Sometimes when I’m importing chapters of books they are too long for a single lesson. I get an error message and I have to chop the chapter into smaller chunks before LingQ will accept them. I therefore have maximum lesson length defined by programming constraints rather than by my needs as a learner.
It’s just a thought, but could LingQ pick a maximum lesson length that corresponds to the level of the material? Eg if I am importing Japanese at beginner 1, a limit of 3 minutes audio or whatever the equivalent in writing would be, whereas for German I can cope with 15 minutes at a stretch. That would mean adding a stage to the import process where the importer must state the intended level of the material. If you don’t specify then the default would be 60000 characters or whatever it currently stands at. It would stop people like me from uploading lessons that are too long to be of practical use for the intended level.
We limit the length of the lessons that you can import not just in order to ensure that they are suitable for the intended level. We have to have a limit to prevent people from uploading extremely long texts and audio files and tying up our resources. It is not practical that we would set up a system of multiple levels of importing content; we simply have too many other things to do. We will look into increasing the number of words that can be imported but in the meantime splitting texts in two is the only way to go.
Thanks Mark! 6000 words works out to about 20 pages of a novel like Angeles y Demonios which would add up to about 30 files for the whole novel if someone was interested in reading the whole thing in Linq. Is the audio limit based in minutes at a certain kbps or is it in bytes?
The audio limit is in MB or minutes, 15 MB or 25 minutes. Just in case you’re considering it, you are also not allowed to record Angels and Demons and post it on the site since the book is presumably copyrighted.
Yes of course, I was just using it as an example, I have the professionally made fonolibro unabridged recording en español which I bought and highly recommend.
You are of course allowed to import Angels and Demons (in any language you like) plus audio if you’ve got it, for your own private study. You just can’t publish it (i.e. share it with those of us who haven’t bought the ebook and audio book).
I fancy reading it in Russian.
10 000 words seems a very reasonable lesson size limit to me, most short stories and chapters of novels come within that. Maybe not The Lord of the Rings, but that’s got exceptionally looooong chapters.
Is there any advantage to uploading audio if you’re not sharing and you already own it? It seems to me you could just add the listening time in your profile if you want to track it, right?