LingoSchema: Multilingual Curriculum Database Boilerplate for App Developers

Don’t model this as “English word -> translated word” unless you want pain in every language immediately. Use content units instead: phrase/sentence/exercise item with locale-specific versions. Something like: - exercise(id, type, difficulty, skill_id) - exercise_translation(exercise_id, locale, prompt, accepted_answers, hints, audio_url) Words are useful as metadata, not the source of truth. Phrases and sentences carry grammar/context; single-word translation is where apps go to quietly die. For speed: pre-generate/cache the lessons, keep user progress separate, and serve mostly static lesson JSON from a CDN. Translation APIs are fine for drafts, but you’ll still want human review for anything learners will trust.

It’s unclear what you’d be trying to achieve with this approach. Duolingo isn’t a translation engine, it’s a curriculum which someone has hand designed the lessons for. The translations happen once, at authoring time, by content people who are likely more like tutors or language experts so it never happens at runtime. If you really do still want to create a Lidl version of Duolingo then I’d pick one language to start with, build 10 to 20 real lessons by hand then ship it. The hard part is that good language curriculum is genuinely difficult to get right as it’s a balancing act between being entertaining and educating. Final point there was a podcast on BBC Sounds called Sliced Bread and they covered language apps. Probably worth a listen as you’ll like get ideas.