I’ve already talked with a couple of team-members about an idea I had. I think it’s a good idea to also share it with everyone here to gather feedback.
Problem
I’ve been reading a lot of Japanese manga and magazines lately.
However, it’s not always effortless.
I want to look up one word on a printed page, but the LingQ-integrated option today is to OCR the entire page using my phone.
However, vertical text found in many Manga and novels isn’t capable. I don’t need to scan the entire page and get a bunch of unwanted text to translate.
So I started wondering about scan translator pens. I watched a few videos and they look like they could be useful for my needs since I tend to read a lot of physical books.
This got me thinking about something…
What if a scan pen saved directly to your LingQ vocabulary?
The idea would be something like this:
Point the pen at a word in a paperback, manga, or magazine (in your target language)
It OCRs the word and surrounding sentence
Shows you the translation
Save it as a LingQ on your account.
Change word status via pen interface
Every word you look up in a paper book adds to your statistics, keep your streak alive, boost activity score, etc.
I was going to grab one of these pens regardless, but the LingQ integration makes it even more interesting.
A few questions:
1. Do you read physical books, manga, or magazines in your target language?
2. When you hit an unknown word on paper, what do you do today?
3. Would something like this actually be useful to you?
Or is this solving a problem you don’t really have?
Let me know!
P.S. The plan if there’s interest is to build a working prototype ourselves, and if the workflow actually holds up, do a small batch as challenge prizes. So no pricing to discuss yet. We’re just trying to figure out if the idea is worth building at all.
1. Do you read physical books, manga, or magazines in your target language?
I often have to purchase my books in my target language (French) physically because there Is not an electronic/Kindle version available in the US, for licensing reasons I guess. But I usually OCR them to put them into LingQ. Because it’s just too frustrating to read them outside of LingQ .
2. When you hit an unknown word on paper, what do you do today?
I avoid reading TL on paper. In rare cases I look up word on my phone
3. Would something like this actually be useful to you?
Well, LingQ essentially solved this problem for me. But I like paper and the OCR when paper is my only option can be a pain. So I could see myself using a pen like that.
1. Do you read physical books, manga, or magazines in your target language?
Truthfully i own lots of physical books and manga but don’t read them too often because of how hard it is to look up a word. I pretty much just either skip unknown words and just read what i can to sort of test myself from time to time but keep them because “one day i will be fluent enough to read them easily” lol
2. When you hit an unknown word on paper, what do you do today?
When i really want to look up a word from paper i either search up on jisho or google if i have the furigana or i just use something like translate or lens but its rare and i have never liked doing it.
3. Would something like this actually be useful to you?
If it would work for most things i think it would actually be pretty useful. Im not aware of how these things work but im thinking perhaps there could be issues with text that is either too small or too big unless there are ways around that with these types of scanners. I do like the idea of being able to easily scan a word and add it to my lingq stats on the go without having to fiddle with my phone. For me to find it useful it would have to be a quick process for me to want to keep using it. I think if it takes more than 30 seconds or so i would probably stop using it.
Lastly for Us Japanese learners, it would also have to filter out furigana as well for it to be really useful but maybe they do.
Eric, I say this out of kindness. But I would prefer that LingQ spend its resources on resuming making podcasts and expanding Mini-Stories rather than a device like this.
Some ebooks aren’t storing the text explicitely, but are using images instead. This is usually the case with mangas, I guess, but I have encountered this with text only books, too. So the “issue” isn’t restricted to physical books, only.
Personally, with the languages I am learning, I am currently not using printed books. It would make more sense if the amount of words I know is already pretty high, so I don’t have to look up a lot of them. This might be the case someday, or if I ever go back to learning Spanish, which has tons of cognates.
If I have to look up printed words or words on images a lot, I usually just use google lens, which works somewhat relyable. I am not quiet sure what the benefit of this type of pen would be, besides that you add a definition for that word in LingQ. I mean, it saves some time, but it also depends on how much the pen costs, how good it is to use and how well the ocr works. My personal experience with the latter is mixed. And considering the amount of extra words the word splitting algorithm creates especially in Japanese, as you mention it, the amount of time saved is probably neglectable, as you have to create tons of definition for what is essentially one word anyway, if you want to have it accessible all the time.
I for one don’t care about the stats or the streak at all, and using LingQ with Yomitan in my browser means I don’t have to create a defintion for every word and am still able to get a good reading flow with relatively advanced material (compared to my language level).
I would therefore second what @georgewhoyt wrote and prefer it if you would focus your energy on working on the things actually demanded or criticised by your customers, instead of adding new fancy stuff (with all the problems it will most likely be accompanied by).
Personally, this wouldn’t be useful to me as I only read ebooks in Korean. Importing Korean paper books would be too expensive for me and there are no bookshops that sell them where I live.
Although I appreciate you are trying to develop new ideas, I believe the focus should not be on introducing new gimmicks, but on improving the experience for customers. The reader for example still lacks many essential functionalities (bookmarks, notes…). The library itself is an absolute mess. Having the possibility to archive courses and organise them by folders seems more important to me than the pen idea, which I have no doubt, will come with extra issues that need fixing.
Oh…another problem, at least with the one I have is that it really required network connection. I think it did have offline for English and Chinese, but for German or anything else it required a connection. I think it would be much more useful for offline. I might then use it more for books or magazines. I think at the time I figured, if I can get online I might as well use LingQ on the phone or tablet.
Nice idea, seems good for faster access to non-latin characters.
1. Do you read physical books, manga, or magazines in your target language?
Yes I spend about 8 hours a week reading paperback in the library as part of my study routine.
2. When you hit an unknown word on paper, what do you do today?
start a free conversation with chatgpt - saying ‘translate following words from Finnish into English’ with a word and then just type the new unknown words as the next prompt as I continue reading. Gives meaningful translations and example sentences without being asked.
3. Would something like this actually be useful to you?
I would give it a try, still unsure how much of a time saver it would be over my current workflow. Swappable foreign keyboard on iPhone is perfectly fine and fast for my use case.
Would expect most users to be Advanced 2+ before attempting to read books offline, which would make it a harder sell for people on this platform.
When I read a paper book, I currently use a digital voice recorder (for notes) and Google Translate+camera. If it worked really really well and the price is reasonable, such an integrated device could be a great addition to LingQ.
Similar generic devices can be found on Amazon (look for “traduction pen”), and the reviews are not good: the lack of accuracy and speed are the major complaints.
As I expect it would cost 150-200+€, people would demand above average results.
Having worked for a few startups, this brings to mind the brand new features that external investors keep pushing for, instead of stabilising and improving on the core product.
1. Do you read physical books, manga, or magazines in your target language?
Yes, at the moment I read physical books in four target languages. Some are for pleasure, some are handbooks for work and some are just plain language course books. I also read magazines, which I buy at the trainstation when I travel. I actually like to work on/with paper. As I read a lot of foreign language content for work and in private, I’d say 50% is paperbased material. (I use ebooks only for my first and second language.)
2. When you hit an unknown word on paper, what do you do today?
Usually - if I want to know the meaning - I look it up in an online dictionary or a paper dicionary (depends on availability). And I mark the word or expression in the book and write the translation down in a little notebook. Usually I review these words before I continue the book the next time.
[Edit: Once a week I scan the lists with the words (and their context sentences ) for all languages and transfer them to my prefered SRS-app. I know that this is not the most time-saving method, but that is what works for me at the moment…]
3. Would something like this actually be useful to you?
I’m not sure. I would love to add newly learned words into LingQ without typing and using a screen. But I would want to scan the whole sentence and would want to be able to find that sentence somewhere on LingQ later.
Also, the obligatory internet connection would not be available on the train, the subway, the library, … which would lead to not using the gadget at all.
And I personally would not want a saved lingQ with an automatic google translation or AI translation.
Conditional yes (3): kindl, scrubtaku, roosterburton — all with caveats
Soft no (3): Zolka, David12scht, ericb100 — paper reading too rare / phone is fine
Hard no (5): georgewhoyt, Obsttorte, SeoulMate, alainravet1, Fer.weh — “fix the core product first”
Key signals
“Fix LingQ first”
Loudest theme across the thread, mentioned in 5 independent replies.
alainravet1’s “investor-demanded features” jab was the sharpest criticism.
Existing scan pen UX is poor
ericb100 already owns a scan pen and says positioning + connectivity issues break reading flow.
Highest-value practical feedback in the thread.
Japanese OCR remains a major pain point
Furigana handling and word-splitting came up repeatedly.
Japanese/manga is the clearest wedge market.
Paper reading is niche behavior
Zolka: ~1% of reading on paper
SeoulMate: ebooks only
kindl: already OCRs paper content into LingQ
High performance expectations
alainravet1 suggested pricing only makes sense around €150–200 if performance is clearly above average.
No, Greek is too hard. my physical books remain on the shelf.
Use Google translate, camera feature. It translates a menu live.
Basically no. I live gadgets so you have to be wary if I don’t like it. And if I did buy it, I’d rarely used it so the battery would be dead.
Make Lingq exceptional rather than this.
I just spend £25 on a double phoen holder to hold a phone that shows Lingq and a phone that controls Lingq (3,4,k, font ±, tabs for different languages etc.). using the web desspite recent improvements in Lingq. I’d want all the shortcuts on the app and smaller margins.
Consider making an app that basically used google camera translation tech and integrates with Lingq. Same benefit; people would be able to access it and minimal investment and consumer price.
Having read the above;
This is also meant with kindness. Make Lingq great, not extra stuff.
Forget the separate app.
My reaction is I’d rather not see the developers get distracted from optimizing the core functionality on Lingq, and wait a while until the translation pen technology matures.
Mostly I would want to use this pen because it’s too cumbersome to get Kindle e-books and Audible audio into Lingq.
A quick, easy, press-a-few-buttons method for ingesting Kindle and Audible content would be my first preference. Then I wouldn’t need the pen.
1. Do you read physical books, manga, or magazines in your target language?
yes, I do, often books + Audible
2. When you hit an unknown word on paper, what do you do today?
I don’t care, unless I want to focus on the vocabulary of the book for some reason, and I collect them for adding them to ANKI in the future, if relevant.
3. Would something like this actually be useful to you?
I don’t think I would spend money for this but I don’t read comics or magazines anymore, and I’m not obsessed with additing all my language knowledge to LingQ anymore. As there are many bugs, I limit my usage to LingQ on what is reliable almost 100% all the time and skip all the rest.
I definitely read a lot of stuff outside LingQ, especially on ChatGPT (I’d love to integrate mine to LingQ) or internet browsing. A Web Reader tool like ReadLang connected to our database would be 100 times more useful. Imho.
