Language Transfer

[Cavesa]

German is a language I am learning, but the course is unlikely to never get finished, that is another point. I don't mind waiting, I do mind false promises.

But that's another reason the FIGS focus is so maddening to me. The people who are voting for FIGS are clearly all willing to wait, which seems to suggest they're not actually that serious, because they could have just gone out and learned the language in the meantime -- there are plenty of good resources out there that they could use (many of the paying supporters would have been able to buy the full MT course in their chosen language with what they've put into LT so far).

It leaves the proposition as ludicrous.
Reach into your pockets to pay for a course in a language chosen by people who probably won't even use it, and never actually get something that you want.

Not sure whether you are criticising me in particular. I am not complaining I didn't get German "on time". I actually did exactly what you suggest. I paid for a good quality course. And I am now beyond the level of the LT German course. As I said, I don't mind waiting. It is just stupid that a course, that has already been started and promised and written on the dashboard, gets put aside constantly by new and new projects.

I think you may have misunderstood that I completely agree with you

You are right. I actually don't think MT is worth the money, but there are so many resources for the FIGS, that you can choose the style you want, and also the price. For German or Spanish learners, there are tons of good free resources and also a lot of excellent resources under 25 euro. Good luck trying to find such a resource paradise for the Arabic or Swahili learners.

I'd be willing to wait for various courses and pay a small monthly contribution and patiently wait for any course I'd be very interested to try (Hebrew, Farsi, Lithuanian). But I am no longer convinced that a course I'd like to see will EVER be chosen, because the Introduction and Complete courses for all the romance languages will skip them. And I no longer think that even the courses I would like to contribute to despite not learning the language, such as Complete Turkish or Arabic, will EVER get done either.

I don't even understand the commissioning anymore. I thought Swahili would logically precede all the other courses and get done fast. But it doesn't look so. That might discourage future commissioners too.

[Cainntear]

Not sure whether you are criticising me in particular. I am not complaining I didn't get German "on time". I actually did exactly what you suggest. I paid for a good quality course. And I am now beyond the level of the LT German course. As I said, I don't mind waiting. It is just stupid that a course, that has already been started and promised and written on the dashboard, gets put aside constantly by new and new projects.

I think you may have misunderstood that I completely agree with you

I wasn't criticising you at all (you're clearly a serious language learner) and I'm sorry if it came across that way. I completely agree with everything you say.

[Random Review]

Mihalis is on his own journey and I totally respect his right to take whatever path he chooses with all but one of his courses. I am also grateful for the wonderful Greek course, which I have used.
The exception is Swahili. That course was paid for by someone. He needs to suck it up and finish it properly or no one will ever commission another course from LT.

I wish him very well in his new direction.

[Cainntear]

Mihalis is on his own journey and I totally respect his right to take whatever path he chooses

But equally his potential supporters have a right to choose whether to support him or not, and he needs people who currently aren't supporting him to make a choice to start.

Any criticism presented here should be given due consideration as an explanation of why we're not paying, and not dismissed as disrespecting his right to free choice. These are points he needs to address if he wants to increase his subscriber base. Yes, he's free to ignore them, but defending him from feedback from his target market leaves him continuing on a path that has proven unsuccessful for several years running.

[Random Review]

Mihalis is on his own journey and I totally respect his right to take whatever path he chooses

But equally his potential supporters have a right to choose whether to support him or not, and he needs people who currently aren't supporting him to make a choice to start.

Any criticism presented here should be given due consideration as an explanation of why we're not paying, and not dismissed as disrespecting his right to free choice. These are points he needs to address if he wants to increase his subscriber base. Yes, he's free to ignore them, but defending him from feedback from his target market leaves him continuing on a path that has proven unsuccessful for several years running.

In my case, I guess I didn't make the effort because I took him for granted and so kept putting it off for later; but FWIW if he made contributing as easy as Amazon (for example) make buying ebooks and audiobooks, I'd have been contributing a long time ago.

[Cainntear]

In my case, I guess I didn't make the effort because I took him for granted and so kept putting it off for later; but FWIW if he made contributing as easy as Amazon (for example) make buying ebooks and audiobooks, I'd have been contributing a long time ago.

Unfortunately that is one of the realities of business planning -- most of your theoretical customer/subscriber base never get around to being actual customers/subscribers. The reason I don't do very well whenever I'm working as a self-employed tutor is that I'm really not good at "conversion" of interested parties into actual students. Mihalis's strategy seemed to be "build it and they will come" and he built it and they didn't come. There is no marketing push behind it and there is no public awareness. I've only ever looked at his material very briefly so can't talk about its overall quality, but it seems pretty damned good for free.

I know Duolingo got to market dominance through word of mouth only, but it was starting from a different place.
Luis von Ahn was already famous for inventing "reCAPTCHA", the system that took those annoying "are you a human?" CAPTCHAs and put them to good use by using the data to help digitise old books.
Duolingo was originally imagined and pitched to the world as basically being "reCAPTCHA for translation" and that got it heaps of immediate press. The original concept may have gone, but that was a vital part of brand awareness and gave it the initial boost it needed. Of course, the fact that von Ahn had an obscenely huge bank account after reCAPTCHA was bought by Google and was plugged into a near-limitless network of venture capital didn't hurt either.

Marketing is important, like it or not, and at the moment the only thing pushing the project is a website that isn't very clear (it's bad enough that there are so many incomplete courses there, but sometimes there's no indication whether there's a complete course or not, and there's one listed as "a course", but when you click on it it tells you that it's been chosen but you'll need to pay enough on Patreon for him to make it) and a YouTube channel with a guy getting increasingly disillusioned but not actually addressing any of the underlying problems in the model he's following.

Don't beat yourself up over it -- you're simply being a normal human.

[crush]

I don't even understand the commissioning anymore. I thought Swahili would logically precede all the other courses and get done fast. But it doesn't look so. That might discourage future commissioners too.

I've been wondering about that as well. He's sent out requests for Swahili speakers to help proofread etc. but at this point it might just make sense to make a short trip for a couple months to southeast Africa and try to finish it up. It's been what, a year and a half, two years now? I also don't really see the point in the "introduction" courses, as all of the courses including the "complete" ones are really just introductions to the language.

I'm also a little bummed by the prevalence of FIGS in the upcoming courses, though to be fair the Spanish course really is top-quality, i personally haven't used it (came out about a decade too late for me, i'm afraid), but i have recommended it to several friends and they have all had great experiences with it. What interested me in the project and got me to donate in the early days before the Patreon site was the prospect of Greek and Turkish. I waited a long time for Complete Greek to come out and i'm not sure that we'll ever see Turkish, but while the recording quality isn't always that great the content and course itself is still amazing.

I've been toying with the idea of commissioning a Basque course for a few years now, but the first commissioned course is still under development and seems to be on the backburner... Being in Spain would probably make a Basque course much easier to put together than a Swahili one, though. Also, releasing "tools" or a general guideline into how he goes about tackling a new language would also open the stage up for other volunteers to take part, but not having control over the whole process might make quality control more difficult. That's been something Mihalis has been talking about since my early e-mails in 2011. I've also gotten in touch about actively participating myself in the project but haven't had much of a response on Mihalis' part.

I'm still very excited about the project and once the FIGS courses are out of the way i'm sure we will see a much more varied/interesting selection of languages, with LT you just have to learn how to wait and be patient, i suppose!

[Cavesa]

You're absolutely right Basque would be a great choice for a commissioned course, given his recent location. But there are still the others in the way. I am also surprised why he didn't just go and spend a bit of time to a place with many Swahili speakers. He is unlikely to find any in the usual destinations he travels to.

It is true that the marketing part is underdeveloped. The "complete courses" links leading to incomplete courses or not even started ones, that is a bad way to present the work. The quality of the courses themselves is very good. But the presentation is horrible

Sure, patience is necessary. Patience goes together with paying regularly. Lack of hope anything will come out of it does not. FIGS won't be out of the way ever. Despite the obvious result of the next voting wave, he still makes "Introductory courses", and will then start new "Complete" courses for Italian and French. German is never likely to get finished. And there is already Spanish remake being planned. There are never gonna be courses for the more interesting languages. So, why pay for something that is neither useful to me, nor it is a good cause I'd like to pay for even without profiting directly?

[Cainntear]

He's sent out requests for Swahili speakers to help proofread etc. but at this point it might just make sense to make a short trip for a couple months to southeast Africa and try to finish it up. It's been what, a year and a half, two years now?

I suspect the weakest point of his strategy is relying on volunteers. In reality, that rarely works. Volunteers are very, very hard to tie down, for various reasons. And besides, if this is his job, why shouldn't it be theirs too? Obviously, right now he doesn't have enough money to pay them, so he can't.

If quoting for a commission, he should either quote for the full cost of doing it right or leave it as the commissioner's responsibility to find the volunteers for him (so, for example, a language activism group could commission him to make a course for them, and their members could record the audio).

Sadly, he seems to have accepted a commission for something that he couldn't do in-house, without the commission covering the part that he couldn't do. No-one got what they wanted, and the person who actually made money out of the deal is effectively blaming people who weren't party to the deal and didn't spontaneously emerge to offer free labour -- this doesn't inspire confidence.

To get me to contribute in future, I'd have to see a lot more certainty in the process, so that he can actually deliver what he promises.

If he was to put up a Kickstarter for to produce courses in English->Basque and Spanish->Basque, and he had the voices he needed budgeted for and people on board, as well as a sound engineer budgeted for, I might actually chip in. It would take a lot of cash -- equivalent to several years worth of what he's currently drawing in off Patreon -- but that's what it would take to get the job done.

[crush]

FIGS won't be out of the way ever. Despite the obvious result of the next voting wave, he still makes "Introductory courses", and will then start new "Complete" courses for Italian and French. German is never likely to get finished. And there is already Spanish remake being planned.

Yeah, i was really surprised to hear about a "Spanish remake". I don't honestly see the point of that. I also saw people "voting" for it (the voting system is a bit haphazard, not sure how he keeps track of everything, seems like a lot of wasted effort if you ask me). However, i do think FIGS will eventually be done, his location in Spain definitely makes those courses easier in any case. I'm not holding my breath on any of them and i don't think any of the more interesting courses (with the exception possibly of Arabic) will be done while they are still of any use to me, but i'm hoping they will be useful to others some day, assuming he doesn't get too jaded with the whole process.

I suspect the weakest point of his strategy is relying on volunteers. In reality, that rarely works. Volunteers are very, very hard to tie down, for various reasons. And besides, if this is his job, why shouldn't it be theirs too? Obviously, right now he doesn't have enough money to pay them, so he can't.

I think all your points are spot on. In one of the recent e-mails i believe he mentioned wanting to be able to pay volunteers, probably wouldn't be very much but it would be a start. In that regard, i imagine smaller minority/regional languages would be much easier to create, especially in Barcelona there are a lot of people passionate about Catalan and Basque, it might even be easier to find volunteers for these two languages than for Spanish. For Basque, i could find him the volunteers, but i'd like to see more effort being put into the current commissioned language. He's been doing this for several years now, so he could just be getting tired. It would be nice to see the project decentralized a bit, perhaps with Mihalis retaining creative control over the whole process.

I donated in the past and after thinking about it the last couple days decided $5/month isn't going to kill me, and i really do want the project to succeed. There are a lot of complications, i'm not really interested in the FIGS courses (maybe 10 or 15 years ago), i also haven't looked at any of the courses for languages he doesn't already speak well (English, Spanish, and Greek), but i really want it to work.