Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5332 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian
| Message 9 of 766 01 May 2014 at 11:22pm | IP Logged |
I always recommend reading native material in the shape of books if possible. If not, then do what you have
to do.
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dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4663 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese
| Message 10 of 766 01 May 2014 at 11:37pm | IP Logged |
Solfrid Cristin wrote:
I can't help you there. Does anyone know a reasonable
conversion system? |
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For Japanese I think I calculate 850 chars (excluding spaces) per page. I've since
sampled a bit more and 750 actually maps more consistently.
Basically I took one of my books (a parallel text, as it happens) and counted columns
and rows and then simply multiplied. The characters are laid out so regularly that each
pages has space for exactly the same number of characters. I tried the same technique
on two other books and I've now arrived at 750 as a good conversion rate.
If Chinese text is laid out the same way and you have a book or two to sample, then
this might be a reasonable way to go.
For physical books I'm going to count pages, but for web news sites I'll go with
copy+paste into a document and let the word processor count characters (excluding
spaces) and then convert.
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Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6595 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish
| Message 11 of 766 02 May 2014 at 12:12am | IP Logged |
According to the Tadoku rules, for Japanese 1 page is about 400 characters, and books like this are considered "double-rowed" where each page counts as double. You can ask @lordsilent how many characters are supposed to count for Mandarin maybe? Initially to have a language added it was required to count the average sentences per page over 10 pages, each from a different physical book.
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BAnna Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4620 days ago 409 posts - 616 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Turkish
| Message 12 of 766 02 May 2014 at 2:15am | IP Logged |
I just added pages for Hebrew, Hungarian and Thai to the Wikia Super Challenge Recommendations. Many pages are still empty, but I hope contributors (you!) will add lots of good resources as you begin to complete the challenge.
Wikia Super Challenge Recommendations
Good luck with the Challenge and remember to have fun!
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Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4907 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German
| Message 13 of 766 02 May 2014 at 8:21am | IP Logged |
Since all of the recommendations for French films are films I've seen (due to some strange coincidence) I need someone else to add more recommendations.
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milesaway Triglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4329 days ago 134 posts - 181 votes Speaks: French, English*, Russian Studies: Finnish, Sign Language
| Message 14 of 766 02 May 2014 at 9:53am | IP Logged |
I am reading tons of books in Russian already, but I was just wondering if I could also
count the textbooks.
As for Finnish, I picture myself slogging through the 50 books at a snail's pace, so any
little bit helps!
Serpent: I have the second book already, and have been working through. Most of my
materials were purchased in Russia, and most of them are in Russian. On the flip side, my
Russian grammar has improved while doing that. :D
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Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5332 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian
| Message 15 of 766 02 May 2014 at 11:11am | IP Logged |
milesaway wrote:
I am reading tons of books in Russian already, but I was just wondering if I could also
count the textbooks.
As for Finnish, I picture myself slogging through the 50 books at a snail's pace, so any
little bit helps!
Serpent: I have the second book already, and have been working through. Most of my
materials were purchased in Russia, and most of them are in Russian. On the flip side, my
Russian grammar has improved while doing that. :D |
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Counting textbooks is more for the A1-A2 candidates. If you are over on native material, I would not count
textbooks, and just enjoy the fact that you are the envy of all us Russian learners who spend half a year on
getting through a book :-)
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rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5234 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin
| Message 16 of 766 02 May 2014 at 12:23pm | IP Logged |
Jeffers wrote:
Since all of the recommendations for French films are films I've seen (due to some strange coincidence) I need someone else to add more recommendations. |
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If you have netflix you can watch the TV series "Engrenages" which is listed as "Spirals" in English, I highly recommend this show.
"Popularie" which is a comedy about a typewriting contest is good.
"Anything for her" (Pour elle) is great, don't bother with the crappy English remake however.
Personally I love Taxi & Taxi 2 by Luc Besson. Again avoid crappy Hollywood remakes.
Another thing I have done for the Super Challenge is go through all the DVD's in my house and pulled out the ones with French as well as English language. So The entire boxed set of "Band of Brothers" and the Pacific will be on my list. These are very good and they are 8 disc sets, so lot of french.
Also I've got French on a couple of sessions of the big-bang.
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