Dream invention for linguaphiles

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IronMike
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Dream invention for linguaphiles

Postby IronMike » Thu Feb 09, 2017 10:12 am

(I first searched keywords to see if there already was a discussion on this topic. Let me know if I missed it.)

So I dreamed up a great invention for us language geeks. I'll pass this idea on to any out there who can make it a reality. No royalties necessary! All I require is a free supply of these glasses.

So my idea: A light pair of glasses, along the lines of those ones you get when you go see a 3D film. There's a little selector wheel where one of the arms joins with the lens. You select your language, and poof, at the bottom of the lens you get subtitles for the film you're watching.

This of course would involve the production company, who would have to offer up subtitle tracks in various languages. Your glasses would receive the subtitle file through wifi or blutooth or whatever and you'd lean back in your comfy chair and watch the film.

I'm thinking mostly for movie theaters, new releases, that sort of thing. And I'm not talking some sort of auto-generated subtitle non-sense. I mean legitimate subtitles.

OK, so what invention would you like to see for us language lovers?
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Re: Dream invention for linguaphiles

Postby DaveBee » Thu Feb 09, 2017 11:04 am

IronMike wrote:OK, so what invention would you like to see for us language lovers?
In one of William Gibson's books there's a fashion of augmenting yourself with electronic hardware. One character has a port behind his ear into which he can plug various extension modules. One of these ports and a language module please! :-)
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Re: Dream invention for linguaphiles

Postby Doitsujin » Thu Feb 09, 2017 3:47 pm

IronMike wrote:So my idea: A light pair of glasses, along the lines of those ones you get when you go see a 3D film. There's a little selector wheel where one of the arms joins with the lens. You select your language, and poof, at the bottom of the lens you get subtitles for the film you're watching.
IMHO, the technology is already there. I'm pretty sure that the much maligned Google Glass, could be used in combination with a souped-up version of Word Lens.

To get better results, app developers could also cull SRT files from one of the many subtitle download sites. (In an ideal word, they might even be willing to license the subtitle data of major movies from movie studies.)

Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any Google Glass OEMs that offer Google Glass compatible devices at an affordable price. :(

While we're at the topic, does anybody know of books similar to:

Listen 'n' Learn Spanish with Your Favorite Movies

for other languages?
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Re: Dream invention for linguaphiles

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Thu Feb 09, 2017 10:29 pm

DaveBee wrote:In one of William Gibson's books there's a fashion of augmenting yourself with electronic hardware. One character has a port behind his ear into which he can plug various extension modules. One of these ports and a language module please! :-)


I think I've seen something like this being mentioned in an article for the Swedish role-playing game Mutant (the "new" edition from ~1990). That was before the internet as we know it, and I'm pretty sure that the creators borrowed a lot of ideas from Gibson and others.
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Re: Dream invention for linguaphiles

Postby smallwhite » Thu Feb 09, 2017 11:01 pm

But many our forum members don't like the idea of learning a language faster aka better in the same time or less. Dream invention? Plug-in module? What a sin! Language learning has to be a long and painful road!

So I'll only say I like this device that reineke mentioned, because at least it's painful.
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Re: Dream invention for linguaphiles

Postby Jar-Ptitsa » Fri Feb 10, 2017 1:20 am

That your mum speaks 5 languages natively and your dad different 5, and they use all 10 with you when you are a baby and child so you get 10 native langauges.

In this dream mine would be:

    1 French
    2 English
    3 German
    4 Spanish
    5 Japanese
    6 Dutch
    7 Sign language
    8 Sanskrit
    9 Russian
    10 not decided

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