EchoWords

Extensive line by line breakdowns

Inspiration

Some of us want to read works from other countries, while some of us are learning a new language. We realized that current language learning apps often lack the authenticity and engagement of real world conversations. They're often too small scale or detached from the nature of normal language use. This sparked the idea for our project, a website that gives users a hands on way to practice language skills by learning from real texts.

What it does

EchoWords is an interactive language learning platform designed to translate text and offer advanced learning tools. Users can input articles, manga, and other text they’ve found, and our site translates it into English. But we go beyond basic translation. By hovering over a word, users can see its immediate translation in the target language with a close synonym. For a longer in depth translation, the dictionary module provides comprehensive translated definitions and contextual uses of a word. To understand grammar and syntax, the analyze module breaks sentences into their structural components, showing how they’re constructed in the original language.

How we built it

The website was built with React for a responsive and user-friendly interface. The backend was powered by flask to handle data and API requests. We integrated the Gemini Developer API to deliver fast and accurate translations.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into some issues fetching the API results from our backend. It took us about three hours to resolve. We requested help from our mentors to resolve these issues. Additionally, implementing asynchronous functions properly was an obstacle to implementing smooth communication between our frontend and backend.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud of how our project evolved over the course of its development. Initially, we set out to create a simple translation tool. However, as we developed the project, we identified ways to make it more robust and learner focused, leading to features like the dictionary and sentence analysis modules. We're proud that we successfully integrated and ran our backend using the Gemini Developer API. We're happy to have built something that wasn't just educational for us, but provides educational value to others.

What we learned

We strengthened our understanding of the React + Vite framework. We all gained experience integrating the front end and back end. We learned how to structure and optimize API queries to deliver the best results efficiently. Using the Gemini Developer API, we acquired experience integrating APIs into our workflow.

What's next for EchoWords

We hope people will use EchoWords to help them learn languages and experience better travel. If we were to continue supporting the application, we would add expanded language support to cater to more language learners. We would also add more interactive features, like progress tracking to make learning more engaging.