Lingro: Foreign-word widget
When Artur Janc attempted to read 鈥�Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal鈥� with his rudimentary Spanish in 2005, he grew so frustrated at constantly referring to a dictionary that he decided to perform some wizardry of his own.
Mr. Janc, then a Polish student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, created , a widgetlike online dictionary for budding linguists who want to put aside their Berlitz and master a tongue.
鈥淔or a lot of people learning languages, making the jump from the classroom to the real world is really tough,鈥� explains Paul Kastner, Janc鈥檚 business partner at Lingro.com. 鈥淪ay you鈥檙e learning Spanish and you want to read about the latest soccer game in Spain. You could read an [online] article in a Spanish newspaper through Lingro and [it] will let you click on the words that you don鈥檛 know to pop up the translations while you鈥檙e reading the article.鈥�
Lingro keeps track of all those words so that users can later play flashcard games. Users can also contribute translations to the Lingro dictionaries 鈥� seven languages in all. Soon, it hopes to add Chinese to the Euro-centric tongues currently available.
The start-up is relocating from Worcester, Mass., to San Francisco to tap into Silicon Valley鈥檚 veins of venture capital. To date, it has won $10,000 in a business-plan competition hosted by the Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
The company also is looking to expand beyond its online widget, hoping to partner with language schools and multinational corporations that host structured language courses for employees.
鈥淲hat we鈥檙e doing right now is really important in the context of globalization,鈥� says Mr. Kastner. 鈥淲e really like being able to help break down these language barriers, especially on the Internet where the channels of communication are already open."
