Steve Ridout: Bootstrapped language learning startup

This is season 3, episode 3, Steve Rydeout.

It's not, everyone gets confused.

There you go.

Yeah, people think it's rideout like French or um the other one I get is readout. But it's actually rideout.

Rideout. All right. Okay, good. Maybe I should just have the guest say their own names like a roll call or something.

Yeah, yeah, that's a good idea. You could just like leave a gap in the introduction and insert my audio of me saying my name or something like that.

Or something. All right. And uh Steve, obviously, you're the creator of uh Readlang and I know some people out there probably don't know what it is and instead of me trying to explain it, I I figured why don't you just give people, you know, the elevator pitch of what what Readlang is.

Sure. Um, well, it's a website to help people learn languages by reading texts that they're interested in. So, I originally created it to help myself read whole novels. So, it's ideal for that. It's got a nice like distraction-free reader interface a bit like reading a Kindle where there's um, you upload a text and then it'll be nicely paginated and you can click on any word or drag across any phrase to translate it to to your first language.

Simple but efficient is uh I'd like to say.

Uh, yeah, yeah. Uh, I I thought it was a lot simpler than it turned out to be. When I first had the idea, it was like, ah, this is just this little tool that I'll make for myself and, you know, hopefully some other people will find it interesting and I I I thought it was a it sounded like really simple idea and it's turned out like it's almost three years later now and there's the the longer that I'm at it, it seems the more features that people want added to it and the the more things are to do.

Right, the life of a developer or programmer. Easy to see the final product but I guess the path to it is long and winded and lots of different uh lots of code behind it at least in any case.

Yeah, yeah, true. Well, and actually the the product itself it grows, the scope of it grows beyond what you originally intended a lot of the time.

Right. And um so obviously you have a background in uh computer engineering, is that what they call it these days or do we just say programming or?

I did computer science.

Right. Yeah, that's what it was called when I was in school as well. But I don't know if they still call it that.

Uh, I think they do, yeah. Um, but then I I did something after that which was computational science and engineering which kind of was um, using computer programs to simulate physical systems like to simulate uh mechanical structures or that that kind of thing.

Right. And and you say you you started the program because you wanted to learn Spanish. Can you just give us the the back story of of why you came to a point where you wanted to or needed to learn Spanish and and and what made you sort of start your own, what was the lack of methods out there?

Uh, yeah, sure. Um, well, I guess going back a bit further. Uh, I I wasn't really into languages when I was in school. Um, like I come from I grew up in Wales and I'm embarrassed to say I can't really speak Welsh. Although I can understand a a bit of it because um, and and I was decent at it in school. But that's not saying anything, you know, I was one of the best in the class but it uh I I actually chose then to to do French instead 'cause Welsh didn't seem very useful or cool or anything. Um, and and yeah, it wasn't very very interested.

Cool. And we can get back to how you how you made that transition in a second but first I just wanted to ask you about the sort of the the if you can think back to the time when you're like, okay, I need to learn Spanish. I've got great sort of let's say contexts or partners in crime to actually get to speaking and practice and all that kind of thing. But what what did you see in the learning landscape that was missing or like what were you actually looking for at the time? Because I guess Readlang has sort of developed over time. So I guess that wasn't you're not seeing Readlang 2015 four years ago or what did you maybe?

Uh, not exactly as it is now. No but what it was was um, like the materials that I'd used previous to Readlang were uh Michelle Thomas to start with, which I'd also used for French and German and I think that's a a brilliant first step in a language. I really like that to get the feel of how the language uh structure is and you you get to learn the grammar without uh in a kind of a natural kind of way. In a fun way, he kind of gets you involved. Um, and then but quickly I I just wanted to get onto native materials as soon as possible and I just that appeals to me, you know, the idea of being able to to read and enjoy uh texts and novels and that kind of thing.

Cool. And I'm I'm hoping that a lot of people will uh, you know, follow that idea. Actually I know a lot of people have as well, you know, follow the if there's something missing out there and you you'd like to see it, you know, make it happen, you know, you don't have to learn how to program yourself. You can also just find a programmer and partner up with him or her. But um, one one idea I really love was that you said you were able to read through a book using a paper dictionary at a very low level of the language. I find that absolutely incredible because maybe it's because I've been corrupted by the availability of every information everywhere that if I have to sit down and it takes me more than let's say a few minutes maybe at most to read a page, I would just give up after two pages. I would just get so bored and I'd be like, oh my god, where's my, you know, where's my stimulation? So I I find that pretty incredible.

Right.

Right.

Yeah, but yeah, I I I know what you mean and I I'm not sure if I would want to do it again. But but especially when you're in the very early stage of learning a language, I think you you have to get reward from very little silly things, you know. And so, even if I could just figure out I didn't really know what was going on in a scene but I could even just figuring out where they were in a scene or who's talking to who or you just think, ah, this is really cool. Like this is a language that is almost incomprehensible to me and I'm somehow piecing together little bits. And just finding pleasure out of those those things it gives you motivation to keep going. I guess that that's one of the huge things about people who are successful learning a language. Um, I guess are good at motivating themselves and finding reward in in things like that and pleasure in in things that um that keeps them going.

Yeah, or or finding methods that appeals to their personality or creating them indeed.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, everyone's got different things that turn them on I guess. And um, there was a guy, I think you may have interviewed him, um, who talks about this Gold List method.

Mm-hmm, yeah.

Iverson, is it or something like that?

Uh, well, Gold List is David James but um, Iverson talks about a similar a list method similar to it but it he it doesn't have a fancy name yet.

Right. But that that kind of thing to me it just sounds deathly boring.

Oh, yeah.

But but I I'm you know, it depends on your personality and if that works for you, that's great.

Yeah, uh a list based on the dictionary going from A to Z, I'm pretty sure what what's his method. And yeah, so that's definitely not something I would do.

Yeah, yeah. But so so what um, what is your favorite method? I hear you use Memrise a lot.

Yeah, for vocabulary I I find Memrise and one of the struggles I have is is enjoying native material like you described. So, what I try to do uh obviously right now it's the language that I that I'm working the most on and have some level in is Russian where I can actually put on a sitcom on YouTube and I can understand what's going on. And you know, I could probably explain to people what they said or what they inferred or anything. But I I don't know individual words and phrases at least not all of them.

Yeah, no, I I totally get that. Yeah.

So maybe I should develop some kind of software that works in my favor but

When I discovered Readlang for instance and I'm a big fan I don't use it as much as I should. I'm guilty. But uh what I like about it is I could have it on in my Chrome all the time and I could just open like BBC Russia or whatever. Have like English news in Russian and it would help me actually digest the news and it wouldn't be it wouldn't take long. And because I could input whole phrases, suddenly it actually started to make sense because looking up one word at a time, although it could probably help you with most texts, I found that usually it actually gave problems in in languages that are very different from the one you're looking up in like English. Um, so by looking at the phrases I was like, ah, okay, that makes a lot more sense.

True. Yeah, sometimes it's a balance. I guess the more advanced you get then it's also easier to know where where you can click on a word and you'll get the meaning or you just immediately know even if you don't understand all the words, like you you just realize that, ah, this is a phrase that goes together. This is some idiom or something and you you'll just translate that. And Yeah.

And then and and then depending on how rare it is. Like most of the time it works and then sometimes if it's a a rarer idiom or something, it that's the that's the problem then that Readlang still won't won't solve completely. Is that Google Translate uh won't have everything.

Right and it has weaknesses, right? You know, there are some languages that are weaker than others because less people report Google Translate. Um, Sure. I don't know if you if you've seen any of this where some of the languages supported are less likely to be have problems. I guess the closer the languages are in in form and style. The the better they are at Google Translating.

I guess the just the more materials that Google have as well because um, I don't know if it's 100% based on this but um, the the way Google Translate works is that it it gets massive amounts of texts like huge corpuses in all the languages that um, like they like one of the corpuses is the European parliamentary proceedings or something. Uh, but then there's a lot more as well of probably more natural uh language that um that they have in all the different languages and then their algorithm matches them up and can figure out what bits correspond to what bits and that's how they get their uh they train their machine learning thing.

What about the problem of uh if I look up an individual word with Google Translate via Readlang, um what about the problem of when a word has a lot of meanings? A lot of different meanings that are radically different. Does the Google Translate algorithm actually understand context or will it just pick the most likely one out of the pack?

It it does understand context. Yeah, so what will often happen is you you could click on one word and you may get the wrong meaning for your context. But then if you add a few words around it then all of a sudden it'll change. Um, because it's picked up the context of what's around it. And so, yeah, quite often that's important.

That's pretty cool. And I guess that's a huge improvement over your dictionary pursuits where you kind of had to find out yourself which was the right word for the context.

Yeah, I think the the biggest improvement over the dictionary thing is just it's so frictionless and fast. There's no need to distract yourself looking something up in the dictionary and figuring it out. It's just you can almost carry on reading almost as fast as you were. You just click, see the translation and keep going, you know. So, the idea is you you keep in the story and keep getting the enjoyment out of the story and being motivated to keep going with that.

Right.

And and another thing that you can do if you don't get the right meaning, you can open up an external dictionary as well which uh there are preset ones depending on the language. Um, for many of them it's WordReference. That's works quite well for Spanish. Uh, for German there's like Dict Leo.

Mm-hmm.

And that that works quite well and um, and you can actually customize that yourself then if you've got a favorite online dictionary that uh it has to work in a way that in the URL you can put the word you're searching for. So so you put the that like URL template in there with a special keyword for where the word goes and then then Readlang will will pop that in the sidebar when you when you open it.

Cool. And um what do you think about the whole learning or sorry, the reading element of language learning next to the speaking? Because I feel like in the last, let's say, a year or so, the focus has really shifted towards uh speaking, you know, spoken or speak from day one or, you know, get out and speak, get out and practice, talk to locals. Uh you need to learn to speak first. And I I understand that if you're really into reading and you that's your only goal in language, of course, you would have a different opinion. But what do you think the part of or the role of reading is in a balanced language learner strategy? You'd like to learn the language sort of on a larger scale, not just the reading or not just the speaking but actually comprehensively learn a language. How important do you think it is to read and and and learn the or maybe even read larger works?

Um, I don't know if I can answer that sort of in a general way because it's it depends on everyone on how much you like it because I think the most important thing if you want to actually speak to people, obviously the most important thing is to speak to people and practice having conversations and maybe use something like iTalki or or one of those kind of things and or just get out there and talk to people. Um,

But can we now use text like uh let's say I'm reading some kind of uh, I don't know, some Spanish, uh maybe young adult fiction or something. They'll have a lot of dialogue in it, right? They'll have a lot of like uh, you know, colloquial speech. It won't be 19 1830s poets.

Yeah, yeah, sure.

So, I

I I think the thing the thing for me is uh although I think probably speaking to people is is probably the best way for a lot of people that comes with a lot of pressure and and stress. Uh, especially if you're a little bit introverted, you know, you can't spend all your time going out speaking to people because I don't know, you'll you'll just be exhausted. And sometimes it's nice to just sit back on your sofa and and in a relaxed way soak in some vocabulary and and uh improve your skills that way so that next time you do go out and speak to people, you'll manage a bit better, you know. So, I think reading serves that role for a lot of people. It's um, sort of a less stressful way of of getting um fluent in a language.

Yeah, non-fiction is good if you have a if you can combine some hobbies like uh if you're really into, I don't know, uh painting and there's a book on painting uh how to paint or how to become a better painter, I don't know because that vocabulary would be something that you'd want to use at some point in a conversation as well. You'd want to tell someone that you're into painting and then you'd need to know all the names for the um, yeah, see I don't know any of the names in English because I'm not a painter but you know, the thing you hold and the thing you paint on and yeah, whatever. They're very technical names anyway.

The brush?

Oh yeah, yeah, I got that one. I got that one.

Yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, that's the that's the key as well is to um have a a plan personalized to you, not just to focus on very generic um language learner materials but learn that vocabulary and read about those things that you're you want to speak about. Um, so you'll be way more motivated and it'll be way more useful for you uh when it comes time to to practice.

Right. And if you're really not into, you know, I don't know, 50 Shades of Grey or whatever, then, you know, you don't have to torture yourself through it in in Spanish or whatever, you know, it's not that's not what it's about. It's it's I would say it's about making it fun as well. It's it mean you learn so much better, I feel like, if you're actually having fun with it and it doesn't feel like absolute torture.

Yeah. Yeah, um, you mentioned you're watching sitcoms in in Russian. And I I wonder I'm not sure if you noticed on Readlang, you can actually watch videos as well. That

No, I haven't seen that function yet.

Oh right, you should check that out 'cause it depends on the language. I I'm not sure about Russian but I know for French and German and Spanish. There are quite a lot of YouTube videos that people what people can do is upload the transcription of a video. And then link it to a YouTube video and then they can synchronize the text to the video and you'll see a little highlight following um, a kind of like watching a karaoke video or something like that. You'll see a highlight following the word. So you don't get lost, you can jump around to different parts of the video and obviously the translation function works as well.

So that I know in um in Spanish and German there are a series of uh videos called Extra. It's like a really cheesy sitcom made in the UK by Channel 4. Uh for language learners and they made the same scripts but in different languages.

Oh, really?

So it's a bit like uh Friends but even more cheesy.

Oh, god.

And uh so if you can get past that then it's it's quite good, you know, it's it's quite easy to understand and and so those are there. And and people um really like sharing songs as well. So, I I quite like those.

Yeah, I like them as well.

Yeah. I I don't know why but I I like Spanish is the language that I'm really focused on but the the songs in French, I just really like. I I don't know what it is but there's something about the the French language maybe and singing that really fits for me.

Well, your name sounds French. I mean, who knows, you could be French.

Yeah, maybe there's some connection there.

Could be. Um, so talking about Readlang as sort of a professional venture. I mean, obviously, I suppose you and your girlfriend could have easily moved to the UK back when you had that decision. What made you decide to go to Spain? Was that based on the language or did you have any other factors playing into that?

Uh well, the main thing was that my girlfriend was doing a PhD that she'd started here in Madrid. And then she went to live in London for a while to work in London and that's where we met. But she wanted to come back and finish her PhD. And at the same time I was at a stage in my life where I wanted to to leave my job and try to start my own venture. And I wasn't quite sure what it was yet, what it was going to be.

Right.

And you're full-time on it now.

Yeah, you're full-time on it now.

Yeah, I've been full-time on it. Um, I started in November 2012, which is almost three years ago now. And I've been full-time except for last year I spent three or four months back in London doing some freelancing work uh to kind of save up a bit more money because Readlang uh for the first um, well, almost its entire life so far, it hasn't been making enough for me to live on. But in the in the past uh I'd say since April, it's been making just enough uh for me to live on and it's it's climbing slowly. So, uh that was a huge milestone for me.

That's incredible and I I I really love to share these kind of stories because there are so many people out there, so many creative people who know things or they can do things. They have talent or ability and they just if they could see more options of how to, you know, go out in the world. I mean, how cool is it that you're learning a new language and you're living in a new country and you're running your own business whereas, you know, four years ago you probably weren't even imagining that you would run a language website, you know. Anything's possible and if you're into programming or if you want to learn programming, you know, that's a definitely one avenue that will definitely give you a lot of opportunity like translation or interpretation as well but obviously it takes a lot longer to learn a few languages to translate into than a programming language.

Uh yeah, sure there's um, I mean I I'm always seduced by wanting to to work on new things but there there is a ton to improve on Readlang. Uh like it's on the there's been on the cards for ages to make apps for iOS and Android and I still don't know when I'll get around to it but some point I'm sure I'll get around to that. Um, yeah, right right now I'm working on something that'll allow people to kind of share, I don't know what to call them but um, maybe reading lists or uh that that kind of thing. So, you can create a little list of um texts or videos or whatever to organize them yourself personally and then to share them with the community.

Right. So, it takes uh any kind of text could be novels or Is it just a list of what you're going to read?

It it'll be um, well, it'll be a list but it'll be the actual text as well. So, you'll have to upload the text um and it could be novels. Although sharing novels publicly then that would mean they'd have to be out of copyright texts. Um, but there's a ton of other learning materials that are out there and and a problem at the moment is just finding them, you know. So, if somebody can do the work of curating some of that content that's on the internet and and putting them together for people to make little little courses in effect, I suppose. Then I think that could be really cool.

Yeah, definitely. And do you have any uh language missions uh coming up or in the future? Would you like to learn French actually or are there any other projects that you're thinking about?

Uh, not seriously at the moment but I would like um, I would like to learn another language. And I well, I'd like to live in another country and and along with that learn another language. Um, because for me I think that's like an important part of the motivation of the whole thing is either planning to live somewhere or living somewhere. 'Cause if not then there are so many other things that I can do with my time that it it feels hard to justify learning a language just for the sake of learning a language for me anyway.

Need some more convincing.

She's from from Spain, she likes the sun and the, you know.

Yeah, there isn't much sun in in. In the summer it was it's very nice but the winters are probably pretty brutal.

Yeah, I guess you can do like part-time just stay in Spain for the summer and go to or the other way around, I suppose. Stay in Spain for the winter and being Berlin for the summer. But then you have a like a mediocre summer and a mediocre.

Yeah, true. No, no, escaping Madrid in the summer is definitely a good idea though. It's it's too great. In July and August, it's uh, 40 degrees and.

God. You need to siesta then.

Yeah, yeah, you do. You can see why where the siestas came from for sure.

Yeah, definitely. I mean, just to go back to your point on on motivation, I I was learning Russian in Denmark with no Russian people around me. And it's very hard and I had no plans of going to Russia, which is actually interesting because that was the first question people asked me when I said I'm learning Russian, they were like, oh, so when are you going? I'm like, what, going where? They're like, to Russia. And I was like, no, I'm not going. And I could tell like you mentioned the the the kind of the effect that has on motivation. It's not that radically different, I'd say. I I live in Hungary now and yes, it does motivate me to learn more but at the same time, I would say it's the exact same motivational resources or the same self-discipline that I'm drawing on. The only difference is that when I walk out the door, I'll hear the language that I'm learning which is useful and I'll see signs and I can assimilate into meaning at some point. And it will give me sort of a daily reminder every time people speak to me in Hungarian and I have to embarrassingly say I don't speak it or speak anything.

Yeah, no, I totally agree. Yeah, it's really easy to fall into that expat trap and um, yeah, you have you still have to find the motivation within you to push yourself when you live somewhere to practice. Um, because the thing that happens as well when you live in another country is it's like really really easy to make friends with other expats. You've got this like shared experience and you just click straight away with people that maybe you wouldn't even get on with back in your own country but you've just got that connection uh of being foreigners in another place and.

That's so true. That's so true. It's like, oh, you're from you're from Denmark. It's like, yeah, we're best friends now. It's like, I don't really share any interest with you or any opinions. But for sure let's let's be friends, you know. It's so true. Um, one of the things that I've been trying to do is is also go to local events like I'm going to the German meetup for instance. And there are lots of Hungarian people there. So, I'm like, okay, I'll make Hungarian friends as well. So I have people who can actually where I can actually speak the language to, which I think is important. Um, without that it would be like being home in Denmark, I guess, because I'd still have to Skype people or for to get any practice in.

Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Awesome, awesome. So if people are interested in joining the uh the Readlang service. So, what does it cost? We we haven't covered that yet. So, what what's the cost of all these great features?

Well, actually you can use almost all of it for free.

What?

Well, you can you can join up for free and you can translate an unlimited number of single words for free. You can practice as many flashcards as you like for free. Um, and then the main restriction on the free plan is that when you translate phrases, then you can do 10 of those per day for free. Um, and then if you want to go above 10 a day to unlimited phrases, you pay either $5 a month or $48 a year.

What a steal. I think that's too cheap, Steve.

Yeah, maybe. It's it's been slowly increasing since I started it but um the first price point that it is now.

But the first price was ridiculous. I remember you talking about it. What what was the first price point you put out?

The first price point was $10 a year.

That's that's hilarious.

You know, this is my my first venture like this, making a website. So, I was just very excited to have anyone pay anything, you know.

Right. Yeah, it's just validation that, oh, this is something that people find valuable. But even if they get in some of it for free, they're willing to pay uh Yeah, I But but yeah, I guess I I don't know, at this price point that it is now, um I think it feels if it feels like it could work if I if I get enough people on board. And and there's enough of a market out there with people learning languages. Like you just look at the kind of numbers of users that sites like Duolingo have got. I know that's a completely free service as well but um but if I can just get like currently I've had 40 something thousand people sign up, not not paying but sign up for free and um I think it's about uh 1.7% of those end up paying. So if I can get that 40,000 number up uh to anywhere near one a fraction of what Duolingo's got in there.

Just get 40,000 subscribers. I mean, this podcast is very popular. So, never know what happens. You might get a surge. But anyway, no, I mean, obviously, I don't think I I'm always I'm probably one of the cheapest people in the world when it comes to like language learning products because I think that there is so much available and like you say there's so much available for free that if I have to go out and pay something every month for a service, it needs to be an amazing service. Like something that I do pay for is something like Hungarian Pod 101 that has a library of thousands and thousands of files. And actually I could just go in and download all of it and cancel my subscription. But, you know, I also kind of want to support the company making more content and, you know, continuing to update and also making new languages is also fun, even though they have made a ton of them.

Yeah, yeah.

You wouldn't have time to add the features um, exactly. So, so yeah, I I hope that people also see this uh thank you economy in play and and that it that it grows. And I hope that for my own personal sake that I can actually get into a routine where I just use it. I mean, even just 10 minutes a day, I think reading a news article in Russian or whatever language I'm learning. I know this is what Alex Rawlings does with uh he's talked about Readlang before. Um, in his uh actually at the polyglot workshops. He he mentioned Readlang as one of his favorite resources to to stay updated in languages because you could just go on to the news and read like uh, you know, Russian, Greek, whatever. And um, it allowed him to do that very fast and I that's that's what I hope to do anyway.

Yeah, yeah, no, I was really I was really flattered and happy when I saw that he'd uh recommended Readlang on in those workshops and and on Facebook as well.

You said obviously you're really impressive uh what what he's achieved uh all the languages that he speaks.

It's

Yeah, for sure. And I I feel like he's um, he's probably also somebody who not maybe not prefers necessarily but he definitely puts a lot of emphasis on the written word as a learning tool. So, I mean, you should probably send him a t-shirt or something.

Yeah, you're right. No, I need to get a a design uh needs to design a T-shirt first. But yeah.

Right, okay, that would be a smaller problem, I suppose. But anyway, Steve, as uh as always, time has been flying and uh we're at the end of this episode, unfortunately. But um before we uh before we end here, I just wanted to say uh thank you for well, first of all, thank you for creating Readlang, which I think it's amazing. And uh thank you for taking the time to come and share your experience with not only creating your own business in a way, which is language-related, which I know a lot of people are interested in but also, you know, your story on on how you got into Spanish and moving to Spain as an experience. I I'm sure a lot of people can relate to that. So, so thank you for coming on.

Thanks for having me. No, it's been really cool.

Awesome. Are you going to come to Berlin next year?

I I think it's very likely, yeah.

It was good fun, wasn't it?

Yeah, yeah, it was great. Yeah.

But did I see you this year?

No, I I didn't go this year. I went year before last. I should have gone. I should have gone.

No, I I didn't go this year. I went year before last. I should have gone. I should have gone. Yeah, I met you there. I met you there last year. Remember, we were talking in the bar. Uh the rooftop bar with 50-minute beer service. But yeah, it was uh it was good fun. I I think that that's one of the events every year that I recommend to anyone really. I mean, you don't even need to like languages. You can just come up and have fun actually because people are so nice and everything's so motivational and you I just go after one day, I'm like, okay, I need to go into my room and study some languages.

Yeah, yeah, it's good to give you the motivation. Uh and yeah, it's a really fun experience.

And you should and you should show the the Readlang T-shirts, of course.

Yeah, yes, definitely. Right. 100%.

I mean that's obvious, right?

All right, Steve, I'm going to let you go now. But uh thank you for coming on and uh, you know, stay stay in touch.

Cool. Okay, thanks for having me. And uh, yeah, see you soon.

Very welcome. Thank you for listening to the actual fluency podcast.