Valo Reader

Valo Reader uses OCR technology to recognize the English text you are currently reading in real time, and through the program's built-in dictionary and your custom settings, it will immediately display the definition of the English word after receiving your instructions.

I think that with this software, users can read English web pages/English pdf documents more easily.

Here are my two common needs:

Read and understand English content in the browser, such as github, stackoverflow, reddit
Read and understand some English books that have never been translated into Chinese on a desktop platform, most of these books are PDF files

my difficulties

But when doing the above reading comprehension activity, I ran into some difficulties:

I often forget the meaning of English words, or dare not confirm the meaning of a word. Even, I often forget the word I just looked up 30 seconds ago

At present, various applications and webpages for looking up words are a bit cumbersome for me. I need to wait for the network request of the dictionary software and filter the advertisements in the dictionary software. I also want to make sure that I won't get distracted during the tedious operation process

Using full-text translation software will cause a considerable part of the information to be lost or deviate from the original meaning. I need to correct the full-text translation software, or directly view the original text to understand the real interpretation

For example, I don't know how to say "slipper" in English. But when the word appears in an English corpus, it forces your mind to shift from "thinking about what the author means" to "thinking about what slipper means". When I look up the meaning of "slipper", I return to focus on the previous context. The process is time-consuming, error-prone, and has little positive feedback.

These difficulties, I think, increased the mental load on my mental work and made my reading less effective. Even, it directly caused me to be distracted, unable to concentrate, and finally gave up reading and acquiring knowledge.

Faced with the above difficulties, our usual solution is to "recite words". However, memorizing words is a painful process for me:

I need to recite a large number of words that are used very infrequently and are easy to become unfamiliar due to the low frequency of use

The words in the syllabus are always prepared for everyone, and the words in the syllabus cannot cover the vocabulary in the professional field

In the Chinese environment, it takes a lot of extra time and energy to ensure the brain's familiarity and quick response to a large number of English words

For me, the efficiency of memorizing words is too low. Rewards come too late, too uncertain, and require a lot of willpower to last. The input-output ratio is too high.

contradiction

These actions above will be a big mental burden for me. Constantly interferes with my reading-comprehension process. It hinders me from obtaining information and knowledge through English, and most of the information and knowledge I currently expect to obtain are written in English.

Solution

face these difficulties. I have gone through all kinds of thinking, exploration, and practice. Developed this app called Valo Reader. This application uses OCR technology to recognize the English text that the user is currently reading in real time. Through the built-in dictionary and user settings of the program, after the user informs the visual focus, the word definition is displayed. In this application, I hope to reduce the additional mental burden on users when reading English corpus because they have less English vocabulary.

🎉 I hope that when we use this software to read English, we don't need to have a word foundation, which can greatly reduce the mental burden caused by unfamiliar words. Boost our reading-comprehension process.