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Digitizing FSI | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| ducr Newbie Canada Joined 7094 days ago 16 posts - 16 votes Speaks: French | Message 137 of 237 23 June 2005 at 8:12pm | IP Logged |
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Hello. I am new to this site and interested in this project. I've noticed activity has died down over the past few weeks. What's going on with this?
I do a fair amount of digitizing cassettes for my own use and would be happy to contribute my time and skills to this project if needed. I must agree with an earlier poster that trying to OCR the text can be very labor intensive. Jpg files are much more practical to produce, though they are larger than text files. That isn't a problem, is it? OCR can be quite tedious because it rarely offers perfect results. Someone will surely need to edit them carefully. Not worth the trouble IMO. Jpgs are the easy way to go. I own and have used the FSI advanced French course units 19-24, but they are audioforum cassettes which have a copyright notice. However, I also own, but have not used, the French phonology course. These are "U.S. Dept. of State" cassettes and textbook. No copyright notice. I would consider digitizing and sharing this course, but I want to make sure that this project is not dead. I have no immediate plans to use them myself and I want to avoid wasting any time on this if they can't be used by people on this site. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Magnum Bilingual Triglot Retired Moderator Pro Member United States Joined 7117 days ago 359 posts - 353 votes  Speaks: English*, Serbian*, French Studies: German Personal Language Map | Message 138 of 237 23 June 2005 at 8:59pm | IP Logged |
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ducr, I would appreciate any french material you have that is not copywrited.
As for the FSI, I can say this much; It is public domain as long as it has not been enhanced. The US citizens paid taxes for this program, and it can be freely distributed. If someone changed the content or enhanced it, then it would not be legal to distribute inside the USA, although if you are outside the USA it might. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| morprussell Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7163 days ago 272 posts - 285 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 139 of 237 23 June 2005 at 10:54pm | IP Logged |
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Ducr, I am also interested in any French material (public domain only). The French phonology course would be helpful. Please keep us updated if you plan to digitize it.
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| Nick Newbie United States Joined 7147 days ago 23 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 140 of 237 23 June 2005 at 11:47pm | IP Logged |
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I would definately be interested in any french materials that might be available. I would also be willing to ocr and proofread the texts if they are provided in a non-text format. This goes for anybody that wishes help in converting roman alphabet based materials to ocr. I exclude non-phonetian alphabets because I'm not sure of the availablity of ocr software that can read other characters. If anybody can verify that software exists for say Chinese or Hindu character systems then I will also be willing to help out with those conversions.
I am also available to assist with distribution of works that are completed via bittorrent or any other system chosen. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ducr Newbie Canada Joined 7094 days ago 16 posts - 16 votes Speaks: French | Message 141 of 237 24 June 2005 at 11:29am | IP Logged |
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I've just completed digitizing one tape out of ten from the FSI French phonology course and it seems to be going smoothly so far. There are 10 one hour tapes in my set, unlike the 8 listed on the audioforum website, but it seems to be the identical course from what I can tell. The textbook is 394 pages, which will take me some time to scan because I will need to monitor it the entire duration. Drudgery. Oh well… I’m happy to do it if others will get some benefit from it.
It's a peculiar course compared to other phonetics courses I’ve done. This will be the fifth such course for me, though I can’t see myself going through the entire ten hours. I believe it does have some value even though it does not teach the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). Most of the newer courses teach the IPA symbols for each phoneme. I personally think IPA symbols provide more clarity for a student trying to learn phonetics, but it’s not absolutely necessary. The course is essentially made up of drills. Some are rather mindless, but there seems to be a method behind it. It’s obviously designed for English learners because all of the instructions are in English. I’ll keep everyone posted on my progress. I haven’t decided how to distribute this, but others here seem to like bittorrent, so I will look into that option. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jackie_chan Newbie United Kingdom Joined 7090 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes | Message 142 of 237 27 June 2005 at 4:23pm | IP Logged |
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ducr,
I am definitely interested in ANY French materials you have. They would be certainly be some use to me. If I can help you in any shape or form, I'd be more than willing. Thanks again! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ducr Newbie Canada Joined 7094 days ago 16 posts - 16 votes Speaks: French | Message 143 of 237 28 June 2005 at 1:14pm | IP Logged |
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Just a quick update. Digitizing the cassettes has not been a big deal. However, my computer decided to change all my input settings and that caused some problems, but otherwise it's been okay.
As expected, the problem is with scanning the book. I have a flatbed scanner that is two or three years old and it does a very nice job, but each scan requires lots of tweaking with the software. It's hard for me to see the end of this without better automation. It's just too time consuming to be practical. I'm trying to find different software that will work with my HP scanjet 4400c. I'm currently using HP Precisionscan that came with the scanner. If anyone has any suggestions on a better way to do this, feel free to reply or send me a PM. --- Thanks. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 7104 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes 2 sounds | Message 144 of 237 28 June 2005 at 5:56pm | IP Logged |
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I've used OCR software (like ReadIRIS) to scan in documents. It has some automation features that make things go a lot quicker and it also can save out to .pdf of word when I'm done. It also can tweak with the scan once you are done (like rotation and text recognition), so you can get the scanning part over with sooner.
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