Remember New Words and Find Books at Your Level

Reading in another language comes with two familiar problems. You look up a word, save it, and a week later it's gone. And you pick a book that looked fine in the store, only to give up on page ten because every other sentence has a word you don't know.

When we added tap-to-translate to the reader, we promised that the words you save would not just sit in a list. Today we're keeping that promise, and adding a way to tell whether a book is right for your level.

All Your Saved Words in One Place

Every word you save in the Bookize reader now lives on your vocabulary page, together with its translation, the sentence you found it in, and the book it came from.

From there you can:

• search for any word or translation;
• filter by language, by book, or by whether you're still learning a word;
• fix a translation that doesn't fit the way the word was used in your book;
• mark words you already know, or delete the ones you don't need, one at a time or many at once.

If you read in more than one language, each language gets its own tab.

A Few Minutes of Review a Day

Press Review and Bookize shows you one card at a time. The front has the word and the sentence from your book, and the back has the translation. A word is much easier to recall in the sentence where you met it than on its own.

After you check the answer, tell Bookize how it went: Again, Hard, Good, or Easy. Each button shows when you'll see the word next. Words you struggle with come back soon. Words you know well come back later and later, right around the time you'd start to forget them.

To keep things manageable, Bookize introduces up to 20 new words a day for each language. Words that are due for review are never held back, so you won't fall behind, and you won't get buried in new cards either.

On a computer you can review with the keyboard: space shows the answer, and keys 1 to 4 pick a rating. On a phone the card fills the screen and the buttons sit at the bottom, within reach of your thumb.

Want the whole scene, not just one sentence? Cards for words from books in your Bookize library have an Open in book button that takes you to the exact place where you first saw the word.

The number of words waiting for review appears in your profile menu and in the reader's top bar. And if you tap a word you've already saved, the translation popup tells you it's in your vocabulary.

How Much of This Book Will You Understand?

Open an EPUB book in a foreign language, and a few seconds later a small badge appears in the reader's top bar. It shows the share of words in the book you probably already know, and what that means for your reading:

• Comfortable: 98% of the words or more. You can read for pleasure and meet an unfamiliar word only now and then.
• Learning zone: 95% to 98%. About one new word in every 20 to 50, which is enough to learn from without losing the story.
• Hard: below 95%. Expect to stop often.

These thresholds come from research on reading in a second language: around 95% of familiar words is where understanding begins, and around 98% is where reading starts to feel easy. Our post on reading levels and text complexity explains what else makes a book difficult.

Click the badge and choose your level, from A1 for beginners to C2 for near-native readers, and the percentage updates right away. Bookize remembers your level for each language, so the next book in the same language is scored for you automatically. Until you pick a level, the badge shows the book's own level, for example "Book ≈ B2".

Your Vocabulary Makes the Estimate Smarter

This is where the two features meet. If you're signed in, Bookize takes your vocabulary into account: words you're still learning count as unfamiliar, and words you know count as familiar, even rare ones. As you read and review, the number gets closer to your real vocabulary.

The badge panel also lists the 20 unfamiliar words that appear most often in the book. Learning even a few of them before you start makes the whole book noticeably easier, because you'll see them again and again. Click a word to see its translation and save it to your vocabulary with one tap. It's saved with a sentence from the book, so it shows up in your daily review in context.

Character and place names are left out, because they appear often but aren't words you need to learn.

The whole calculation runs in your browser. Your book isn't sent anywhere to be analyzed, you can keep reading while it runs, and the next time you open the same book the badge appears instantly.

Availability

Your vocabulary and daily review are free with any Bookize account, with no limit on how many words you save or review.

Book difficulty is free for everyone, with or without an account. It works for books in English, German, Spanish, French, and Italian, and appears when the book's language is different from the language you translate into.

Translations in the reader still have a daily limit on the free plan, and Bookize Premium removes it.

Start With Your Next Book

Open a book you've been meaning to read in the Bookize reader and see where it falls. Save the first few words you don't know, and come back tomorrow for your first review.