Foreign Dispatch: Ideas from code editors applied to foreign language writing
1–10 of 18 posts
Re: Foreign Dispatch: Ideas from code editors applied to foreign language writing
#2Note you might be interested in looking at interactive machine translation systems and the associated research papers - for example Lilt [1, 2] or TransSmart [3, 4] - while those are designed for professional translators rather than for language learners, what they do is very similar to your long-term aims for this project (a specialized MT system that, given a partially written translation to the foreign language and some context written in in the user's native language, suggests the following word).
[1] https://lilt.com/technology/translate [2] https://lilt.com/research [3] https://transmart.qq.com/ [4] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2105.13072.pdf
Re: Foreign Dispatch: Ideas from code editors applied to foreign language writing
#3Love the idea!
Are you planning to keep the core tool stack OSS?
Would love to contribute to growing the project in the long term.
I imagine there could be avenues for monetization while keeping it OSS (e.g. Licence for business use)
Re: Foreign Dispatch: Ideas from code editors applied to foreign language writing
#4Wonderful idea, Viel Glück.
Re: Foreign Dispatch: Ideas from code editors applied to foreign language writing
#5Great idea. I wanted to use pmd to learn some subtle aspects of Java. Tool-assisted learning. It's either operate on existing code and learn the conventions and techniques, or write hundreds of programs in the language.
From a maintenance perspective, it's a superpower.
Re: Foreign Dispatch: Ideas from code editors applied to foreign language writing
#6I had this idea (and way down the list on things i planned executing on) but I'm very glad you're doing it so I can enjoy it without having to
Re: Foreign Dispatch: Ideas from code editors applied to foreign language writing
#7Great idea. I wanted to use pmd to learn some subtle aspects of Java. Tool-assisted learning. It's either operate on existing code and learn the conventions and techniques, or write hundreds of programs in the language. From a maintenance perspective, it's a superpower.
I thought the idea sounded interesting, but it appears to be very narrowly focused on the problem of "I'd like to write something in [German], but I don't know [German] all that well". I'm more interested in the problem of "I'd like to read something in [German]". The "right way" to solve the problem of knowing how to write something in German is, unfortunately, to read several dozen examples of people writing similar things.
Dictionary entries are complex things. (Well, often they aren't, but they should be. The amount of information one dictionary entry needs to provide is quite large.) I don't see a lot of value in having the editor pop up abbreviated dictionary entries for words that I know I need to look up. If I know that, I can look up the word in a high-quality dictionary and benefit from a much fuller entry.
Re: Foreign Dispatch: Ideas from code editors applied to foreign language writing
#8Great idea. I wanted to use pmd to learn some subtle aspects of Java. Tool-assisted learning. It's either operate on existing code and learn the conventions and techniques, or write hundreds of programs in the language. From a maintenance perspective, it's a superpower.
I thought the idea sounded interesting, but it appears to be very narrowly focused on the problem of "I'd like to write something in [German], but I don't know [German] all that well". I'm more interested in the problem of "I'd like to read something in [German]". The "right way" to solve the problem of knowing how to write something in German is, unfortunately, to read several dozen examples of people writing simila…
That's a good approach: one should read many examples in German to learn writing it that way, whether fiction, or news, or mathematics.
Foreign Dispatch looks to eventually be an ensemble of tools. Autocomplete being the first, with one-for-one analogs of programming: linter, in-line documentation, and language server.
Going back to your writing concept, how cool would it be to pop up snippets of German literature for similar sentences in context? That would be neat.
Re: Foreign Dispatch: Ideas from code editors applied to foreign language writing
#9Great idea. I wanted to use pmd to learn some subtle aspects of Java. Tool-assisted learning. It's either operate on existing code and learn the conventions and techniques, or write hundreds of programs in the language. From a maintenance perspective, it's a superpower.
I thought the idea sounded interesting, but it appears to be very narrowly focused on the problem of "I'd like to write something in [German], but I don't know [German] all that well". I'm more interested in the problem of "I'd like to read something in [German]". The "right way" to solve the problem of knowing how to write something in German is, unfortunately, to read several dozen examples of people writing simila…
> I'm more interested in the problem of "I'd like to read something in [German]"
Something can be done here. Books with aligned/inlined/popup translations, tracking known/unknown vocabulary, spaced repetition for new words.
Re: Foreign Dispatch: Ideas from code editors applied to foreign language writing
#10I think it should be "Ich ziehe Sauerteig vor." (or in past tense, "Ich zog Sauerteig vor"). "Zuge" is not a word[1]. So yes, a kind of spelling+grammar linter would be great I guess!