Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Toucan is better for language learning. It replaces words in a page with your target language.

https://jointoucan.com/




Alas toucan is a security nightmare (or was it when I tried it last year) - it was sending all the URLs I was visiting to the server - even local host stuff I was running on my machine. I checked that by using a local proxy and looking at all requests made to the toucan servers.

While I love the idea, I don’t trust the company with my complete surfing history. What they should have done is to have me opt into each website that I want to use toucan on and do not do anything if I visit others.


Crazy idea, if local LLMs are good enough to translate languages reliably, an open source extension that translates every page you visit would be so incredibly useful. You don't even have to change your habits, just carry on like normal, but while becoming a language sponge.

I guess you can already do this with Chrome's built-in translation, but that built-in translation leaves a lot to be desired, doesn't it?


Hm, I really don't get Toucan.

So it's doesn't appear to even attempt show the grammar of the target language, including the very basics, such as the word order.

Even for vocabulary acquisition, how is one going to learn noun classes (genders), case endings and articles, things like German separable verbs etc?




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: