New Languages at LingQ: A Public Project

Content Forum
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LingQ requires its 60 mini-stories to be translated and recorded in order to add a new beta language. Volunteers interested in working towards LingQ adding their language face a potentially off-putting amount of work, as well as the possibility of duplicating work done by other volunteers that they are unaware of.

In order to help facilitate the process of creating content for new and currently unsupported languages, and to hopefully attract more volunteers, I have created a public workspace. This workspace creates a more central, collaborative environment that allows anyone with ability to drop in and contribute as much or as little as they wish.

When you click on the link, you will arrive at a public Google spreadsheet that has a list of languages that are in need of work. On this “homepage” you can also add a language that you’re interested in (under “Requested Languages”) if it is not already present. Clicking on one of the languages in blue will take you to a workspace for that language. From there, clicking on “Home” will take you back to the main page.

For each language, I have created three columns. The first column on the left is for an initial translation of a mini-story. The second column is for an edited, final version of the text. The third column is for the audio recording of the edited text. Any other questions, comments, resources, or anything related to the project can be added in the space to the right.

I believe that it is less overwhelming for a volunteer to correctly edit a translation already in place, than it is to write one from scratch. (Edit: It is also less expensive to get someone to edit than to translate from scratch)

The space will continue to be updated to include more content, and hopefully better organization and appearance in due course. I’m open to suggestions for improving on this idea. It is very much a work in progress. Hopefully it will be useful.

Feel free to add any content whatsoever for unsupported languages. Learners will absolutely love having that “early access” while waiting on LingQ to make it official.

Please note that this is a LingQ-community project, not an official LingQ-company project.

If you have any ideas on how to improve this project, please comment below!

Help if you can! Writing corrections and audio recordings are needed!

The following languages have all needed stories ready to be corrected and recorded:

Afrikaans
Albanian
Bengali
Danish*
Finnish*
Galician
Haitian Creole
Hmong
Inuktitut
Irish
Kurdish (Kurmanji)
Malay
Maltese
Norwegian*
Slovak*
Somali
Tamil
Zulu

Happy LingQing!

Since this continues to get revived from time to time I’d like to say that I am no longer working on this. I will, however, leave the spreadsheet up for anyone interested.

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Impressive!

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This is great! Thank you so much

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Wow, beautiful work you guys are doing! I really can’t wait for the Celtic languages to be represented on linkq - do you offer an early “sneak preview” of the Irish Mini Stories? Once again, thank you.

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Thanks for your comment. I must apologize if I misrepresented myself in this post, but I’m not part of the LingQ team and this project is not official. I’m just an avid user who thought a project like this could be useful in making it easier for volunteers to work on bringing these languages to LingQ.

We’re both agreed on the Celtic languages! Irish in particular I’ve studied on and off for a long time and am eager to see it here. I know the pool of Irish speakers is relatively small, but I’m on the lookout for one who could help.

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There is already a group working on Faroese. Most of the stories have been translated and some have been corrected. Not sure when the recording will start.

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Thanks for the reminder (and the effort)! I’ve made a note of it in the spreadsheet.

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Update: Flag Icons.

Flags have been added next to each language. I understand there can be some controversy with flags in general. Since I’m likely not aware of situations surrounding some of these, please suggest alternatives if the images I’ve put up are not appropriate. Thanks!

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Does “Scottish” refer to Scots, Scottish Gaelic or Scottish Standard English?

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Scottish Gaelic. Fixed.

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Desperate for the Norwegian stories! Hjelp!

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The lack of mini-stories in Norwegian was actually the genesis of this project. There had been lots of talk of LingQ getting them, but nothing has materialized. I think LingQ has some stories already, but maybe the quality isn’t good? I’m not sure.

Right now I’m putting effort into getting Irish done, but after that either Norwegian or Maltese are my next efforts. Of course that doesn’t stop others from trying to get the language they’re most interested in ready. Crowdfunding might be a good idea to try out, but I know LingQ has supposedly put some effort into this language, and maybe they are working on it in the background. Might be worth finding out before moving forward.

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Thank you, we are loving this so much. I appreciate the openness and that you are sharing this information with us.

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Unfortunately I can only help in Portuguese (Brazil)

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Am I right in saying one can’t simply take any 60 mini-stories, but that they have to be translations of a/the given set? I’ve worked through the Spanish beginner set, so I’m roughly familiar with those. If I were to, say, get hold of a set of stories that were either already translated or initially written in a niche language, would that fit the bill?

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please add Amharic language (Ethiopia)

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It has to be the 60 mini stories that exist here on LingQ. You can find them for most of the common languages like English, Spanish or French

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It would be great to see Hindi added to this list.

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If I’m not mistaken, LingQ already has Hindi ready to go sometime after their update.

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That is excellent! Thank you for the information.

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