I studied translation, and noticed to my surprise that the foreign language part of translating is fairly easy, unless it's highly technical, or contains dialect or slang.
The hard part was the command of my native language. I was pretty literate, but the translations I produced weren't good enough - they were accurate, but wooden, and they stayed too close to the original. What I had to learn was my own native language.
So I have doubts about the quality of the translations, and I have doubts about how they're planning to merge translations from different users, which sounds like a very tricky problem.
And it looks like the only exercise they use is to translate the foreign language (e.g. Spanish) into the native language, which will teach you to read, but not to write, speak or understand Spanish.
Nevertheless, a fascinating experiment, and an extremely ingenious idea.
Speaking as a professional translator, I gotta say it's time to transition back out of professional translation. Another five years, maybe, and I'm going to be out of a job.
It was lucrative while it lasted: the Internet made it possible for me to do well as a freelancer, but now the Internet is going to supersede me. Which I knew. It's just scary to be right in this particular instance.
This idea is immense in its brilliance and in the impact I expect it to have.
You'll be just fine. As someone who has employed a number of translators in my professional career, the biggest issue is trust. Translation is scary because it's one thing you have no ability to self-validate. While duolingo is incredibly smart, they're going to have to go a LONG ways towards building trust that what they're producing is truly what my app, brand, whatever wants to convey.
I'm blown away by the simplicity of this. Also, there's something that feels weird about taking two things people pay for (translation and learning a new language) and somehow simultaneously making them both free.
> there's something that feels weird about taking two things people pay for (translation and learning a new language) and somehow simultaneously making them both free.
The exact same principle that is behind reCAPTCHA, except in that case it's CAPTCHA generation & OCR.
This makes so much more sense. I heard he was working on duolingo but could not figure out how a translation application could work as a captcha. The video explains that it isn't a captcha technology, instead it's an app about translating, wholly disconnected from his previous two "monumental" inventions.
I look forward to working with it. It seems like it's another excellent step forward for independent study along with the Khan academy.
This is amazing. I wonder how they combine the beginner stuff though. Also, captchas have the benefit of being adopted by lots of websites, while this is a standalone destination. They may not get 10 million active users, but if they do, it will be because so many people want to learn a language. How will they market the site?
The software he mentions (rosettastone.com) doesn't work with grammar either if I remember correctly. Instead, for one spoken sentence, they display various images of which you have to pick the right one (i.e. the image the sentence corresponds to).
It's the child approach: When you were a kid, you probably didn't have any clue about english grammar either, yet you were able to produce perfectly valid english sentences.
It seems more likely to make English less dominant by (for example) letting people read all of Wikipedia in their native language. Same goes for countless other resources that are currently published only in English.
Either way, if someone cares enough about learning English to put in the huge amount of time required to do it, I would bet they have a pretty good reason already. Giving them a free tool that helps is a clear win for everyone.
I'm not sure whether you're intending to pose that as a problem -- why should language be a barrier to anything? It could open the possibilities to a lot of people in less well off countries.
What would be a problem (and is kind of assumed in what you're saying) is if people stopped learning their native language in favour of English.
[+] [-] merloen|15 years ago|reply
I studied translation, and noticed to my surprise that the foreign language part of translating is fairly easy, unless it's highly technical, or contains dialect or slang.
The hard part was the command of my native language. I was pretty literate, but the translations I produced weren't good enough - they were accurate, but wooden, and they stayed too close to the original. What I had to learn was my own native language.
So I have doubts about the quality of the translations, and I have doubts about how they're planning to merge translations from different users, which sounds like a very tricky problem.
And it looks like the only exercise they use is to translate the foreign language (e.g. Spanish) into the native language, which will teach you to read, but not to write, speak or understand Spanish.
Nevertheless, a fascinating experiment, and an extremely ingenious idea.
[+] [-] Vivtek|15 years ago|reply
It was lucrative while it lasted: the Internet made it possible for me to do well as a freelancer, but now the Internet is going to supersede me. Which I knew. It's just scary to be right in this particular instance.
This idea is immense in its brilliance and in the impact I expect it to have.
[+] [-] enjo|15 years ago|reply
That's going to take awhile.
[+] [-] StavrosK|15 years ago|reply
This is both exciting and ingenious.
[+] [-] w1ntermute|15 years ago|reply
The exact same principle that is behind reCAPTCHA, except in that case it's CAPTCHA generation & OCR.
[+] [-] izuzak|15 years ago|reply
The Royal Society - "Augmented intelligence: the Web and human computation" (Louis von Ahn) http://royalsociety.tv/dpx_royalsociety/dpx.php?cmd=autoplay...
+ has excellent discussion at the end.
[+] [-] newman314|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vpdn|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vpdn|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trickjarrett|15 years ago|reply
I look forward to working with it. It seems like it's another excellent step forward for independent study along with the Khan academy.
[+] [-] EGreg|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] StavrosK|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amichail|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vpdn|15 years ago|reply
It's the child approach: When you were a kid, you probably didn't have any clue about english grammar either, yet you were able to produce perfectly valid english sentences.
[+] [-] Tomek_|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] codybmusser|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amichail|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhc|15 years ago|reply
Either way, if someone cares enough about learning English to put in the huge amount of time required to do it, I would bet they have a pretty good reason already. Giving them a free tool that helps is a clear win for everyone.
[+] [-] _Lemon_|15 years ago|reply
What would be a problem (and is kind of assumed in what you're saying) is if people stopped learning their native language in favour of English.
[+] [-] karanbhangui|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucywoozie|15 years ago|reply