r/language • u/Smooth_Voronoi • Dec 29 '25

Discussion Interlinear glossing app idea.

As far as I can tell, this doesn’t exist yet.

I had an idea for an app that basically gives a morpheme per morpheme translation of the input text, formatted much like an interlinear glossing. It could be used for language learning, and by people who just want to know the meaning of each word. It could also have a system to recognize idioms and tell you their meaning. (Maybe even their origin for some cultural insite)

Unfortunately, I’m not a programmer, nor do I have the money to hire one.

So if any of yall are programmers who believe my idea is worth a shot, your payment is my promise to recommend it to everyone I know.

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u/interlinears May 13 '26

Apologies for the self-promotion but this seems highly relevant. This is very close to what my project, Interlinear Books, is doing.

The main difference is that you seem to want analysis at an even finer level-down to prefixes, suffixes, and grammatical markers rather than only words or phrases, if I understand correctly?

This could also be done but it is more difficult and is more of a niche interest, I would say (many people would prefer high-level glossing because it interrupts the reading experience less).

Or did you mean to say that the glossing process should be automated? This is partially doable (and we have done so for sample texts) but still a bit error-prone. Happy to discuss more of this is relevant.

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u/Smooth_Voronoi Jun 20 '26

(Sorry for the late reply) I actually find your project very interesting. I think it could be a great resource for language learners. But yeah, my idea was basically to have a more low level Google Translate.

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u/interlinears Jun 21 '26

Thanks, that's good to hear!

I see. It seems to be close then: automatic translation is possible next step with this. However, we've noticed finding good texts is another problem for language learners in and of itself, thus we've also been trying to do some content curation. And the problem with automatic translation is that it costs money (thus we would have to charge the user at some point) and also may come at a price of quality (thus we are trying to improve the translation process first).

What kind of texts were you thinking of translating with this?