Looking Glass

About

Transform any foreign language video into your personal language learning experience. Looking Glass adapts content to your proficiency level, helping you learn naturally through media you love.

🎯 Why Choose Looking Glass?

Imagine watching your favorite shows and movies in a foreign language, but with just the right amount of help to understand everything naturally. No more pausing to look up words, no more missing key plot points, and no more settling for beginner-level content when you're ready for more. Looking Glass sits quietly in your browser, intelligently adapting foreign language videos to match your current language level.

For language learners, finding truly comprehensible input that's also engaging is a constant challenge. Most comprehensible input available today is specifically curated content, which means you're often choosing between comprehensibility and genuine interest. What if you could turn any video into comprehensible input, automatically tuned to your level?

Looking Glass makes this possible. Using a custom NLP pipeline, it identifies words at your 'N+1' level—just beyond your current vocabulary—and selectively translates them. Combined with AI-powered graded reader versions of dialogues and summaries, Looking Glass transforms any video content into a personalized comprehensible input stream. Whether you're watching movies, TV shows, or online content, you can finally focus on content you love without sacrificing comprehensibility.

NOTE: this product is in beta, please be patient with us! We would love to hear your feedback; you can email me directly at: [email protected]. Or if you prefer, you can use the Chrome Web Store support feature at the bottom of this page to provide feedback.

✨ Key Features:

🎧 Dual Learning Modes
- Audio Mode: Universal compatibility with any video through real-time audio transcription
- Subtitle Mode: Utilize existing subtitle tracks for higher accuracy when available

📚 Smart Learning Tools
- Graded Reader Summaries: Get summaries of recent video segments, at a complexity perfectly matched to your proficiency level
- Graded Reader Dialogue: Experience real-time dialogue simplification that adapts to your proficiency level
- Smart Dictionary: Automatically identifies and translates words based on their difficulty and your proficiency level
- Inline Translations: See translated words directly within the subtitles for seamless comprehension

🎯 Personalized Experience
- Difficulty Levels: Choose your proficiency level (1 (easy), 2 (medium), or 3 (hard)) to tailor the content to your level of comprehension
- Language Support: Currently supports Spanish, English, and Mandarin (Simplified) for target languages. Currently supports only English as the native language

👥 Perfect For:
- Late-beginner / Early-intermediate and Above Language Learners: Choose the content that speaks to you and let Looking Glass tune it to your comprehension level
- International Students: Better understand lectures and educational content
- Entertainment Enthusiasts: Enjoy foreign movies and shows while improving language skills
- Cultural Explorers: Connect with content in its original language while learning naturally

🛠️ Easy to Use:
1. Select your native language, and the target language you are learning
2. Choose your preferred learning mode (audio or subtitles)
3. Set your difficulty level
4. Start watching and learning!

💡 Technical Features:
- Integration with all video streaming platforms (however, it currently works best on: YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Paramount Plus, and Peacock. We plan to strengthen the support on other platforms in upcoming releases; but, if you have a platform that you really want supported right now, please email me! [email protected])
- Real-time transcription using Deepgram APIs
- Selective translation of ‘difficult’ words using a custom NLP pipeline
- Real-time dialogue simplification using AI
- Conforms to CEFR language proficiency levels (difficulty level 1 = CEFR A1, 2 = B1, 3 = C1).

🔒 Privacy & Security:
- Local storage of preferences
- No recording or storing of video content

Changelog: https://github.com/some-trees/looking-glass-privacy/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md 

Made with ❤️ by Some Trees LLC