This new iOS software, Wordy, provides a one-of-a-kind approach to the process of learning English. When you are watching your favourite films or television shows, the app will instantly translate and describe any words that you are not familiar with. Wordy has more than 500,000 titles available, some of which are well-known television shows, such as “The Penguin” on HBO and “Agatha All Along,” a new sitcom just released on Disney+.
An independent software developer named Sándor Bogyó, who is 23 years old and hails from Budapest, came up with the idea for the program when he became frustrated with the need to look up uncommon phrases in his non-native language while viewing shows that were in English. He came to the realisation that he needed a mobile application that would make it simpler for him to use his phone while he was watching television or using the computer as a result of his experience with Language Reactor, which is a Chrome plugin that is comparable to Wordy.
When a user chooses an episode from Wordy’s library, the artificial intelligence first examines the subtitles, and then it draws out and lemmatises each individual word. Through the use of the microphone on your mobile device, a specialised speech recognition model is able to recognise spoken sentences from the audio streaming from the television or computer. Because of this, the application is able to determine where you are in the episode and follow along with it. It does this by scrolling down the transcript and emphasising specific terms that may be challenging for people who are not initially fluent in English. You are able to rapidly glance at your phone for the translation whenever a new word arises throughout the conversation.
A summary page is also included for each episode, which gives you the opportunity to view all of the words at once. These words are arranged according to the level of difficulty, which includes: Proficiency English, Advanced English, Upper-intermediate, Intermediate, Elementary, and Beginner Languages. Another feature that Wordy offers is the ability to store words to your Library and then use digital flashcards to practise them at a later time.
Wordy employs machine learning models that are both its own and those developed by other parties. In an interview with TechCrunch, Bogyó revealed that the company collects data on films and series from the largest open movie database, TMDB. Additionally, it uses OpenSubtitles.com through their application programming interface (API), which he has discovered to be the source of the most accurate and trustworthy subtitles.
During the course of our testing, we accessed the application on our mobile device while simultaneously viewing the popular television show “Wednesday” on a laptop. Wordy brought up concepts such as “plagued,” “nefarious,” and “séance,” which are examples of more advanced vocabulary that novices who are just beginning to educate themselves in the language might not be familiar with. It was our experience that the translations were not only accurate but also simple to comprehend.
When compared to its competitor Language Reactor, which supports all of the main languages, it is now only available in English. This is a significant limitation. We were given the assurance by Bogyó that he is working on introducing additional languages. During the month of November, he intends to incorporate Spanish into the application, and then in the following months, he will add French and German.
Taking the effort to verify that each language integration satisfies my criteria for accuracy and user experience is something he said. “I prefer to maintain quality over rushing the process,” he said.
It costs $2.99 per month or $29.99 per year to use the application. In the month of November, an Android version will be released.
