Comment by NielDLR | Hacker News Reader

Comment by NielDLR | Hacker News Reader

Hey Steve,

the language reader market is currently a bit saturated with open-source and paid alternatives.

However, I looked at your site. I'm a linguist with some expertise in web development (http://hanzicraft.com, http://polyglotlink.com and some other sites under my belt).

I really like the idea of a quick importing using a bookmarklet. My main language that I'm learning is Chinese as this market has MANY options (http://3000hanzi.com, http://chineselevel.com, http://lingq.com, http://duable.com, LWT). It's hard to choose. I particularly enjoy ChineseLevel mainly because I know the developer, so I'm biased.

In any case, I think it's possible to get at least some income with your startup. To make it a full-time job is something else and depends on your needs. Because the language reader market is saturated, you'll have to set yourself apart from open source and paid alternatives. At the moment I'm not exactly sure what that is, but I'll be trying your site to learn a bit of Spanish and French (I'm a language learning addict).

I can help you with some more advice and testing if you want. I can also give you some linguistic advice if it comes up. Send me an email: niel@delarouviere.com

Thanks for your thoughts.

You're right there's a lot of activity in this space, language learning tools seem to be a common itch that developers like to scratch :)

I think Readlang's unique position is that it provides a very streamlined workflow compared to the alternatives, it tries to remove unnecessary friction and lets you concentrate on either reading or learning. e.g. to do something similar to Readlang with other tools you may need:

- LWT (the user needs to run the server software themselves with XAMPP or similar) + Anki

- LingQ (seems OK, but a bit expensive ($10 / month) and personally I think the UI has too much clutter, and I don't like having all the words I know/don't know highlighted in the text, it distracts me from enjoying the content)

- Manually switching between tabs when reading to translate and build flashcards in Anki or similar

Maybe there are other tools that I'm not aware of. Thanks for your links, I especially like the idea of chineselevel.com and I've been thinking along these lines for Readlang - estimating the users proficiency based on the words they translate and suggesting content of the appropriate difficulty. My big missing link at the moment is built in content on the site, I'll probably look into finding good public domain / creative commons content soon.

I'll send you a personal mail now...

Edit: one of your links may contain a typo: http://duable.com/ - this URL is for a brand advertising company

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