Language Course Creators: Help Me Test this Forvo Integration Script

cos · July 1, 2016, 12:35am

Since this post on the old forum is still active, I’m copying it here where we can continue it. Apologies for formatting errors.

Arete_Hime: and here is the thread archived for when the above link stops working: http://web.archive.org/web/20160701105703/http://www.memrise.com/thread/1334937/

Language Course Creators: Help Me Test this Forvo Integration Script

I got tired of going back and forth to Forvo.com when adding audio files to new levels. So, I wrote a user script that does the checking for me. I tried to make it so that it will work for any language, but I can’t test them all myself.

If you are a course creator, do me a favor and install the script to try it out. It doesn’t make any automatic changes to your course, it just displays a new column for you alone. You can decide whether or not to save the MP3 and upload it to your own course.

https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/6305-forvo-audio-in-the-memrise-level-editor

Posted by carpiediem 11/7/14 , last update Jun 18 (1 week ago)

Please let me know any problems you run into or other feedback you have.

Posted by carpiediem 11/7/14 (1 year ago)

Terrific idea! I tried it on Firefox33.0.3/Win7x64, got a Forvo API, but it is just loading endlessly. The speaker icon (above) never shows up. The Forvo website counts the requests however.

Posted by JamesBP 11/7/14 (1 year ago)

This kind of funcionality would be incredibly useful on the website though. I think users desperately need more automation to create larger (4-5000 word) courses.

Posted by JamesBP 11/7/14 (1 year ago)

James, I’m getting the same result as you. Can’t seem to find the solution yet, but I’ve asked for help and will try again later this week. Thanks for letting me know.

Posted by carpiediem 11/10/14 (1 year ago)

There are several other issues with your code, but the most serious is that you are trying to do a cross-domain request using jQuery. You need to use GM_xmlhttpRequest instead. Read up on “same origin policy”.

Posted by crt32 11/10/14 (1 year ago)

I know about the same origin policy, that’s why I’m using jsonp. I know the code is hacky (it’s difficult to hook into Memrise’s load events), but it does run normally on Chrome.

Posted by carpiediem 11/10/14 (1 year ago)

I seems like in Firefox, you can’t create global JavaScript variables that can be accessed from outside the userscript, thus your callback is undefined (that’s the error I got using your script).

Is there a reason for not using GM_xmlhttpRequest?

Posted by crt32 11/10/14 (1 year ago)

crt32, I has used jQuery because I know it better, it handles JSON very nicely, and it worked in Chrome on almost the first try. I tried out your suggestion though, and it did the trick for both browsers. Thanks.

That unearthed a new problem with Firefox, though. The right click event is handled differently. I can open up the context menu and save the MP3 link in Chrome, but right-clicking immediately closes the drop-down menu in Firefox. For now, users can still save the file with a middle click.

JamesBP, go ahead and update the user script to see if it works for you. It’s not perfect, but it should be functional enough to save a lot of time maintaining courses.

https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/6305-forvo-audio-in-the-memrise-level-editor

Posted by carpiediem 11/11/14 (1 year ago)

Thanks for the effort! It’s indeed working now with the middle-mousebutton-download method. By the way I’m not a programmer unfortunately (and don’t want to sound like a jerk), but is there a way to maybe eliminate the downloading part? Sort of like a “1-click-add” button, which is how memrise should work in the first place IMHO

Posted by JamesBP 11/11/14 (1 year ago)

I’d love to try this out, on Firefox, but I’m going to wait and watch this thread for a bit longer and see if the Firefox wrinkles get sorted out. Thanks for writing it!

Posted by cos 11/11/14 (1 year ago)

Okay, I went ahead and tried it out anyway

At least on Firefox, it only seems to work when I edit levels, not when I edit the dictionary. Since I tried editing the dictionary first, I thought that it didn’t work at all. But later when I was editing a level I saw the extra column and realized that it does. It would be helpful to add that to the documentation.

Secondly, I have a minor problem that I think I could easily solve by editing the script, but this is not a programming language I know, so I wonder if one of you could give me the line of code I need. My problem is this: I’m making a Hawaiian course and to make typing easier for people, I’m using a backquote instead of the unicode okina character. This is because okina appears very often in Hawaiian, but is unavailable on most people’s default keyboard layouts, and a backquote looks about the same and works as well.

Problem is, of course, that now about half of my words won’t match anything on forvo even if they are there, because the search is using a different spelling. All I need to do is to make this script automatically translate every backquote in the word to a unicode okina, right before this line, I think:

var word = encodeURI( $(this).attr(“data-word”) );

It’s a simple character substitution on the variable “word”, I think. Though maybe there’s some subtlety I’m missing. And of course encodeURI would need to be able to handle okina, but I expect that it can.

Posted by cos 11/11/14 (1 year ago)

cos, I edited the script so that it works in the database editor now. If that’s not what you meant, please point me to a URL where you’re having trouble.

As for the Hawaiian courses, I see two issues, but both are solvable. Let’s look at the word kaa as an example. The Forvo API will only respond with an audio file if the request for this word is formatted kaa. You’re right that a different punctuation mark is used, but the levels I’ve looked at also include the article he in front of every word: “he kaʻa”. What I’ve done in this version of the script is remove "he " from the front of every Hawaiian word and manually changed the punctuation as necessary. This means that learners would see “he” but not hear it. It’s also possible that it introduced some new weird bugs, since I don’t know how the Hawaiian language works. Let me know if it’s working okay for you, otherwise we can try something else.

Posted by carpiediem 11/12/14 (1 year ago)

oy, this pseudo-markup language is strange. We need a preview option.

Posted by carpiediem 11/12/14 (1 year ago)

I’m not sure what levels you looked at, but my course is “incomplete” and does not show up on searches, so I think you were probably not looking at my course I definitely make a point to introduce each word on its own, with no determiners (he, he mau, ke, ka, nā), the first time. After a word is introduced I use it in phrases, but I don’t expect to find my phrases on forvo. Just the individual words is good enough to start with

Yes, I was aware of the weird effect of using backquotes in memrise forum comments, which is why I avoided typing these words in here directly Anyway, I’ll try your new version of the script now. I’m only going to look for bare words, so I won’t benefit from the he-removal feature you added, but maybe someone else will.

However, removing the okina is actually a bug. Forvo does in fact have words properly spelled with okina in them. What you may not have been aware of is that the okina is not punctuation, but a meaningful consonant. If you remove it, you will significantly change the pronunciation of some words, and often turn them into different words. For example, “kou” is a one syllable word meaning “your”. But if you add an okina between the o and u, you turn it into a two-syllable word meaning “my”. So if your script removes the okina, it’ll change “my” back to “your”, and give people an incorrect audio file.