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siomotteikiru Senior Member Zaire Joined 6358 days ago 102 posts - 242 votes
| Message 17 of 489 26 June 2007 at 2:48pm | IP Logged |
As to parallel texts.
Good quality literature has very often good translations.
It does not matter if it is 100% exact, words mean something only in a context, and very soon you're able to guess the exact meaning, occasianally you can use a pop up dictionary.
As to making parallel texts: it takes time and effort, but it is more effective and much cheaper than buying textbooks (Assimil, Pimsleur, Rosetta, etc). In one chapter of a novel there are more words, sentences and text than in any language textbook.
You can find some parallel texts online, I remember seeing Tom Sawyer by Twain in English-Italian. There are plenty XYZ language-Russian parallel texts too.
I usually make my parallel text myself. I buy a book, scan and OCR it. Even so, it takes less time to learn a language than in a traditional way, using textbooks I mean.
I like Kafka, and I wanted to listen to Der Prozess in the original (German), so I “listened-read” to it, it took me four days (forty hours of active study), and now I am able to understand most German texts (written and spoken)! And I knew practically nothing about German before.
The novel is about nine hours, read by Gert Westphal, the translation into Polish is very good, and close to the original.
That’s how effective „listening-reading” is. I am not interesting in German, and I am not going to learn it comme it faut.
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| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6444 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German
| Message 18 of 489 26 June 2007 at 3:00pm | IP Logged |
frenkeld wrote:
reineke wrote:
It's kinda difficult to find texts/audiobooks that overlap perfectly. |
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I can see that being the case with classics, that often come in slightly (or not so slightly) different versions, but shouldn't an unabridged audiobook edition of a modern novel match the orginal?
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I'll try to find out, the logistics of it is somewhat difficult for languages other than English. Are German/Italian translations of an English book identical to those of its audiobook? How many modern novels in other languages appear unabridged as audiobooks? I don't feel like shelling out twice for a modern novel but that's another issue.
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| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6940 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German
| Message 19 of 489 26 June 2007 at 3:13pm | IP Logged |
reineke wrote:
Are German/Italian translations of an English book identical to those of its audiobook? |
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I was thinking of a novel being read in its original language. With translations, you'd have more checking to do.
reineke wrote:
How many modern novels in other languages appear unabridged as audiobooks? |
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I certainly don't have a general answer to that. Amazon.de is suggestive of audiobooks being fairly popular in Germany. I have not yet looked into Italian or Spanish, but would simply research a couple of online stores.
reineke wrote:
I don't feel like shelling out twice for a modern novel but that's another issue. |
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Three times, in fact - novel, audiobook, translation into English. It would have to be considered a "learning" expense, you wouldn't want to do this with every book you read.
There is also the issue of whether one will enjoy this type of study method - I haven't done well with multiple readings of any book in the past, which seems necessary for this approach to be effective.
Edited by frenkeld on 26 June 2007 at 3:15pm
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| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6444 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German
| Message 20 of 489 26 June 2007 at 3:29pm | IP Logged |
I like rereading books - but this applies mostly to well-known classics. A lot of German audiobooks are translated literature (modern + classics) or German classics. Vorleser might be a good place to start as they provide free audiobooks and texts. There are of course modern German books as audiobooks but the choice is necessarily more limited. If one's language skills are more advanced, plain reading/listening should suffice and be more enjoyable as well. I believe this is something one should try with a new language. I would like to know more about audiobooks in Russian and Spanish.
This is the largest Italian audiobook store:
http://www.ilnarratore.com/index.php?tid=10
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| siomotteikiru Senior Member Zaire Joined 6358 days ago 102 posts - 242 votes
| Message 21 of 489 26 June 2007 at 4:06pm | IP Logged |
There are PLENTY of unabridged audiobooks in Russian (mp3), both modern and classical literature, and very cheap, you can buy on-line or use p2p.
There are a lot (thousands) of Polish audiobooks, too. They are not so readily available, but if you're persistent...
I have unabridged audiobooks in English, French, German, Russian, Polish, Danish, Swedish, Spanish and Italian.
I have a few hundred hours of audio with transcripts in Japanese and translations into several European languages, but mostly classical literature or newspaper articals.
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6436 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 22 of 489 26 June 2007 at 7:45pm | IP Logged |
siomotteikiru wrote:
3. you look at the translation and listen to the text at the same time, from the beginning to the end of a story, usually three times is enough to understand almost everything
This is the most important thing in the method, it is right AT THIS POINT that proper learning takes place.
If you’re in a position to do it right from the start, you can skip 1. and 2.
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How do you decide when enough is enough? I've listened to the recording of "In der Strafkolonie" once; it was just over an hour, and I lost my place in the translation for a couple of sentences to half a paragraph well under a dozen times. Other than that, I largely followed it, although a few more sentences confused me in parts.
siomotteikiru wrote:
4. now you can concentrate on SPEAKING: you repeat after the recording, you do it as many times as necessary to become fluent
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With or without using the written text in the target language?
siomotteikiru wrote:
5. you translate the text from your own language into the language you’re learning
you can do the translation both orally and in writing, that’s why the written texts should be placed in vertical columns side by side: you can cover one side and check using the other one.
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Is it good to do this one sentence at a time, or in larger chunks?
1 person has voted this message useful
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Keith Diglot Moderator JapanRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6774 days ago 526 posts - 536 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map
| Message 23 of 489 26 June 2007 at 10:44pm | IP Logged |
siomotteikiru, what is your username supposed to mean?
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| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6467 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese
| Message 24 of 489 27 June 2007 at 4:04am | IP Logged |
You can find a 3-language online version of "The Little Prince" at http://www.fairydream.net/html/littleprince/ (Chinese in traditional and simplified characters, English, French). Unfortunately the texts are not aligned and there is no sound either. See the Harry Potter thread for where to find "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" online as text and recordings. Matching that to a native-language Harry Potter shouldn't be hard at all...
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