I think user learning experience would benefit greatly with the following amends
Translation toggle - it’s too easy to unconsciously glance over at the translation, which makes it easier to read the sentence.
Audio feature - it would be amazing to be able to read the sentence, and listen to whether your were correct (e.g with general pronunciation /right readings used)
Is that something WaniKani are looking to implement in the near future?
thanks!
For the first part, there does exist a userscript:
As to the later, I don’t think they have such a thing planned any time soon. That would be an even bigger lift than the simpler audio overhaul they did for word pronunciation. I don’t think anything has changed last since @viet posted here:
Sure, but the scale of recording sentences for Bunpro vs WK is quite a bit disparate in scale. Assuming every vocab item has three sentences you’re talking around 19,000 sentences to record on WaniKani. Even a rather unrealistic goal of 5 minutes to record, check and edit the audio would be an effort of well more than 1500 hours.
BP is ~9000 sentences and growing and the audio is currently being donated by one generous community member. Tofugu has a much bigger team with native speakers, it’s definitely feasible.
WaniKani isn’t going to return to the haphazard “let’s have everyone record a few things” style if they ever do this. They’d hire someone, perhaps the same people as the vocab recordings, to do it professionally.
They also have plans to add many more sentences. And, for better or worse, they are frequently making minor updates to the existing ones.
I’m sure if you’re willing to front all the costs of the voice talent and staff required to record, check and edit and integrate the audio into the website that they might consider it more. It’s easy to say what is or is not feasible for a company to do when you have no insights into their revenues and the costs of things like this.
BP current voice is not an actor and I think it’s great, as long it’s native I think it’s all fair game and more realistic anyways. This site is maturing towards 10 years, some audio sentences is better none IMO. Certainly doesn’t have to be expensive, you can do it as cheap as for free using voice memo on an iphone. But if users want to wait for professional voice actors in distant future of unknown expense, then that is different.
Only if you assume the staff’s time is free. I assume the Tofugu staff that would need to listen to all these files for accuracy, potentially edit them and integrate them into the website all would want to be paid for their effort.
It’s great that BP has someone willing to donate their time and effort, but that doesn’t seem to be the way Tofugu operates. It’s not as if this is Koichi being a cheapskate considering all the time and effort during the current audio overhaul where no one had their monthly subscription fees raised nor anyone with a lifetime charged extra to allay their costs to access to the new content.