The Linguist is a languages magazine for professional linguists, translators, interpreters, language professionals, language teachers, trainers, students and academics with articles on translation, interpreting, business, government, technology
Issue link: https://thelinguist.uberflip.com/i/1035089
@Linguist_CIOL oCToBeR/noVeMBeR The Linguist 21 FEATURES Thebig idea Q What's the vision behind Lingopolo? A it's an online language-learning service from any language to any language, which is free to use and collaborative in terms of who creates the content. Because so many people can collaborate on it, it can be better than commercial offerings in terms of languages covered and the depth of coverage within each language. ultimately, it is a deposit of words and phrases with clever software that crunches them into a useful order, so users can learn the simple words and phrases first. Q How did you get started? A i was working as a web developer in Thailand in 2012, and learning a bit of Thai. i started to record my language teacher so i could practise between lessons, and i put those recordings online for others to use. The idea, even at that stage, was to automate my language helper, so the computer would almost become my language partner. When i returned to Belgium, the plan was to commercialise the site, but also to make the software freely available to organisations working in linguistically challenging situations, who could add their own content in whatever languages they needed. Q How did this develop into the open-access concept you are working with now? A i spoke to someone who was working with refugees. The refugees wanted to learn the language of their destination country but had no money to pay for a course. i realised that i could adapt my system to solve this problem but that it wouldn't be practical to continue with the commercial venture as well. Creating something like a Wikipedia, but for language learning, seemed like a great vision! it could potentially cover hundreds of languages. Q What is your languages background? A i loved French at school and now speak French and Flemish fluently. i taught english in Poland for two years and have lower- intermediate Polish, as well as basic Thai. Q What languages does Lingopolo support? A Currently Thai, French and dutch. in future, new languages will be added according to demand. The way many language-learning sites are structured makes it difficult for them to deal with different scripts, but Lingopolo should work perfectly with Arabic, Chinese, japanese and others. Q What is the methodology? A The basic theory is comprehensible input: building an ever-increasing corpus of audio input that the user is able to comprehend, starting with individual words and moving on to more complex phrases. Most online language courses mix listening, speaking, reading and writing; one of the distinctive aspects of Lingopolo is that it splits these skills, with a focus on listening. Hugh Prior embarks on an ambitious plan to build an open- access platform to study any language from any language Q How is Lingopolo funded? A So far it has been self-funded. i've started a kickstarter campaign to fund a small team of developers and administrators. in future i hope individuals and charities will contribute, both financially and in terms of adding content. Q Lingopolo is at quite an early stage; what work have you done on it so far and what are the next steps? A i did a course for high-tech entrepreneurs, and hired a software developer and content editors for each language. i worked one day a week for a year developing the technical side, and have been working on it full-time since September. i now need to convert Lingopolo to a self-service content-editing experience that is as easy to edit, correct and add to as Wikipedia; and ensure the system functions from any language to any language. Then we can start adding multiple languages concurrently, using volunteers to contribute. The Kickstarter campaign runs in October. See lingopolo.org/the-linguist for details.