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Arabic Parallel Text for L/R in the Works | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| DavidW Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6527 days ago 318 posts - 458 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French, Italian, Persian, Malay Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Portuguese, German, Urdu | Message 1 of 56 21 February 2011 at 10:15pm | IP Logged |
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I have been in contact with the owner of Mijo Books (http://www.mijobooks.com/) about
producing a number of English/Arabic parallel texts that corresponds to his audiobooks. We've got it mostly figured out. We are planning on starting with Taha Hussein's Doaa al-Karawan ('The Call of the Curlew' or 'The Nightingale's Prayer') to be followed by a title by Nagiub Mahfouz. They will be sold in paperback form on Amazon and via my website (http://www.omilialanguages.com/). Do you have any comments, or suggestions for other titles? This is the approximate format I am planning to use for the book. This sample uses Alice in Wonderland in English/German: The 'cells' delineate paragraphs, and the texts are aligned at the sub-sentence level. The idea is to make it very easy to easily switch between the two languages without getting lost. I will also experiment with an interlinear format, and see how that looks. Does anyone have any other suggestions, or additions they would like to see? I will start work on other languages soon too (including Persian). Thanks for your comments. Edited by DavidW on 21 February 2011 at 11:19pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5321 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 2 of 56 21 February 2011 at 11:37pm | IP Logged |
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Good idea, but unless you manage to secure the publishing rights for the original and the translation from the estates of Naguib Mahfouz and Taha Hussein you won't be able to legally sell your books on Amazon.com.
As for your sample chapter, I don't like the layout. It looks like it came straight from a word processor. You may want to use a DTP program instead to create a more professional looking layout. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| DavidW Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6527 days ago 318 posts - 458 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French, Italian, Persian, Malay Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Portuguese, German, Urdu | Message 3 of 56 22 February 2011 at 12:33am | IP Logged |
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The rights to the Arabic texts aren't a problem. I've been chasing the copyright
holders for the English translation of Doaa al-Karawan, hopefully that will be sorted out soon. The output is actually from InDesign, but is only one of a few mock-ups I made to test different layout ideas. I'm concerned more about getting the usability right first, then I'll tweak the spacings etc. One of the problems in tightly aligning two texts is that you must often insert blank lines in one of the texts to keep things in sync. So you can't use newlines to indicate paragraph boundaries. I agree it's not pretty as it is. The cells surounding the paragraphs are little dominating.. probably a single horizontal line across the width of the page would be enough to show the paragraphs. Alternatively, I thought about using a pilcrow symbol (¶) in the left margin. Edited by DavidW on 22 February 2011 at 12:51am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Andrew C Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom naturalarabic.com Joined 5191 days ago 205 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written) | Message 4 of 56 22 February 2011 at 1:34am | IP Logged |
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It's a nice idea - there aren't enough Arabic-English parallel text books, and with audio it would be great.
I hope you are 100% sure about the copyright situation. And also that you are aware that the market for this book will probably (unfortunately) be miniscule, even though it is a great product. To make it more useful, it would be great if it had the unguessable vowels (e.g. on form I verbs) and also if the translation was as close as possible to the original Arabic. There is an English translation of al-Ayyaam (The Days) by Taha Hussein which is wonderfully faithful to the original. I can't see you getting permission to use the translation though, but no harm asking, I guess. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| DavidW Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6527 days ago 318 posts - 458 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French, Italian, Persian, Malay Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Portuguese, German, Urdu | Message 5 of 56 22 February 2011 at 2:53am | IP Logged |
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Andrew, do you have the name of the translator? Is it the book ISBN 9774244354 ? It's
published by a university press, so there might be some hope. I will look into this. 'Google Tashkeel' is a tool that will apparently add vowel markers to text automatically. It hadn't occurred to me to add vowels, as I assumed it would be used with the audio, but this is maybe not a bad idea. I guess though, full vocalisation clutters up the text in your opinion? I am actually quite partial to transliteration, although I know many people don't like this, as I like to focus on speaking and listening skills, and I don't read regularly in a few of the languages I study. I guess though, most people learn MSA to read it, not to speak it, so a transliterated version wouldn't have many takers. I had a few other thoughts, such as highlighting less common words that are most useful in understanding the authors style (i.e. words that are used a lot, that appear more frequently in the book than in Arabic in general, and that the student is unlikely to know. If that makes sense.) If the student learnt these words first, it could speed their comprehension of the text and get them to a natural comprehension stage faster, where they could understand the remaining words via context. But this will probably only be useful for the more advanced student, intermediate students will still have to learn more common vocabulary and constructions first anyway. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Andrew C Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom naturalarabic.com Joined 5191 days ago 205 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written) | Message 6 of 56 22 February 2011 at 1:34pm | IP Logged |
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It seems to be the same book - translated by E H Paxton (the first part) but for some reason my copy has a different ISBN: 9774246357
I wouldn't use Google tashkeel - it is only about 90% accurate, whereas you need 100%. It would be better to have no vowels. Fully vowelled would be excellent, but that would be a mammoth task, as would transliteration. Also it is important the text is read out correctly - it is common (and quite natural, I think) for readers to just guess the vowels when they are unsure. But this would be annoying for learners. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| JPike1028 Triglot Senior Member United States piketransitions Joined 5398 days ago 297 posts - 337 votes Speaks: English*, French, Italian Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written), Swedish, Portuguese, Czech | Message 7 of 56 22 February 2011 at 1:53pm | IP Logged |
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I'm a fan. I would definitely use these resources, were I able to afford them (poor, starving artist here).
1 person has voted this message useful |
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