It is wonderful to be able to access Google Translate instantly when making LingQs. In the last week or two I have found that the length of the phrases that I am able to have translated has been shortened down to about five words.
Have google decided again to ask for more money from LingQ or is something else causing this?
Also, I have made a new collection but when I try to put my latest imports into it, the box with all the collections does not come up. In fact, absolutely nothing happens when I click on the appropriate button.
As well, whenever I open any LingQ lesson, forum or whatever, the little blue circle turns and turns and turns, all night if I leave it happening (unless their is a power cut or the Internet stops functioning), even though the lesson or other page has finished downloading. This is happening even as I write this post.
Are these just more quirks from this part of the globe, or have others observed similar occurrences?
I just went through a whole lesson and didn’t have any problems. Also, the integrated Google Translate seems to be working properly with both words and phrases. Do note that if the phrase is too long, it might not all appear in the Google Translate box in the blue popup but it is still there – this is the same with user hints that are too long to fit.
Thanks, Alex. The yellow popup does not have all the words either. I have to look in the dictionary and type in the phrase manually. Could this be caused by a virus on my computer?
Is this the case for all LingQs that you’ve created or only for new ones? Also, which browser are you using?
But there are also “muffle technology” that even nic
Es gibt aber auch die “Technikmuffel”, die gar nicht wissen
Picking a phrase at random from the yellow popup, the first phrase is what appears in the hint box, the second is the phrase I hightlighted in a German lesson.
This sort of thing is what is happening all the time. I used to be able to select whole sentences without any problem.
@rae68: it is not your computer. What you described (shortening of things in google translate) happened to me last week too but things have returned to normal (since yesterday if not earlier).
Here is another example:
8 Damals versammelte Salomo die Ältesten von Israel und alle Häupter der Stämme
8 Then Solomon assembled the elders of Is
@3kingdoms Thanks for letting me know how this has been for you.
The previous example, however, was saved a few minutes ago, so things have not returned to normal for me.
It seems that it doesn’t go beyond 8 words. So it is not exactly “back to normal” but better than last week when I could see only three words in there.
Usually you could see only about five words in the pop-up box, that’s why I earlier assumed things went back to normal. Maybe we’ll have to live with a new limit.
OK, so here’s the deal. Several users were creating excessively long LingQs, even highlighting complete paragraphs to try to save them. Since Google charges per character, this was causing a significant increase in the usage of this service. Because of this, we have recently implemented a limit on the number of characters that are processed by the integrated Google Translate, and feel that the limit is reasonable for all but a few users. For those who are looking to save entire sentences by using Google Translate, instead of using the integrated option you can simply click Search Dictionary then select Google Translate as your dictionary of choice. This will allow you to use the service unrestricted, where you can feel free to copy and paste entire paragraphs or the whole lesson text if you like. You can also keep Google Translate open in another tab if you like.
LingQ was not designed with the intention of saving entire long sentences, but rather of individual words and phrases (2-5 words), so for entire sentence translation it would be best to keep Google Translate (or Bing Translator, etc.) open in another tab.
Thanks Alex for your explanation. My reason for making full clause translations is the way verbs are separated in German. Often there are quite a few words before one part of a verb and another. If I translate the bits of the verb separately the meaning is not correct.
I can easily select phrases from the print version and translate them, but this does not make a LingQ. I want to be able to turn my translation into a LingQ that connects with the lesson the original phrase came from. Otherwise I have to write it in a book. I can do this any time without using LingQ at all.
The search dictionary method is possible, but is very slow.
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Yes, that is a tricky issue for us especially since everything we do has to work for all of our languages. Somewhere in our wishlist is a function to better enable handling of these kinds of verbs. Someday…!
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Thanks Mark and Imy.
It is certainly true that a ‘one fits all’ system that works perfectly for all languages is not possible. However, there are ways around most problems if we, the users, become inventive.
Now that I have been using LingQ for more than a year, I am doing the following:
One is able to see where each word in the translation has come from in the original phrase or sentence. It is possible to change words or remove words to see what difference that makes to the translation. This method clears up some, but not all, misunderstandings for me. The extra time it takes is very beneficial.
Here is an example from today’s Wikinews in German. I had to use ‘search dictionary’ and had to type in the last German word manually.
Original sentence:
Das Unglück dürfte somit als eine der schwersten Schiffskatastrophen Südasiens in die Geschichte eingehen.
My hint:
The accident should therefore be remembered as a one of the worst maritime disasters in the history of South Asia. (somit = therefore)
I can see here how the word Katastrophen has been modified in the German text. This is a different approach from the way it is done in English.
In my example can also be seen another reason for using the sentence translation, namely the ability to clarify the use of modal verbs.
I am sure that a similar study method would work well for learning English, and probably most languages.
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Imyirtseshem, I’ve been thinking of doing the same thing myself. I just need a convenient way to grab the audio snippets of the phrases from the lessons (without spending hours chopping them up in Audacity) to make them audio so I can listen to them and repeat in my car (and maybe improve my accent a bit as well)
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Hi rae68
Looking at your sentence
"Original sentence:
Das Unglück dürfte somit als eine der schwersten Schiffskatastrophen Südasiens in die Geschichte eingehen.
My hint:
The accident should therefore be remembered as a one of the worst maritime disasters in the history of South Asia. (somit = therefore)"
or perhaps I should say looking at your hint, it isn’t obvious that “eingehen” should be translated as “remembered”. It fits perfectly of course, but it is exactly this word at the end that would throw me.
By the way, I put the original sentence into Google translate and came up with your hint word for word!