Show HN: Learn Japanese contextually while browsing
Posted by englishcat 7 hours ago
Hi HN,
Just wanted to share a tool i've been working on to help with my own study routine. It’s a browser extension called Lingoku.
The idea is simple: we spend hours browsing the web in English every day. This tool replaces some of the english words with Japanese vocabulary based on your japanese level (Similar to Toucan, but with a better user experience).
It’s basically an attempt to make the "i+1" method actually passive, you understand the sentence because it's mostly english, but you pick up Japanese words naturally from the context. It uses an LLM in the backend to make sure the translations fit the context (so it distinguishes between different meanings of the same word).
since it uses paid AI APIs for the words replacement, I couldn't make it 100% free (server costs are real, unfortunately). However, there is a "forever free" plan with daily credits that doesn't require a credit card. it should be enough for casual daily browsing.
I built this because I struggle with Anki burnout and wanted a way to review words without feeling like i am "studying"
It supports Chrome, Edge, and Firefox now. would love any feedback or feature requests!
Comments
Comment by madmod 7 minutes ago
Comment by socalgal2 10 minutes ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcolM6W5Odc
TL;DW you have to use the words
Comment by skeledrew 40 minutes ago
Comment by englishcat 3 minutes ago
Comment by FuturisticLover 1 hour ago
Comment by marak830 1 hour ago
Edit: Decided to make my own firefox addon to do it, no worry about daily limits and I can simply update a json file with more words when I feel like I'm remembering things.
Comment by terhechte 17 minutes ago
Comment by laurieg 4 hours ago
I find that students of Japanese often have enough grammar to read widely after finishing a couple of beginner textbooks, but they are completely held back by vocabulary.
Comment by englishcat 2 hours ago
For this scenario, we will translate the Japanese text completely into English first, then inject japanese words in to the english text, the translated text with the injected Japanese words is displayed next to the original material.
This is the main feature I've been using myself, you can try it out and see if it's the feature you want.
Comment by quamserena 3 hours ago
Comment by vunderba 5 hours ago
I have a personal extension that I wrote (close to 12 years ago at this point) which does the same thing - translates random words on websites as you browse according to your linguistic level. It vastly predates LLMs though so it's all built on sentence segmentation, POS analysis for stemming, and other NLP techniques.
I've written a bunch of integrations for it so it works with websites, documents, even Kindle books.
https://mordenstar.com/projects/linguaswap
Now onto some feedback:
The site is visually a bit of a mess. The nav bar anchors but not to the top of the viewport (scroll and watch). Some of the cards are also different sizes. Some of the text isn't properly spaced (look for the colons).
Comment by skeledrew 26 minutes ago
Comment by englishcat 4 hours ago
LLM's makes this kind of words substitution more easier and accurate. we have also tried some methods like NLP, but effect is mediocre, but if we want use it in specific scenarios, NLP maybe more efficient.
The website's visual design definitely needs improvement. we are currently work on it.
Comment by LandenLove 4 hours ago
Comment by Larrikin 2 hours ago
Comment by gabmartini 1 hour ago
Comment by atrus 5 hours ago
Comment by englishcat 5 hours ago
Comment by bw86 54 minutes ago
Is that just my Debian/Firefox system? Or is "AI slop" the reason here?
Comment by englishcat 22 minutes ago
I tried the above words in Chrome, and got the same problem. sorry about that, our tool is far from perfect. this is a bug in the extension, we will fix it asap.
Comment by jedbrooke 4 hours ago
is there a possibility of using local llm endpoints for this?
Comment by englishcat 3 hours ago
We will seriourly consider the point of support local llm, this will also allow more users to utilize our basic functions.
Comment by ermacaz 1 hour ago
Comment by ekropotin 3 hours ago
As a struggling lifelong English learner I had an exactly same idea, but for English.
Comment by jz391 5 hours ago
Comment by englishcat 4 hours ago
Comment by OgsyedIE 5 hours ago
Comment by englishcat 5 hours ago
Yes, we will prioritize support for Safari, Opera, and Arc. Support for other browsers will be added as needed.
Comment by shiroiuma 4 hours ago
Comment by englishcat 3 hours ago
Comment by JanetteNews 5 hours ago
Comment by caryzhang1 5 hours ago
Comment by xhevahir 2 hours ago
Translating everything into your native language is pretty universally considered a very bad habit in language pedagogy.
Comment by rickcarlino 2 hours ago
I’ve been experimenting with monolingual vocab this month but it is too soon to say if I like it or not: https://rickcarlino.com/notes/korean-language/monolingual-vo...