Android wizards: is this feature possible?

[Soclydeza]

I've always though how nice it would be if there was a feature that could do this: when you hold your finger on a word to select it, you can send that words to another app or something; essentially allowing you to easily create a vocab list (in a single note) of unknown words from articles, ebooks, etc. that you can go back to later. Keep in mind, I don't mean anything that automatically translates the words, just collects them all in one place.

Every few months I go back and try to figure this out, since this seems like such a fundamental feature (not just for language learning) that someone had to of thought of it already.

Does anyone know of a way of accomplishing this in simple, flowing way?

**Note: I can do it with individual words that make individual notes on, say, Evernote or Google Keep, but this is just clunky and unnecessary. I'm looking for all words to end up in one file.

If you need me to clarify what I mean, just let me know. Thanks!

[Tomás]

For the Chrome browser try Readlang, which saves every word or phrase you ask it to translate, which you can later export to Anki. I have not yet personally tried the export feature; I'm just reporting on the feature list on the Readlang website. I think it's a great add-on and use it regularly.

For ebook files, some readers allow you to highlight words or phrases and then later export your collection of highlights -- for that book -- as a .txt file. With a little find-and-replace magic, it should be easy enough to turn that .txt file into a .csv file for import into Anki.

[emk]

I've always though how nice it would be if there was a feature that could do this: when you hold your finger on a word to select it, you can send that words to another app or something; essentially allowing you to easily create a vocab list (in a single note) of unknown words from articles, ebooks, etc. that you can go back to later. Keep in mind, I don't mean anything that automatically translates the words, just collects them all in one place.

Every few months I go back and try to figure this out, since this seems like such a fundamental feature (not just for language learning) that someone had to of thought of it already.

Does anyone know of a way of accomplishing this in simple, flowing way?

There's a really nice way to do this on Android 6 with Google Translate, but it's not obvious. This will work in the Chrome app and most standard apps, but not the Kindle app. (For that, you can try logging into kindle.amazon.com and looking for your highlights there.)

1. Select some text in any app that supports regular copy-and-paste.
2. Wait for the floating popup menu with "copy", etc., to appear next to the text. Click on the three vertical dots on the right, then select "Translate". This will give you a translation on the spot.
3. Later, go to the "Translate" app on your phone. It will show a list of all the words you've recently translated. You can "star" individual words, which will add them to your glossary.
4. Click on the three vertical dots at the top right, and select "Glossary" (or "Dictionary", or whatever they call it in English). Click on the buttons to set up synchronization with other devices.
5. Go to translate.google.com and click on the glossary icon near the top right. It looks like a book with a bookmark.
6. Export your vocabulary to Google Sheets. From there, you can do anything you want with it, including download it.

The Google Translate app for Android is rather nice, and definitely worth exploring a bit.

For the programmers in the audience, there are two major ways to capture selected text on Android:

• All versions: Receiving text via ACTION_SEND intents (the "share" option for selections)
• Android 6: Using the brand-new floating menu of text actions

So if anybody wants to build a solution besides Google Translate, there's a couple different ways you could integrate it.

[Tomás]

Very nice, thanks. Once you set it up, does Google update the spreadsheet regularly as part of the sync, or do you need to do that by hand?

[Soclydeza]

Wow, awesome advice! I never heard of Readlang before, I've already added it to my routine! And that Google Translate hack will help me with a lot of stuff I've been trying to do. Thanks guys!

[Montmorency]

Wow, awesome advice! I never heard of Readlang before, I've already added it to my routine! And that Google Translate hack will help me with a lot of stuff I've been trying to do. Thanks guys!

Readlang is really good, and deserves more publicity I think. IIRC, the author used to post on HTLAL from time to time. I don't know if he has discovered ALLF yet.