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Ask HN: Language Learning Tool combining ebooks, translations, audiobooks
3 points by albert_e 9 months ago | hide | past | favorite | 3 comments
Is there a tool that exists for this purpose?

I have an idea to vibe-code a tool but I know I will struggle and might give up midway -- so putting this idea out here in case there are tools that do this already:

Say you want to learn a new language in a fun way -- and you pick a book you like for that purpose.

If you have an epub copy of the same book in both English and the other language, you could have a UI that displays both side-by-side with synchronized scrolling and highlighting so you can read them together. (or even interweaves paragraphs in with a different color for either language)

If you also have the MP3s of audiobooks -- the tool can optionally let you playback select portions of the text in either language.

Additional features like integration into a dictionary on click for word definitions, individual word pronunciation guides, synonyms etc would make it even more feature rich.

Is there already a tool or say a Calibre plug-in that does something like this already? Thanks!

inspiration: Reading Harry Potter in French [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89z2kPYmYps]



https://readini.com Side by side, synchronized audio, dictionary, learning words. I'm the author. Considering coming back to working on this project, with more books and languages.


Wonderful! Thanks for sharing and hope you find time to expand on this project. Good luck!

I am interested in English-French at the moment and was hoping to use sideloaded ebooks and mp3 audiobook versions - not necessarily just old classics out of copyright.

It seems there are some open source projects that replicate Amazon Whispersync (sync audio to text and highlight words/phrases as they are spoken).


Thank you. It gives me some motivation :)




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