Elreader beta launch has arrived! (LingQ alternative)

Ask specific questions about your target languages. Beginner questions welcome!
Kraut
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2599
Joined: Mon Aug 07, 2017 10:37 pm
Languages: German (N)
French (C)
English (C)
Spanish (A2)
Lithuanian
x 3204

Elreader beta launch has arrived! (LingQ alternative)

Postby Kraut » Wed Jul 21, 2021 4:34 pm

Elreader beta launch has arrived! (LingQ alternative)

https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearni ... ternative/

positive features for me:

-layout
-sentence translation is below original
-they use "DeepL"

What I would like to see is example sentences for new words, from Tatoeba, Kontextwörterbuch ...
------------
update
For the example sentences, install Firefox's "Pop-up-Dicionary" with "Kontextwörterbuch" or "Tatoeba" or whatever, and a double-click on a word will bring them up.
When you use Edge Browser you can get Edge's voices which are better. I also noted that due to the layout of the text, the Edge voice reads the text with small delays in between words, not a bad feature.
Last edited by Kraut on Wed Jul 21, 2021 5:20 pm, edited 2 times in total.
1 x

User avatar
MorkTheFiddle
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2114
Joined: Sat Jul 18, 2015 8:59 pm
Location: North Texas USA
Languages: English (N). Read (only) French and Spanish. Studying Ancient Greek. Studying a bit of Latin. Once studied Old Norse. Dabbled in Catalan, Provençal and Italian.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 11#p133911
x 4824

Re: Elreader beta launch has arrived! (LingQ alternative)

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Wed Jul 21, 2021 5:02 pm

But will it still be around when the sun goes down?
2 x
Many things which are false are transmitted from book to book, and gain credit in the world. -- attributed to Samuel Johnson

User avatar
Gordafarin2
Orange Belt
Posts: 161
Joined: Wed Aug 22, 2018 10:53 am
Languages: English (N)
Current focus: Mandarin (A2), Italian (A2)
Maintaining: Persian (B2), Esperanto (B2), Spanish (rusty B1-2)
Dabbled: ASL, French
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17156
x 557
Contact:

Re: Elreader beta launch has arrived! (LingQ alternative)

Postby Gordafarin2 » Thu Jul 22, 2021 9:18 am

When you mentioned DeepL I knew that it wouldn't work for my language of choice, but I didn't expect it to only support FIGS, Portuguese, and English... :\ Of course the more sophisticated a tool becomes, the harder it is to support a wide variety of languages. Right now there isn't anything that differentiates it too much from any of the other reader apps out there, is there? So I guess I'll wait and see how it progresses, which languages they add support for and what other added-value features they may implement in the future.
4 x
Persian... 10 novels: 4 / 10

Mandarin...
4000 words: 4000 / 4000 / 2000 characters: 1640 / 2000

she/her

Stefan
Green Belt
Posts: 379
Joined: Sun Dec 20, 2015 9:59 pm
Location: Sweden
Languages: -
x 920
Contact:

Re: Elreader beta launch has arrived! (LingQ alternative)

Postby Stefan » Mon Jul 26, 2021 12:13 pm

I like how it's one click to translate the whole sentence but there are some concerns. Mainly how it only gives one translated result and doesn't consider context. The creator is also mentioning that it will become a premium service, which is understandable, but the drawback of this is that you don't know the future pricing. I also wish that it would include shortcuts to quickly moving through the words instead of relying on the mouse.
0 x

Kraut
Black Belt - 2nd Dan
Posts: 2599
Joined: Mon Aug 07, 2017 10:37 pm
Languages: German (N)
French (C)
English (C)
Spanish (A2)
Lithuanian
x 3204

Re: Elreader beta launch has arrived! (LingQ alternative)

Postby Kraut » Mon Jul 26, 2021 2:48 pm

Stefan wrote:I like how it's one click to translate the whole sentence but there are some concerns. Mainly how it only gives one translated result and doesn't consider context. The creator is also mentioning that it will become a premium service, which is understandable, but the drawback of this is that you don't know the future pricing. I also wish that it would include shortcuts to quickly moving through the words instead of relying on the mouse.

With add-ons you can refine the functions

Firefox's "Translate Man" gives you other meanings.
With "Pop-up-dictionary" https://youtu.be/JDCCVYuLLFM you can add f.ex Google Translate with example sentences etc
0 x

farukaydin
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Aug 16, 2021 3:04 pm
Languages: English, Turkish, German
x 2

Re: Elreader beta launch has arrived! (LingQ alternative)

Postby farukaydin » Mon Aug 16, 2021 4:13 pm

Hey everyone, founder of Elreader here. I have been checking the language learners forum but have missed this topic so far.

Thank you so much for all of your feedback and let me clarify all the concerns you have about Elreader.

What I would like to see is example sentences for new words, from Tatoeba, Kontextwörterbuch ...

It might be a useful feature on top of the current structure but I'm not sure how many users will request that feature and when I can start working on it. Currently, I'm bloated with all the feature requests and trying to prioritize the ones that are requested most.
But will it still be around when the sun goes down?

To be honest, it's a fair concern. I have been working on Elreader for more than 7 months and we had quite good progress in our roadmap, which you can check here: https://feedback.elreader.com/roadmap My plan is to make this project my full-time job and provide a better reading tool for the community but all of those depends on my financial independence. If I can commercialize the project in a way that I want, then the project will continue to improve, otherwise I can't promise anything which might sound like a negative thing, but I'd prefer to be transparent about it.
When you mentioned DeepL I knew that it wouldn't work for my language of choice, but I didn't expect it to only support FIGS, Portuguese, and English... :\ Of course the more sophisticated a tool becomes, the harder it is to support a wide variety of languages. Right now there isn't anything that differentiates it too much from any of the other reader apps out there, is there? So I guess I'll wait and see how it progresses, which languages they add support for and what other added-value features they may implement in the future.

We would like to and we will support different languages but again as you said it's difficult to keep the core feature-set and launch all the languages together. It's not certain yet but probably we will start supporting languages requested most in the feedback board one by one eventually.
I like how it's one click to translate the whole sentence but there are some concerns. Mainly how it only gives one translated result and doesn't consider context. The creator is also mentioning that it will become a premium service, which is understandable, but the drawback of this is that you don't know the future pricing. I also wish that it would include shortcuts to quickly moving through the words instead of relying on the mouse.

Both of them are good points. Pricing is still not certain yet so no promise about it but I'm thinking about 10$ in a month for the premium package.
For your other feedback, we recently launched the keyboard shortcuts feature, so you can start using it.

I have tried to answer all of your concerns but let me know if you have any further questions.

Cheers.
2 x


Return to “Practical Questions and Advice”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests