tools

I use Firefox for browsing the web. Firefox has so many cool tools - known as "extensions" - for translating words, phrases and whole web pages on the fly with one click.

Free Language has published articles on two of these thus far...

Quick Translation Firefox Extension to Translate Single Words in 17+ Languages
FoxLingo Free Firefox Browser Extension Software for Translating Web Pages

...and there are loads more!

With this quick blog post, I just wanted to point out a pre-defined search for "translation" on the Firefox extension download site. Have a look, try out a few and find one or two that work best for your particular target language(s) and needs. These web browser extensions can be a huge time-save, making your language work online more productive.

Started using a tool with Firefox this morning that I came across yesterday: the WordChamp Firefox Toolbar for instant translation of words while browsing any web page.

It is a really cool tool! You not only get to hover over any text word and get a translation into the language of your choice, often there is an audio recording of the word that you can listen to! Here's a screenshot of it in action - click to see a larger version:

To get the extension, visit WordChamp and look on the left side almost on the bottom where it says: "WordChamp Language Toolbar for Firefox". Click that while browsing the site with Firefox and you'll install the extension and can start using it once you restart Firefox.

A proper article on WordChamp will be out soon on the front page.

Yesterday I made an update to the site that was long overdue: I finally added links to translate the page using Google Language Tools for automatic machine translation.

You can see this banner in the site's footer:

I used the Brazilian flag for Portuguese, the US flag for English, the Spanish flag for Spanish, the Chinese flag for Chinese and the German flag for German because... I just did. At some point, this site is going to be multi-lingual and localized itself, that's just a "little further" down the roadmap for the site!

There are also text links on the bottom right side of every page:

As Google adds more languages, so will Free Language.

I chose Google because I couldn't find any totally free and cool ones that allowed browsing of the site with instantaneous translation. If anyone knows of one, please let me know. For now, this will do.

What are podcasts?

Podcasts are basically audio (and sometimes video) files that you can subscribe to. The actual podcasts themselves take on may different formats. Some are produced like high-quality radio shows, some are basement productions about local events or interests, others consist of music and still others regard just about anything you can imagine, such as language learning.

The key here is that you can subscribe to these audio and video "feeds" so that when a new one comes out, you can be automagically notified in a number of different ways. The way that you are notified depends a lot on how you subscribe. There are many types of "RSS readers" and "News Aggregators" that can aid you with this subscription process. (See links at bottom for more info about these.)

Tools for Subscribing

Here are some links to lists of available RSS readers for Mac and Windows. (Linux? BSD? You know what you are doing!)

List of RSS readers and news aggregators for Windows.
List of RSS readers and news aggregators for Mac.

For those who want a good one to run with, I would recommend these Free Software RSS Feed Readers:

Feedreader for Windows.
Vienna for Mac.

Many web browsers such as Firefox can manage RSS feeds for you.

There are also many web-based news aggregators such as Technorati and Bloglines.

Free Language RSS Feeds

Free Language has numerous RSS feeds you can subscribe to for automagic updates. Every language has an RSS feed, and these show up in the left sidebar. Just click them to subscribe.

Free Language also offers RSS feeds for the front page articles, the blog entries and the newsletter.

More Info

Find out more about Podcasting.
Find out more about RSS Feeds.
Find out more about web feeds.
Find out about more about News Aggregators.

Over the last two days two new podcasts have been added for learning Spanish and French:

Learn French by Podcast
Chile Podcast and Video Podcast