Livemocha
Livemocha's Esperanto course is available!
And I finally got full translation access...
now that it's nearly complete. :-(
by Ailanto
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Excellent
I visited Livemocha today and it's excellent. However, there is a problem in that the volume levels of each person reading are quite different, and one person comes on very loudly and other so quietly that I can't hear. Also, there was one place where one of the four pictures shown was a "bag of groceries," yet the only written choice was a "bag of vegetables."
It's an excellent course and I had a lot of fun with it, but there are still a few kinks that need to be ironed out.
Aitlanto, I would like to help out with the project if I can, but I'm barely at the intermediate level still. So let me know what I can do to help out with this great project.
December 5, 2009 by pauswa, 15 weeks 13 hours ago
helping out
Heh, actually I'm not sure what all I can do now! That grocery/vegetables thing is an example of why I wanted full translation access earlier. Basically the way it works is that people with higher access provide translations into the target language, then people with any translation access get to vote "yes" or "no". When a translation receives 5 "yes" votes, people with higher access get to speak the translations, and then we all vote on the pronunciations. Again, any which receives 5 "yes" votes is approved. Some people were trying to push the things through as quickly as possible (advocating "yes" votes (or abstention) for everything!), so some questionable translations got through. (On the flip side, sometimes when people spoke the translations, they spoke the correct translations rather than the actual translations, so I found myself having to vote against good pronunciations because they didn't match the accompanying text!) (On the flip flip side, it seems like some people were voting against perfectly good translations and pronunciations... anti-Esperanto conspiracy? LOL!)
But now that the courses have been released, I don't know how corrections will be handled. As for the sound levels, I assumed that they would be adjusted before release, but I guess that wasn't done, so what you're hearing is just what different people recorded, there is variation.
To make the long story no longer, here's how I got involved... Create an account, request translation access (see the link near top left of homepage), and then start voting on translations (though I don't think there are any more to be done), create some flashcard sets, and grade submissions of people who are learning language(s) that you know. (Now that Esperanto is available, you can teach that too!) Apparently you have to earn a certain number of mocha points and teaching points to get higher access, but nobody's been able to find out how many!
You may also be interested in the mailing list la bona livemocha
December 6, 2009 by Ailanto, 14 weeks 6 days ago
voting against
> it seems like some people were voting against perfectly good
> translations and pronunciations... anti-Esperanto conspiracy? LOL!
I doubt there was a conspiracy. I bet I'm not the only one was was judging harshly. There were a few areas I was pretty unforgiving about:
1) When the speaker combined two vowels into a diphthong when they should be separate.
Example: kam-jono instead of kami-ono
2) When the speaker spoke too quickly or slurred his/her words together.
3) When the quality of the recording itself was terrible
There may have also been a few times when I voted against a perfectly good recording when the text itself shouldn't have been approved in the first place.
December 12, 2009 by traevoli, 14 weeks 22 hours ago
voting
Another possibility is that people might have been voting against good ones to help the better ones move to the top. I wonder how ties were resolved?
> There may have also been a few times when
> I voted against a perfectly good recording when
> the text itself shouldn't have been approved in
> the first place.
Yup, that's a tricky one. I saw those too. But now that I have the full translation access (as far as I know!), there doesn't seem to be anything more to do. Is there a way to correct them now that they've been released?
December 14, 2009 by Ailanto, 13 weeks 5 days ago