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A Budget Bilingual Book Making Method | ||
Tags: Bilingual texts | Book | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| jazzboy.bebop Senior Member Norway norwegianthroughnove Joined 5446 days ago 439 posts - 800 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian | Message 1 of 7 21 May 2012 at 7:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Being a fan of bilingual books and parallel texts, I get a little frustrated with Norwegian which has very little of either. I finally decided to just experiment with using a paper Norwegian book with the translated English book, and see if I could find a simple way to read them like I would a parallel text. I thankfully a discovered a relatively comfortable method of doing this which is so simple I am surprised I never tried or thought of it earlier.
I laid out both books next to each other on a table, opened them up and then took two other books and laid one on each horizontally to hold them open with the spines facing upwards to form a straight line across the page. I could then use the spine as a marker to underline whatever line in the text I was at. By doing this I could easily jump from reading one book to the other, keep my place, keep each book open, and all I needed to do was slowly slide each "covering book" downwards as I read. For those of you who like bilingual books and parallel texts, and own books with translated versions, you might want to give this a try. It's surprisingly comfortable. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4893 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 7 24 May 2012 at 10:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
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My variation on that theme when I first started reading the Harry Potter series in Spanish was to just keep the English version at hand and open it only when I got stuck on a Spanish sentence. As time went on I relied less and less often on the English text until I was finally able to read the Spanish without reference to the English at all.
I personally found having parallel text available to be immensely helpful in learning how to read a sentence in Spanish, (since Spanish sentences are constructed differently than English sentences), but I also believe it's important to always be reaching for the goal of setting aside the native language version. That's why I don't like parallel language texts bound together in one book. It allows me to "cheat" too often, using the native language text as a first resort instead of as a last resort. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| jazzboy.bebop Senior Member Norway norwegianthroughnove Joined 5446 days ago 439 posts - 800 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian | Message 3 of 7 25 May 2012 at 1:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
Completely agree with you. Think it won't be too long until I do what you've been doing. Looking forward to the point where I can take the stabilizers off as it were. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4856 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 4 of 7 31 May 2012 at 5:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm not sure if they are still marketed (although I'm sure similar things will be), but
when I first started studying with the Open University, I invested in some "bookchairs", which are like small deckchairs for holding books open and at the desired angle. I think they were originally designed by an OU student, and used to be marketed through the OU student magazine. (For use on a desk or table top). With two "bookchairs" side by side, you could reasonably easily do what the OP describes I think, although I haven't tried it so far. Edited by montmorency on 03 June 2012 at 12:00am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| jazzboy.bebop Senior Member Norway norwegianthroughnove Joined 5446 days ago 439 posts - 800 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian | Message 5 of 7 02 June 2012 at 1:56pm | IP Logged | |||||
Looked these up, seems a lot of companies sell them now. Looks like they could be useful and would certainly make things more comfortable, but there would still be the problem of easily keeping one's place in the text when looking between books, especially with books using small font sizes. Not that much of a problem though. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4856 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 6 of 7 03 June 2012 at 12:05am | IP Logged | |||||
What came to mind on reading this were those "copyholders" designed for people transcribing text from a hardcopy source into a computer. They come in various designs, but I think usually have a gadget to remind you which line you were on. Perhaps something like that could be adapted. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| jazzboy.bebop Senior Member Norway norwegianthroughnove Joined 5446 days ago 439 posts - 800 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian | Message 7 of 7 03 June 2012 at 1:43am | IP Logged | |||||
Ah yes, I remember seeing some of them around my old office. They had transparent rulers that you could move vertically to keep your place. I've had a wee look online and unfortunately book holders with "line guides" as they seem to be called don't come cheap but it is likely not difficult to adapt a cheap, basic book holder. Might well look into that... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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