I think the idea is that to learn Spanish, you read not only Spanish webpages, but even the webpages you read that happen not to be in Spanish can become so.
The way you intend your extension to work assumes the user is already on a Spanish webpage. This assumes the user has overcome procrastination and reads pages in his target language often.
Now, as a language learner yourself: What percentage of all people who want to learn a language does that case represent? How many overcame procrastination and practice everyday?
These are the users who don't need help and would be fine.
The biggest problems in language learning are two: - Procrastination. - Weak, infrequent and/or sporadic exposure.
Just imagine if in addition to catering to those serious users the way you do now, you can annihilate learners' worst problems and serve the whole 99% of people who've had "I want to learn X" on their mind for 5+ years but have been too intimidated, or think it's too hard..
They're on a page in English sprinkled with foreign words in context. They get value with every single page they read. If they don't understand a word, the only effort they make is click on it. If they somehow read a sign in the streets or see something in TV in the target language and they recognize it, they will have a smile and that will be a turning point. This is where they'll feel "It works". It has more significance because they've tried to learn that language years ago with a bunch of arcane methods, and weren't even able to do the smallest things with it.
Discomfort threshold to the prospect of reading pages in the target language is decreased by the page.
Your extension isn't one that translates words on a webpage, it is as an extension that minimizes friction to learn a langue. It can do it in a variety of ways and already does a great job with the flash-cards. Everybody hates doing the legwork and you're getting them to "Read it and it gets saved".
>I think you're referring to the bookmarklet that needs to be installed to translate webpages, this is an alternative to the Chrome extension and works on almost all browsers.
It's just a guess, but I think a lot of people would benefit if this step gets streamlined. It's already cool that it doesn't require restarting the browser, and making it even more seamless would be awesome. A user has only to click on the install button on the Chrome extensions pages and that's it. No further intervention.
This is for more accessibility. There a lot of people who don't know what a bookmark is, or bookmarklet for that matter.
All the best,