Duolingo is translating the web for/with you

Last weekend I met an old friend of mine in Zagreb. I didn’t see him for at least a decade. We were best friends in elementary school, we went through high school together, as for universities our paths got separated; he chose computer science in Zagreb while I went to study pharmacy in Trieste.
As the conversation progressed and as we were filling the gaps of what each of us has been doing in the past ten years, my friend has brief me in on a very cool project called [Duolingo](ww.duolingo.com). He was quite fascinated by the idea behind it and by its realisation while I was surprised that I never heard of it before.
I like to think of me as a very informed individual plus I work in a scientific environment that by definition is filled with informed individuals, however Duolingo seems to just past me by. At first I thought, surely it is something very recent. No, it isn’t. It has been launched in November of 2011.

So what is Duolingo? Duolingo is a project from Luis von Ahn a crowdsourcing pioneer and founder of reCapcha, another revolutionary project that helped to digitise every single issue of The New York Times (that is 13 million articles from 1851. till today). It is a language-learning tool that doubles as a translation service. In other words, von Ahn gives you a chance to learn a new language for free and without adds interference. In compensation it uses you for translating snippets of text that another company is actually paying for, as part of your learning experience. The ultimate goal of the project is to translate the web on every language out here, you can find out more about the Duolingo from the Luis von Ahn TED talk.
The user experience is completely gamified and you can access it via the desktop web or through mobile devices. Currently you can learn Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese from English, while for now you can learn just English if you choose any other of four languages as a starting point. However the plan is to include virtually any language from Chinese to even fictional languages like Klingon or Elvish.

I’m really impressed by the idea behind the Duolingo project, and I’m surprised how little information regarding it I found on the web. Although Apple gave the credit to Duolingo by awarding it as best app in 2013 very few websites gave space to the project.
So if you want to learn a new language or you are already taking some lessons and you want some extra practice, give it try with Duolingo I highly recommend it.