6 guides

Basic

Here's just a few things you've gotta know about LangLime.

Guide 1 of 6

What is an excerpt?

An excerpt is the text you translate in LangLime. Feedback is what you get back, and config is the settings behind each excerpt.

Throughout these tutorials (and the rest of the app), there are a few words I'll use over and over, so it's best I tell you what they mean.

Excerpt: This is the chunk of text that you'll be trying to translate. These can be in English, for you to translate into your language of choice, or vice versa.
Feedback: This is the response that LangLime gives you when you submit a translation. You'll get a score from 0 to 5, with 5 meaning the AI considers your answer fully correct. If there's something to improve, the feedback explains what. Have another go with that in mind. The AI can get things wrong too, so you can regenerate the feedback or report it if it doesn't make sense.
Config: The config (or configuration) is the "settings" you can apply to an excerpt. This defines the translation direction, difficulty, etc.

With that little glossary out of the way, we can continue to the meat and potatoes of how to use LangLime.

Guide 2 of 6

Choosing your language and difficulty

Open the config menu to pick your language and difficulty, and click the flags to switch translation direction.

I'll cover the everyday settings here. If there's a particular grammar topic you want to work on, head to Practising specific grammar topics for the more focused stuff.

Let’s open up the menu, which you can find by clicking on the button in the top right of the screen.

Opening the Config Menu — Opening the config menu

Which difficulty should I choose?

Difficulty tells the AI whether to generate an excerpt for a beginner, intermediate or advanced learner. You'll see these as Easy, Inter. and Adv. in the menu.

EasyStart here if you're new to the language or coming back after a break.
Inter.Give this a go once Easy starts to feel comfortable.
Adv.Try this once Intermediate feels easy. If you're guessing more than translating, drop back down.

I'd pick the level where you can have a go, follow the feedback and improve your answer. Each excerpt is generated by the AI, so two at the same level can feel quite different.

Changing your language

Choose the language you want to practise from the Language selector in the config menu. You probably aren't going to change this too often, but if you're feeling like testing out a new language, I'm not going to stop you.

Changing Excerpt Language — Changing excerpt language

Switching translation direction

This is an important one. If you want to translate the excerpt into English, or the other way around, you can do so. Just click on the area with the flags in the top left of the screen.
I think most of us would find it easier to translate from a foreign language into English, so if you've been struggling, or just want to coast for a bit, then this could be a good option.

Excerpt translation direction switch — Switching translation direction

When do my changes apply?

When you've made any change to your config, it'll affect the next excerpt generated. You also have the option to force the regeneration of an excerpt, which gives me a great segue into our next topic...

Guide 3 of 6

Regenerating excerpts and feedback

The repeat button gets you a new excerpt, or a fresh round of feedback if the first one seems off.

The icon indicates when you're able to regenerate something in LangLime.

Regenerating excerpts

Before you've made an attempt at an excerpt, you'll see this button below. Clicking it will generate a new one with the current config.

Button for Regenerating an Excerpt — Button for regenerating an excerpt

Regenerating feedback

After making an attempt and receiving some feedback, you'll again see a button for regeneration. This will regenerate the feedback for your translation. It can be helpful if you think the feedback is a little bit harsh, or perhaps even slightly misleading.

Guide 4 of 6

Getting a hint when you’re stuck

The lightbulb button in the text box shows hints for the current excerpt. Use the arrows to flick between them.

Hints can be great when you're stuck on an excerpt. Just don't overuse them! I'm kidding, I don't care.
That little button in the bottom left of the text box will make some hints appear. The same button can be used to hide them.
Usually, there’ll be a few hints given to you, and you can flick through them using the arrows.

Guide 5 of 6

Understanding a sentence with Explain

Once you've finished an excerpt, the Explain button breaks down its grammar and sentence structure piece by piece.

We're getting into the more "hidden" functionalities of LangLime. Once you've completed an excerpt, you'll see an Explain button. Clicking this will open up a sidebar and start breaking down the text into small pieces, explaining how the sentence is constructed as it is. Pretty handy when you want to get into the nitty-gritty of the grammar and sentence structure.

Guide 6 of 6

Looking up words and hearing them aloud

Highlight a word to look up its meaning and example sentences, or highlight any text to hear it read aloud.

If you highlight a non-English excerpt, or your final correct answer to an excerpt you've just translated from English, you should see a little floating menu appear.
This presents you with a couple of actions you can take on the selected text.

Selecting the text of a finished translation from English

Selecting the text of a non-English excerpt

Looking up a word

Clicking on the Define it button will open up a sidebar and fetch a bunch of information about the selected word, like its meaning, some related forms and example sentences.

This only works if you highlight a single word. If you select more than one word, the button won’t appear.

Hearing text aloud

If you instead decide to click on the Hear it button, a little audio player will pop up on your screen and play the transcription of the text. From this menu, you can also slow down the audio if you're finding it a bit tough to understand. Don't worry, I do this allll the time.

Still stuck?

Tell me what tripped you up and I’ll write a guide for it.