Does Import Convert to Target Language?

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 doesn’t translate it to another language. So, if you want to import something into the language you’re learning (Italian), you’ll need to find content in Italian. If you’re still just beginning in Italian, you’ll 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 they’re selected as the active captions on the video before importing.

You can also find LingQ’s official article on importing here:

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@KellyK1 LingQ doesn’t 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. It’s 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. I’ve done this with some of the Nova Lectio content with no ‘official’ Italian subtitles.

You have to be be somewhat cautious though, because sometimes the subtitles are wrong or misspelt. You don’t 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 I’ve 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 doesn’t. This is why I haven’t been studying any longer content on YouTube recently, because of this bug with LingQ.

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THANK YOU so very much for your insight and suggestions!! I will definitely check out the sites for Italian content!

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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 lesson…but it’s 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 don’t think it’s 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 isn’t horrible either, especially for common languages.

I’ve done it for English articles I found of particular interest. I’ve 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. There’s 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 “interesting” uses correct nowadays.

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You’re 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.

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For what it’s worth, it’s good LingQ doesn’t 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 can’t get a translation quite right, we’ll still understand the meaning.

I guess it’s 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 it’s ill-advised.

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I am a beginner in Italian.