This is a submission for the Cloudflare AI Challenge.
What I Built
A simple virtual foreign language learning companion specialized in holding conversations, helping with translations, and improving diction.
Demo
Please check out the demo at slater.sean.app.
My Code
seanvelasco
/
slater
Cloudflare AI challenge submission: Slater - your virtual foreign language friend
Slater - your virtual foreign language friend
Conversational, context-aware, and multi-modal chatbot specialized in carrying basic conversations in foreign languages.
Submission to the Cloudflare AI Challenge.
Please check out the demo.
Problem and pain points
I want to learn Mandarin, but I don't have a Mandarin-speaking friend to practice with. I'm also not confident enough with my foreign language skills to speak with a Mandarin-speaking person online.
Duolingo doesn't teach me how to write or speak the things I want to express. For example, I want to say This is my favorite coffee shop. I know how to construct the sentence, but I don't know the Mandarin word for favorite. So, I end up saying - Zhe tiao wo de favorite kafei guan.
Google Translate lacks certain language nuances. It also doesn't keep track of the things I looked up.
Keeping notes of the words…
seanvelasco
/
slater-worker
Cloudflare Workers that power Slater
Journey
Pain points and motivation
I want to learn Mandarin, but I don't have a Mandarin-speaking friend to practice with. I'm also not confident enough with my foreign language skills to speak with a Mandarin-speaking person online.
Duolingo doesn't teach me how to write or speak the things I want to express. For example, I want to say This is my favorite coffee shop. I know how to construct the sentence, but I don't know the Mandarin word for favorite. So, I end up saying - Zhe tiao wo de favorite kafei guan.
Google Translate lacks certain language nuances. It also doesn't keep track of the things I looked up.
Keeping notes of the words I learn takes effort - I have to write down the English word, hanzi, pinyin, and how it is used in a sentence.
Therefore, I wanted to create an experience where I can converse freely in a foreign language without fear of judgement, where I can quickly translate (and save as "learned") words, and where I can practice my diction (Chinese pronunciations are really hard).
This is my first time developing an LLM app. I learned a lot in a span of two days (I learned of this challenge a little bit late). The next steps would be, developing this further for personal use, and to extend the use-cases for other languages.
Multiple Models and/or Triple Task Types
Slater has three modes: conversation mode, translation mode, and speaking/diction mode.
Meta LLama 2 for general conversations, but instructed to limit and focus its scope to language learning.
Meta Meta M2M-100 for text translations between English and Mandarin Chinese.
OpenAI Whisper for speech-to-text. However, currently figuring out how to make it work with Mandarin Chinese.
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