
Show HN: Subasub – Learn Languages with Translated Subtitles - larion1
http://subasub.com
======
riffraff
I could not understand what I was supposed to search while looking at this on
mobile, it seems the text below the search is missing.

Anyway: neat! Good idea and works quite well.

But it does look like the matching text is wrong sometimes, i.e. third example
here

[https://subasub.com/?lang=hu&query=%20juh%C3%A1sz](https://subasub.com/?lang=hu&query=%20juh%C3%A1sz)

The HU sentence is 'Beszéltünk a juhásszal' the corresponding IT sentence is
'Abbiamo parlato con il pastore' but it gets a much longer one.

Similarly, example 9 here
[https://subasub.com/?lang=hu&query=puszi](https://subasub.com/?lang=hu&query=puszi)

has "Adj egy puszit!" ("give a little kiss") on one side, which should match
"Dammi un bacio!" but on the other side it matches the previous sentence
("…Vieni qui!" is "…- Gyere ide!").

Maybe a "report error" could be added although I fear it would be hard to
support.

~~~
larion1
First example is actually more of an UI issue which I will fix asap.

Filtering out or fixing (where it is feasible) the bad quality stuff
(alignment-errors like your second example) is very high on my list. Of course
it's less trivial to do it right.

------
Mahn
Superb idea, it makes so much sense to look up foreign words this way that
it's suprising we weren't learning languages this way already.

~~~
visarga
Pretty soon there will be even less reason to learn (so many) foreign
languages, because automated translation is going to get very good, unless you
need it on the street.

~~~
luxpir
Shame some people have such a negative view of learning a foreign/new
language. You're not just learning a language, but a whole culture. New ways
of thinking, interacting and connecting with the world.

Such intense focus on computer-based solutions robs us of genuinely fulfilling
life experiences, swapping them out for quick dopamine hits and thousands of
completely forgettable 'oh cool' moments.

~~~
visarga
I personally subscribe to your view, but was thinking outside my perspective.
I have learned a couple of foreign languages pretty well and enjoy comparing
cultures and ways of thinking.

------
luxpir
Nice work! Translators use this kind of tool every day, known by them as
concordance searching, where finding other uses of a term in context can give
nuance and new word-choice options. I can see how this can be used in language
learning but it really helps to know the multiple uses of any given word, and
that assumes prior knowledge.

One way to incorporate this prior knowledge could be to add dictionary
definitions to the search results. Is there a way to scrape or API the
wiktionary? That might be one way to do it on the fly without the impossible
task of building a dictionary.

~~~
sayginburak
"Translators use this kind of tool every day,"

Can you name a few of them?

~~~
luxpir
Sure, it's actually a feature of the major tools, rather than a tool in itself
(in most cases). Look up MemoQ, Trados and the newer EU project Matecat.
Dozens more besides, take a look at the Wikipedia page for CAT tools [0].

\--

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-
assisted_translation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-
assisted_translation)

------
drakmail
Really awesome idea! Bookmarked it.

PS. Searching could be faster =(

~~~
larion1
Thanks for the encouragement! :)

I will definitely think about some tweaks to make it faster. I had to
invalidate the cache (new version) like a week ago so the problem might at
least partially solve itself. Also I might step over to some kind of document
store instead of a transactional db in the future.

~~~
Mahn
Search was speedy enough for me, 1 second at worst, no complaints here.

------
anonfunction
I couldn't think of movie names, would be cool to have a "browse" mode of
discovery as well.

~~~
larion1
Yeah, actually it works more as a contextual dictionary now, so you can look
up words or expressions and you get dialogues in which these occur (with some
movie metadata as an extra). There is no functionality yet to search for
dialogues in a given movie. It seems though that there is quiet a demand for
such a feature, so I might add it soon. :)

------
kumarski
I developed a similar product a few years ago.

[http://lingomill.appspot.com](http://lingomill.appspot.com)

I would love to connect with you. The product uses subtitles and vice video
segments to teach people a language. Dual subtitles are the key.

------
executesorder66
I am really surprised Japanese is not an option.

This is awesome by the way.

~~~
sdrothrock
Japanese subtitles are hard to find for various reasons, one of which is that
Japanese DVDs and blurays often come without them.

~~~
DarkLinkXXXX
What about fansubs? The right people could tell you which sub groups are the
most trustworthy.

Perhaps another option could be incorporating music lyrics, as there are many
sites that list Japanese, romaji (romanized Japanese), and English lyrics
beside each other that you can scrape.

In case you didn't already know, subs.com.ru is a great source of anime
fansubs (no video, just the subs).

There's also opensubtitles.com, but I'm not sure how to heuristically
determine what the quality subtitles are.

I can understand if you're hesitant to use unlicensed translations, but I've
found that licensed subs hardly compare to a quality fansub group.

~~~
sdrothrock
That relies on you wanting to watch things that tend to get fansubs, though.
As a mostly-deaf foreigner living in Japan, I tend to watch/want to watch a
lot of things that don't get fansubbed, like news, foreign shows/movies,
variety shows, cooking shows, and tons of domestic-only movies/shows that
don't get much international attention.

------
drakmail
Have a 504 error (Gateway Timeout) while sending a request for searching
something ;-(

Please repair it =)

------
larion1
Service is responsive again :) I really didn't expect to get on the frontpage.

------
gyvastis
Awesome idea! Though there could be an option to search by a movie

------
AznHisoka
What's the backend?

~~~
larion1
The backend is in perl using the Dancer framework (
[https://metacpan.org/pod/distribution/Dancer/bin/dancer](https://metacpan.org/pod/distribution/Dancer/bin/dancer)
). The db is Postgres with Full Text Search. Everything is on AWS.

------
anewhnaccount2
Could you add Finnish?

~~~
larion1
I would love to, but it might take some time until I get to it. I actually
added Portuguese and Russian just recently and I plan to stay with the current
9 languages for a little time to see if there is enough interest in this
product (and maybe I can break even in server costs - I don't really have any
monetization model atm, I might add a donate button though). But yeah I would
love to add new languages :). Same goes for Japanese.

~~~
drakmail
Could donate several dollars or provide an account on my dedicated server for
free

------
larion1
Wow so many good suggestions. You are really cool :)

------
cachvico
Upvote/downvote buttons!

~~~
larion1
Good idea!

