Saiful Islam
Founder of English-thai.net
CEO, SoftValley Technologies Ltd.
English-thai.net is a multi dimensional online dictionary developed by some young geeks of Bangladesh. Md. Saiful Islam is the Core Developer of this innovative Initiative. English-thai.net started journey on 25th July 2009. With the user friendly interface and value added features, English-thai.net has become useful among online readers very fast. Now a days it is becoming popular across the country. To experience the beauty of English-thai.net please visit
english-thai.net
How the ideas come?
I came from a Bangla medium curriculum. In our graduation level we had all the text books and lectures written in English language. At that time we had to learn a lot of new words. At the beginning of my graduation it occurred to me that finding words in dictionaries is harder than learning meaning of any word. I am sure that all the students that come from Bangla medium face this sort of problem and they hate this. Then I was looking for an alternative to solve this problem. In our time I did not get any good solution. I was involved in two clubs (Computer Club and Language Club) in my university. At that time I was practicing PHP at home. To find a word manually I used famous English to Bangla dictionary called "Bangla Academy English to Bangla Dictionary". It is very good English to Bangla dictionary. Then I had the idea to create computer software that will find word meaning for me and it has to be English to Bangla dictionary. At that time I planned to do it. Then I discussed it with Rebeka. Rebeka was the president of Language Club at that time. She helped to find volunteers from Language Club who helped to insert all the words manually using my software. I used PHP programming language to manage the dictionary data manipulation. Finally when we finished the project we decided to use it within our club members. Day by day the demand was growing in our university. Then we decided to release the software as an online version.
What is the specialty?
It gives word meaning within seconds. It can search meaning for both English to Bangla and Bangla to English. It has a unique feature called "Read Text". We read a lot in websites; during our reading we find a lot of unknown words. To use this feature a user just has to copy any text from anywhere and paste it in the "Read Text" tab then a page will appear containing the text. Then the user will has to just double click on any unknown word to see word meaning. This dictionary also has two extensions for Firefox and Chrome. If a user installs the extension in any of these two browsers then he will have the opportunity to see any word meaning in any page. For instance, if a user reads the Daily Star and the browser extension is installed then he can get meaning of any word just clicking twice on any word. It is a simple process but helps a user to learn a lot of new word meanings within a minimal time.
How English-thai.net is different from other online dictionaries?
The basic difference is other dictionaries are just dictionaries. But English-thai.net is a tool which helps its' users to read any text very conveniently by finding meanings for unknown words. It has browser extensions, misspelling detection, plenty of words and faster.
What value it is adding to our society?
Our society needs more automation in education system. Our govt. is trying to digitize all the books so that students get the digital books conveniently. We are creating a combined effort to create such online software so that people get benefited directly through internet. Our dictionary provides a great value to a person who wants to learn English language by reading. It saves their time and reduces extra headache for searching word meaning manually.
How user friendly it is?
It is very user friendly. The average page loading time is less than a second. And anybody wants to get word meaning he has to just type the word in input box and press search button then the word meaning appears instantly. If the user misspells any word our system automatically corrects it and gives him the desired word meaning. It also give English to English word meaning so that the user won't have to find another dictionary to find English to English meaning.
Who is the user?
Around 60% users are from our country, about 20% from India. Users from 50 other countries access our dictionary from various locations.
How many visitors per day?
We have 12 thousand visitors per day searching 50 thousand words.
From which place this is using?
Mostly they use our dictionary from Desktop and tablet pcs.
What is the technical background?
(1) Language : PHP, Java Script
(2) Server : Ubuntu
(3) Hosting : Amazon Web Services
What is the future plan?
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We are planning to create mobile phone apps. We have already developed an android app which is in the state of testing. We are developing an iphone app too.
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We will increase number of new words.
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We will add forum support.
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We are preparing another support for English grammar, where our member Rebeka is contributing.
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We are considering to open a national Language Club in Dhaka
What do you expect from this?
In this year we are hoping to reach at least 25 thousand users and 80 thousand word search per day. We are looking forward to launching our new updated version and two mobile apps for both android and iphone.
How youth can be added?
Most of our users are from age group of 15-30. These users have a good opportunity to learn the language for their higher study purposes. Most of the local users are struggling to get job where proficiency in English is a compulsory matter. Students need a tool like English-thai.net so that they can utilize this to their study purposes.
What is the scope for users?
Users can learn new words. They can learn English Language by reading texts.
Any upgrade version?
We are bringing another update version of English-thai.net. It will be our 11th update since the launch. Currently we have 1,43,442 words. Our new version contains additional 4015 new words. And we have fixed few areas. We have also upgraded our server system so that it support up to 50k users in a day. Our new version will be launched in July.
Media References:
Please click on the links to know more about us :
(1) ATN Bangla :
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(2) Prothom Alo :
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(3) E Prothom-Alo :
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(4) Daily Observer :
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