
Show HN: Chrome extension that replaces words into a different language - drshrey
http://alpharabi.us
======
ivancamilov
Cool, but the example has a few errors. "students" in spanish is
"estudiantes", the example is missing an S.

Also, "more" is "más" in spanish. Accents are important for meaning in a lot
of languages.

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anewhnaccount
Same thing:

* [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kypsis-language-im...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kypsis-language-immersion/ddkbjollcgaccneogdbnjadkcbocgcof)

* [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mindtheword/fabjla...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mindtheword/fabjlaokbhaoehejcoblhahcekmogbom)

* [http://lifehacker.com/5907432/language-immersion-for-chrome-...](http://lifehacker.com/5907432/language-immersion-for-chrome-teaches-you-a-new-language-while-you-browse-the-web)

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drshrey
Oh neat. Yeah, definitely going to check this out, and do an analysis on what
these guys get right and features that might need to be improved on.
Appreciate the links!

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pkd
Sigh. I was working on EXACTLY the same idea. Well, looks like these guys have
the momentum now and the product looks good. Good luck!

~~~
drshrey
Thanks for the support! But yeah, what lotyrin said. You should keep working
on it because making a genuinely helpful language learning service isn't an
easy problem by any means.

EDIT: And it needs all the help it can get.

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elhalyn
Hey Guys, love the idea... since I have the "not invented here" syndrome I am
building my own version for quite some time now :)
([http://www.langulearn.com](http://www.langulearn.com))

Next step to implement would be nlp, if you need help or just want to talk ->
hello@langulearn.com

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clydethefrog
Similar browser extensions are made before.

HN discussions:

Language Immersion for Chrome

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3921773](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3921773)

Polyglot

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1669162](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1669162)

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kraftman
Polyglot:

"UPDATE: Due to the shutdown of the Google Translate API, Polyglot is no
longer being maintained. It's been ported to use Bing Translate but due to
rate limits the service is relatively unreliable and cannot be guaranteed to
work consistently."

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misnamed
Let's not forget this one!
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/millennials-to-
sna...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/millennials-to-snake-
peop/jhkibealmjkbkafogihpeidfcgnigmlf)

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Insanity
I am using the extension now as I am currently learning Spanish. The previous
languages that I have learned I have learned through a formal education
(English, French and German) but this is the first one that I am just learning
on my own, as my SO's family mainly communicates in Spanish.

The idea of this plugin is a neat way to increase my vocabulary a bit and thus
I have installed it. But one annoying thing is that I need to open the
extensions popup page to click on "translate". I think that it would be nicer
if the translation would just happen on pageload.

I will look into doing that myself maybe since the project is on github
anyway, but I am at work now. :-)

EDIT: Created an issue for it now ;-)

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Davidiusdadi
The same idea has implemented a while ago by
[http://readlang.com/](http://readlang.com/)

Being able to repeat the words i "looked up" is essential for me.

~~~
steveridout
Creator of Readlang here. This extension is a little different to mine since
it works in the other direction. Readlang allows you to read articles in your
target language more easily by offering tap-to-translate. This one gives you
occassional exposure to target language words while reading articles in your
first language.

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drshrey
If anyone's interested, the repo's right here:
[https://github.com/drshrey/alpharabius](https://github.com/drshrey/alpharabius)

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steveridout
Nice work so far.

I'm not convinced by this approach since I prefer to learn Spanish words in
the context of Spanish sentences, but I haven't given it a fair shot. Of
people who have tried this or similar extensions, did you a) find that you
learned much? and b) keep using it for a prolonged period?

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dvcrn
Very cool idea but slightly disappointed by the language options and
constraint on websites. I barely use any of the sites it supports and don't
learn any of the languages.

I'm wondering how difficult it would be to pipe random words into google
translate and replace them.

~~~
drshrey
OH! And it works on other sites too, but that's "experimental" since it's not
tested on all sites (which is why we put the on/off slider). Might be
interesting to build a DOM parser- in the future -that figures out where
relevant, "could be translated" content is in the webpage.

~~~
Insanity
It was not very clear to me what the slider meant. Good thing that I read this
comment section I guess. The slider 'on' means that the translation happens on
all websites, whereas off it only happens on the selected sites?

~~~
drshrey
Yeah, I'm going to make that clearer in the next update. It's much simpler,
'ON' means make the page translatable and 'OFF' means to leave the page alone.
Because sometimes you just want to read the damn thing

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afro88
Very nice. Would love support for German!

~~~
drshrey
Thanks, working on it!

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sladix
My extension did not gather as many upvotes :'(
[https://bigbangalaconspiracy.com/turdifier/](https://bigbangalaconspiracy.com/turdifier/)
but I find it as useful as this =D

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phmagic
Brilliant, keep up the good work

~~~
drshrey
Thanks, there's a LOT of room for growth and definitely not an easy problem to
solve. More updates in the future, though!

