I have had a bad experience with Anki so far. Maybe someone can chime in, clearing things up for me:
When I search for HSK vocabulary Anki decks or whatever they call it, I found almost exclusively sets of words that are the wrong way around. They showed me the Chinese characters and asked me what the English translation is. I was incredulous about how many wrong decks there are and that I could not find good decks. I was starting to wonder, if people are actually just using Anki to learn to read Chinese characters, one-way learning basically, only recognition not writing. Only for reading subtitles and such, instead of writing with friends. Or perhaps they have the illusion, that they are able to write, because they can type in the Pinyin, and will get a selection of characters, which they then can recognize. But I, I want to be able to properly write the characters myself. The crucial issue was, that I did not find a simple setting to invert the direction of translation of a deck. How can such a simple thing not be among the most easy to find actions to perform with a deck? I read something about it not being possible on mobile phone, but somehow being possible on computer, but not as simple as flipping a switch.
Ultimately, I abandoned Anki and recently proceeded made my own tool for learning the characters, that is highly configurable and that can change the direction with the change of one config attribute.
>Ultimately, I abandoned Anki and recently proceeded made my own tool for learning the characters, that is highly configurable and that can change the direction with the change of one config attribute.
You built an entire flashcard app by yourself, but you couldn't figure out how to edit card templates in anki?
Ah who am I kidding, your probably just trying to advertise your app.
I have fun developing useful software catering exactly to my individual needs, learning a GUI framework/toolkit on the side. I don't have fun needing to figure out the abstract concepts of someone else's tool, and needing to search a lot, to find a way to do something that should be very simple and very prominent in the interface, as it seems to be necessary for most decks I can find, in order to properly learn the characters including writing them.
I have not much to gain from advertising my app. It is AGPL and I don't plan on ever selling it. If it is useful to other people, that's great. If not, then it will at least be very useful to myself. I don't see what's wrong with mentioning, that I build my own, especially since this is HN. We are not on TikTok here.
You can do that easily with Anki as others have mentioned, however it is generally recommended to create your own cards since the process of researching, phrasing, and formatting the content serves as the crucial first stage of cognitive encoding. By actively deciding how to simplify a concept or which image best represents a term, you are building unique neural "hooks" that link new information to your existing knowledge. This personal investment transforms the card from a dry piece of data into a meaningful memory, making it far more resistant to forgetting than a generic card designed by a stranger.
That's basically what I do with my own tool. I create my own data files and store lots of meta information like similar words, usage, and mnemonics in there. I try to keep that somewhat usable for others, but ultimately, I am building the tool for myself and also write the data about words in the way I personally find it useful, so it will be biased in that way. Only, that I am also building the software to use the data around it, combining 2 hobbies, computer programming and learning Mandarin.
Regarding the "wrong direction" issue: In my experience it could also have just been the case that both directions had card templates, but due to some sorting order of new cards setting all Chinese->English cards would appear before any English->Chinese.
If that is the case, it could be corrected in the deck options. And if the English->Chinese cards are missing altogether they can be created from the note by adding a new card template to the note.
> They showed me the Chinese characters and asked me what the English translation is. I was incredulous about how many wrong decks there are and that I could not find good decks.
You can edit the structure of the card templates so they're the 'right way around' for you:
https://docs.ankiweb.net/getting-started.html#card-types
Is this available on the mobile app? A template editor?
My issue is, that I also don't know where to find the functionality for editing the template. I also cannot find it under deck "Options" in the desktop app. There is sooo much in the UI, that I think it is possible, that I am simply overlooking it somewhere. The docs you linked don't tell me where to find that. No screenshots of any UI are visible. Even now, after you telling the I need to edit templates, I still cannot find the functionality in the UI. I simply don't see it.
My feedback at this point would be to make this something, that is easily discoverable for the user, or add screenshots of how to get there to the docs and have keywords in the docs, that will ensure, that when I search for how to invert a deck, I will most likely find that page of the docs.
It's available on AnkiDroid: Main menu -> Manage note types.
And on desktop? When i go to:
I only see some latex code for header and footer: I assume those are header and footer of a card when it is displayed? But this does not include translation direction.And why is it called "Note Type"? How does this concept relate to "Cards" or "Templates"?
Can you see, why one would have problems finding the correct setting?
EDIT: Now I found it under:
There I would actually expect some list of the cards, not a template editing. It seems rather unintuitive to me. The issues are:(1) The user has to know where to find that.
(2) The user has to know, that there is no short way to get to editing the attributes of the word shown, but instead, that they need to edit a template.
(3) The user has to know, where they will find the function to edit a template. I claim a normal user will not suspect this option to be hidden under "Note Types". What even is a note? Starting to use Anki, I would look for words like "Card", "Flashcard", "Translation", "Direction", "reverse", "training options", etc., but not "Note Types". It is a weird naming.
(4) A user will have to discover, that they are not supposed to click "Options", but "Cards". But that this brings up the card options, and that that contains the template, instead of the templates being something entirely separate, loosely coupled.
It is hard to include so much functionality in one tool. I understand that. But personally, I would have had to wade through every single menu item, to find this functionality, and this also explains, why in the past I have not been able to find this at all.
On mobile you can edit the front and back template.
Anki is a platform, not a content creator. I would be thankful that someome shared their hard work of creating a deck that has all of the content to meet your needs.
For what it's worth, there are many "RTK" decks for Japanese that show english keyword on front and expect you to write the kanji before flipping.
Maybe search for an "RTH" deck to go along with the book Remembering the Hanzi.
Anki is an extremely powerful and feature rich software, and it seems that you barely scratched the surface before dismissing it.
Edit: it took me 10 seconds to find this deck https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1489829777 there's probably a Simplified one as well. Good luck with your studies.
What does RTH stand for? I am guessing "something something To Kanji/Hanzi".
The deck you linked is not mentioning HSK in the description though. It was maybe 1 year ago or so, that I searched for HSK1-3 level decks and only got wrong direction ones.
I am searching again now:
(1) "HSK1 English" -- nothing
(2) "HSK1" -- lots of results, but also tons of results that are not relevant for me, because they are not for English. -- Results like https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1474834583 -- but that is 1-4 which is too much for me. I either need the 1, 2, 3 levels separate, or 1-3 in one deck. Also finding https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/166845167, which is the wrong way around. Starts right away by asking me "的" instead of something like "(some description here)". When I go to deck options in Anki desktop app, I see "Display Order", but there I cannot select any "English -> Chinese". Tons of options, but none that inverts what the cards show.
One sibling comment informs me, that I have to edit a template somewhere. But I don't know where, and in the deck options I don't quickly see any template editing function.
And this has been my experience with pretty much every HSK deck I found there. It would seem silly, that everyone uploads decks in the "wrong" order. Which leads me to think, that many people cheat themselves, by only doing the recognition part of learning the characters. Why else would so many people upload decks, only so that whoever who downloads the deck has to invert them first, before using them. I also think that many learners are probably not aware of the issue with seeing the character first and then translating to English, in comparison with doing it the other way around.
So now lets do your "RTH" search:
"HSK1 RTH" -- " Error: Please log in to perform more searches."
I am sorry, I cannot even do a keyword search a couple of times??? I need to log in, requiring an account (!) to even find a suitable deck?! OK, at this point I give up again.
Could you share your tool please?
I could, but as you can see in this thread in sibling comments, even stating that I couldn't find a way to invert the direction easily already attracts ire of Anki evangelists, who assume bad intentions and try to dismiss personal experiences of others. Anki must be perfect! If you want to take a look, you can check out my recent comments, or my git repos.