Hello. I am new to LinqQ - just signed up today. I am a bit confused about importing pages, books, sites, etc, I was under the impression that the importer would take a web page written in English (or another language) and translate it into the language that I am learning (Italian). Anything I import does not convert to Italian. It simply stays in English. Any insight would be appreciated. Many thanks!
All the importer does is take something that you find online (an article, transcript, youtube captions, etc.) and put in into a lesson in LingQ. It doesnât translate it to another language. So, if you want to import something into the language youâre learning (Italian), youâll need to find content in Italian. If youâre still just beginning in Italian, youâll probably want to begin with some of the beginner courses already on LingQ (like Who is She or the mini stories). If you already have some knowledge of Italian, here are some good sources you may find interesting to import into LingQ.
News:
rai.it
internazionale.it
essenziale.it
Other articles:
wired.it
nationalgeographic.it
The only YouTube channel in Italian that I watch that consistently has subtitles is Nova Lectio.
Note: You can only import YouTube videos if the video has manually generated captions - not auto generated captions. Importing from Netflix is also supported, though unlike YouTube, importing from Netflix only imports the transcript and not the video to go with it.
**nfera below informed me that you can actually import auto-generated captions, you just have to make sure theyâre selected as the active captions on the video before importing.
You can also find LingQâs official article on importing here:
4 Likes
@KellyK1 LingQ doesnât translate anything. You have to import Italian content. I also would not translate any English or other language content into Italian, then import it into LingQ. Itâs just not worth it. Use content written in Italian.
@rhess You can import auto-generated subtitles from YouTube. You just have to select the subtitles before using the LingQ Importer extension. Iâve done this with some of the Nova Lectio content with no âofficialâ Italian subtitles.
You have to be be somewhat cautious though, because sometimes the subtitles are wrong or misspelt. You donât really want to be wasting your time lingQing misspelt words and obviously marking misspelt words as Known.
This is why my workflow for this is to use Language Reactor and import the lesson after Iâve watched it with Language Reactor. On Android, I then go into the lesson > Vocabulary > New Words. On Android you can click on New Words (not possible on the browser). If there are multiple community definitions or I know the spelling is correct, then I mark the word as Known or lingQ it. Somewhat annoyingly, you have to mark it as Known on the browser due to this bug:
Then you can also relisten to the audio on the mobile, if your audio trimmed correctly, which, unfortunately, it often doesnât. This is why I havenât been studying any longer content on YouTube recently, because of this bug with LingQ.
3 Likes
THANK YOU so very much for your insight and suggestions!! I will definitely check out the sites for Italian content!
1 Like
Thank you!! I appreciate you taking so much time to reply to my question!! I have never heard of Language Reactor (new to language learning!), but I will check it out today! I have yet to download a YouTube lessonâŚbut itâs on my list as well as a Netflix show! Have a great day, and thanks again!!
What level are you? There is some reasonable content in the Italian library on LingQ. Both @rhess and I have added some decent stuff.
I could be in a minority here, but I donât think itâs entirely worthless or inherently bad to import something that is translated. Now, it might not be 100% accurate, but it should be relatively proper Italian. If using DeepL in particular it should be pretty good. Google translate isnât horrible either, especially for common languages.
Iâve done it for English articles I found of particular interest. Iâve translated these with DeepL and/or google translate and imported.
I do agree that the bulk of importing should be with items that are from original target language though. Thereâs definitely certain colloquialisms or phrases that may not always translate well, but on the whole I think these two do a pretty good job and often get many of these âinterestingâ uses correct nowadays.
1 Like
Youâre welcome! Just ask around the forums if you have any questions about language learning or LingQ - LingQ is a somewhat complex (but effective) platform, and language learning obviously can be hard to wrap your head around as well.
2 Likes
For what itâs worth, itâs good LingQ doesnât translate things. Or rather, we are better to find the right source material in the target language and understand it in our own language rather than rely on an app/ service to translate. A mistranslation into the target language could lead us astray whereas if LingQ canât get a translation quite right, weâll still understand the meaning.
I guess itâs similar to reading translated books or listening to dubs, but with just a little more error. As a beginner though, these errors can be very confusing and therefore itâs ill-advised.
1 Like
I am a beginner in Italian.