Show HN: Phrasing – learn every language, to any level • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Phrasing – learn every language, to any level

#51

Post by sologoub » Mon, Jan 29, 2024, 5:13 PM UTC

barrell wrote: post #19

Mordisquitos wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same is the case for the "Spanish" example, which is only barely understandable and lacks basic grammatical gender concordance: > Una carrera comparativamente segura y próspera con algún prestigio básico automático es peligrosamente tentador para alguien joven, que no ha pensado mucho sobre lo que le gusta realmente. If that's what's being presented for the world's 2nd most spoken native language and 4th most spo…

Hmmm we assumed that the translations for the Paul Graham essays would have been properly translated. Someone else pointed out a French issue earlier, both the French and Spanish examples were taken from their 'official' translation. Now I'm questioning everything. Unless we seriously messed up a copy and paste, it's possible we just used a bad source. It is a bring-your-own materials type of app, so if you bring an…

It reads as a direct word for word translation of English as opposed to native speaker conveying the overall meaning using native language idioms and such. Its very difficult to translate things word for word and have them sound „native”. That’s why when you have side by side text is something complex, like a novel, translating authors often take creative license with text to make it sound reasonable.

Re: Show HN: Phrasing – learn every language, to any level

#52

Post by barrell » Mon, Jan 29, 2024, 5:14 PM UTC

chefandy wrote: post #48

Edit: nm

I'm not sure if this is clear, but this is just a playground for Hacker News? The main homepage can be found at the root URL https://phrasing.app/

That being said, we've done exactly this, polished the landing page, and are literally working our way through all our friends and family again to refine it again. Another couple rounds and I think we might make it all clear! :D Indeed none of us are marketers so we're learning as we go :)

If you look at the waybackmachine though I think it's definitely trending in the right direction!

Re: Show HN: Phrasing – learn every language, to any level

#53

Post by aredox » Mon, Jan 29, 2024, 5:18 PM UTC

The French example is horrible. Barely sensical, very weird, absolutely not what a native person would write nor say. It looks like something someone who barely speaks French would produce.

Re: Show HN: Phrasing – learn every language, to any level

#54

Post by chefandy » Mon, Jan 29, 2024, 5:21 PM UTC

barrell wrote: post #52

chefandy wrote: post #48

Edit: nm

I'm not sure if this is clear, but this is just a playground for Hacker News? The main homepage can be found at the root URL https://phrasing.app/ That being said, we've done exactly this, polished the landing page, and are literally working our way through all our friends and family again to refine it again. Another couple rounds and I think we might make it all clear! :D Indeed none of us are marketers so we're lea…

ok-- It was not clear to me. You might want to put a big print bit at the top of the page.

Re: Show HN: Phrasing – learn every language, to any level

#55

Post by oh_sigh » Mon, Jan 29, 2024, 5:22 PM UTC

sgc wrote: post #9

Two unrelated items: I had very good results many years ago polishing the last steps of my French while in France. My tutor used very novel and interesting short articles, one example was a short article about shrimp found in a cave with no light. At the time this was a novel bit of information and quite interesting on its own. I think an effort to find novel and educational information to learn from is an effort wel…

Do you have a personal connection with Albania that would lead you to learn it? I traveled through Albania for 2 months and literally never met a person who didn't speak English or Italian...but maybe I just didn't go to the areas where people only speak Albanian.

Re: Show HN: Phrasing – learn every language, to any level

#56

Post by raitom » Mon, Jan 29, 2024, 5:23 PM UTC

aredox wrote: post #53

The French example is horrible. Barely sensical, very weird, absolutely not what a native person would write nor say. It looks like something someone who barely speaks French would produce.

Agree. As a native speaker, I found these examples to be weird at best. No way any native would write or speak like that.

Re: Show HN: Phrasing – learn every language, to any level

#57

Post by AdamH12113 » Mon, Jan 29, 2024, 5:24 PM UTC

ESMP wrote: post #44

I would use it for japanese, but after seeing these two examples of english/japanese translations in the landing page that are nonsense just make me say: no thanks. With such powerful forces leading us astray, it's not surprising we find it so hard to discover what we like to work on. しかし息子が木から落ちたり、娘が妊娠させられたりしたときには、そうした結末に対処せざるを得ない。規律 Actually they've been told three lies: the stuff they've been taught to regard as…

To be clear, some of the example translations given for Japanese seem to be for the wrong parts of the documents.

Phrasing English: I am not suited to this world.

Phrasing Japanese: それなのに大人たちは、自分たちのやっている事が好きだと言い張る。

Actual meaning: Despite this, adults insist that they like what they do.

Phrasing English: It's hard to find work you love; it must be, if so few do.

Phrasing Japanese: 数十億人のうち、おそらく二、三十万人といったところだろう。好きな仕事を見つけるのは難しい。

Actual meaning: Probably 2-300,000 out of billions of people. It's hard to find a job you like.

Re: Show HN: Phrasing – learn every language, to any level

#58

Post by barrell » Mon, Jan 29, 2024, 5:26 PM UTC

wmil wrote: post #35

`env.js` is returning html for me and thus throwing an error. Is it working for everyone else? Is this a cloudflare config problem?

hahaha this is a debugging trick we use to be able to run production builds locally through proxy servers :) is it causing issues for you (besides logging a 404)?

Re: Show HN: Phrasing – learn every language, to any level

#59

Post by barrell » Mon, Jan 29, 2024, 5:27 PM UTC

chefandy wrote: post #54

barrell wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if this is clear, but this is just a playground for Hacker News? The main homepage can be found at the root URL https://phrasing.app/ That being said, we've done exactly this, polished the landing page, and are literally working our way through all our friends and family again to refine it again. Another couple rounds and I think we might make it all clear! :D Indeed none of us are marketers so we're lea…

ok-- It was not clear to me. You might want to put a big print bit at the top of the page.

just did :)

Re: Show HN: Phrasing – learn every language, to any level

#60

Post by sgc » Mon, Jan 29, 2024, 5:29 PM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #55

sgc wrote: post #9

Two unrelated items: I had very good results many years ago polishing the last steps of my French while in France. My tutor used very novel and interesting short articles, one example was a short article about shrimp found in a cave with no light. At the time this was a novel bit of information and quite interesting on its own. I think an effort to find novel and educational information to learn from is an effort wel…

Do you have a personal connection with Albania that would lead you to learn it? I traveled through Albania for 2 months and literally never met a person who didn't speak English or Italian...but maybe I just didn't go to the areas where people only speak Albanian.

Not all Albanians speak another language, especially among the older generations who have a lot of wisdom to impart. And yes, of course I have reasons to learn it.