and you are free to do with it as you please. I just felt like I needed to show my appreciation for your website. Thanks again for your work!
You are correct, banshee, Readlang is the best thing out there. I mention Readlang in some comments I make on YouTube, but now I realize I need to do a better job at getting the word out. Thank you for your comments!
