Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI

talk.quazel.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 354 posts

Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI

#211

Post by Hadjimina »

crazygringo wrote: post #187

I tried using it in Portuguese and it's cool but it seems very off, just a huge number of things that don't sound even remotely natural or idiomatic. But when I click the translate button, the English translation is a perfectly reasonable thing to say. SO... I'm highly suspecting that, behind the scenes, the "real" conversation is happening in English, and it's translating in both directions. Which is always going to…

I'll take this as an A+ this . Joking aside, we really are just getting started and there are still kinks to iron out. In our core team we speak about 5 languages well enough to judge the quality of the conversations, but the others are more difficult to judge.

Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI

#213

Post by Agentlien »

englishrookie wrote: post #200
crazygringo wrote: post #187

I tried using it in Portuguese and it's cool but it seems very off, just a huge number of things that don't sound even remotely natural or idiomatic. But when I click the translate button, the English translation is a perfectly reasonable thing to say. SO... I'm highly suspecting that, behind the scenes, the "real" conversation is happening in English, and it's translating in both directions. Which is always going to…

Based on just a few exchanges in Dutch (I'm a native speaker), I'd say it's pretty good. The conversation sounds pretty natural (albeit shallow). Maybe the quality differs per language?

I tried it out in both Dutch (fluent) and Swedish (native speaker). The Dutch seemed fine. In Swedish most of it was perfectly ordinary Swedish except one response seemed like awkwardly translated English.

Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI

#214

Post by richrichardsson »

Hadjimina wrote: post #183
phpisatrash wrote: post #2

It really looks cool. But, why it doesn't have English? Or meybe if it does have, why isn't showed first? People who use language learning apps are focused in learning English most of the time. Still those who speak fluently are trying to improve their speaking and listening. And the first language which appeared for me was Brazilian Portuguese which is my mother language. [Edit] I was trying the Brazilian Portuguese…

Hahah I have a super silly response for this one: It's simply because we have not gotten around to translate the UI and everything into other languages besides english. That's why we simple assume people know english, since they need to be able to know at least some english to use it. But it's high on our to-do list.

I think you misunderstood what they're missing: the ability to converse and practise English, given it's a foreign language for some people.

Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI

#215

Post by Hadjimina »

PetrBrzyBrzek wrote: post #85

It's super slow for me.

What device did you use and how was your internet connection? Still super early days so innefficiency in some parts of the code are to be expected. (TBH I am surprised that it still more or less works and did not completely crash)

Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI

#216

Post by Quazel_S »

englishrookie wrote: post #200
crazygringo wrote: post #187

I tried using it in Portuguese and it's cool but it seems very off, just a huge number of things that don't sound even remotely natural or idiomatic. But when I click the translate button, the English translation is a perfectly reasonable thing to say. SO... I'm highly suspecting that, behind the scenes, the "real" conversation is happening in English, and it's translating in both directions. Which is always going to…

Based on just a few exchanges in Dutch (I'm a native speaker), I'd say it's pretty good. The conversation sounds pretty natural (albeit shallow). Maybe the quality differs per language?

Yes exactly. Currently there are slight quality differences depending on the chosen language. We're working on improvements in all languages.

Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI

#217

Post by sebastiansm »

swyx wrote: post #115
sebastiansm wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I been looking for a few months for services to improve my English in a cheap/free way. Until now some Discord channels have been my solution to practice conversation, but it would be nice to have this kind of service to speak anytime about any topic.

for what its worth what you just typed is completely indistinguishable from a native speaker, well done

The advantage of typing is that I can erase and improve what I'm trying to communicate. In real time I struggle thinking about pronunciation and if what I'm saying is correct or understandable by the other person.

Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI

#218

Post by Hadjimina »

nonasktell wrote: post #6

Cool!(but yeah english is really important!!) which models do you use for speech recognition and text generation?

Yup english is top of at the top of the to-do list. We use some APIs from a few different big players. One that I want to highligh which is waayy better than the rest is Microsoft speech to text, which not only recognized what you say but can also do punctuation and capitalization. Instead of "do you like to eat pizza" which is what google speech to text would give you, microsoft recognizes it as "Do you like to eat pizza?". Small but important difference.

Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI

#219

Post by Rooster61 »

swyx wrote: post #116
kleiba wrote: post #70

This is a nice idea but unfortunately not for me: I'd feel uncomfortable sending recordings of my voice to some cloud service I have no trust in.

good thing it doesnt require login at all?

Yes, it does

Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI

#220

Post by madmod »

Hadjimina wrote: post #208
madmod wrote: post #125

As someone who is studying Japanese intensely with a tutor this is absolutely perfect for me! Being able to do some speaking and listening practice instantly at any time is exactly what I need! A few feature requests: - save conversations and come back to them - history of past conversations - auto speak the sentence - larger buttons particularly for the microphone

- Noted - Noted - Not 100% sure what you mean with that. So, you want to automatically speak a sentence that you enter in translator? The normal messages you get from the AI, should already be spoken automatically (though I had to implement a hack on safari, b.c. you can't automatically play audio there) - Noted

The mobile safari hack may not be working for me. I’m on the latest iOS and had the issue in the browser and in the PWA home screen version. It might be an issue with the first sentence only but I haven't tested enough to be sure.
Post reply on HN