56 messages over 7 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
DavidW Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6517 days ago 318 posts - 458 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French, Italian, Persian, Malay Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Portuguese, German, Urdu
| Message 49 of 56 09 March 2011 at 7:23pm | IP Logged |
I didn't know about that. It's a recording of part 1 of 'The Days,' which corresponds to
about the first 70 pages of the book (~400 pages). It would have been good to know about
it before, but I don't think it changes much now.
Edited by DavidW on 09 March 2011 at 7:23pm
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| DavidW Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6517 days ago 318 posts - 458 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French, Italian, Persian, Malay Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Portuguese, German, Urdu
| Message 50 of 56 14 March 2011 at 7:07pm | IP Logged |
The recording of 'The Days' is now for the most part finished. Still waiting for the
copyrights to be cleared for the translation however. One they are obtained, the book
should be on Amazon within a couple of weeks.
We are looking to start recording the next book. Are there any other Arabic learing
materials you have that you wish had audio? We could get in touch with the publisher and
produce audio to accompany the book.
Edited by DavidW on 15 March 2011 at 3:20am
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| Andrew C Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom naturalarabic.com Joined 5181 days ago 205 posts - 350 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written)
| Message 51 of 56 17 March 2011 at 2:05pm | IP Logged |
daristani wrote:
I don't know how relevant it might be to your project, but there's an audio version of "Al-Ayyam" available for download at the following page:
http://www.iu.edu/~celtie/arabic_archive.html
(It's about halfway down the page, under "literature". Whether it's complete or not I have no idea.) |
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I was listening to this recording of al-Ayyaam - it is excellent, except for one really annoying thing: At the beginning of every page/chapter the reader says the page/chapter number in English! I find this so patronising - he's just been reading complex sentences in Arabic then thinks we won't be able to understand if he read the page number in Arabic ...grrrrrr! Praps I should take a chill pill...
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| DavidW Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6517 days ago 318 posts - 458 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French, Italian, Persian, Malay Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Portuguese, German, Urdu
| Message 52 of 56 29 March 2011 at 1:02am | IP Logged |
I thought I would give an update. The recording of 'The Days' is has been finished for
some time, and is available from Majed's site: www.mijobooks.com. We are still waiting
to hear back about the rights to the English translation for the bilingual book.
Whilst there is a lot of high-quality writing by well-known modern Arabic-language
writers in the public domain, getting the permissions to the translations of these
works, which are rarely in the public domain, has proved to be the most challenging and
time-consuming aspect of this undertaking. As an alternative, Majed is thinking about
translating a number of public domain English language works into modern idiomatic
Arabic. An alternative is to forego the full English translation, and provide a
translation of only the difficult Arabic words. If you have a background in computer
linguistics, you might be able to me with building a system to do this automatically
here
I have also contacted a couple of universities here in the UK where Arabic is taught,
to see if there is any possibility for collaboration on a project like this.
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| CaucusWolf Senior Member United States Joined 5263 days ago 191 posts - 234 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Arabic (Written), Japanese
| Message 53 of 56 29 March 2011 at 4:58am | IP Logged |
DavidW wrote:
Are there any other Arabic learing
materials you have that you wish had audio? We could get in touch with the publisher and
produce audio to accompany the book. |
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I'd really like Vol 3 of the FSI MWA course to get audio. That would be awesome if I could actually go through the entire FSI course.(because I wont do it without the audio.)
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| TDC Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6912 days ago 261 posts - 291 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, French Studies: Esperanto, Ukrainian, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Persian
| Message 54 of 56 03 April 2011 at 2:11am | IP Logged |
I think you should get as literal a translation done as possible, instead of just using the normal version. In the Alice example, already in the second sentence there is a divergence and unless you already know what it means, the translation won't help you.
The English says: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading
The German says: Das Buch, das ihre Schwester las, gefiel ihr nicht;
So, to help the learner, the English should say something more like: She didn't like the book that her sister was reading.
Or: The book, that her sister was reading, wasn't pleasing to her (She didn't like it). With a gloss for where the two languages express the ideas differently.
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| DavidW Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6517 days ago 318 posts - 458 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French, Italian, Persian, Malay Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Portuguese, German, Urdu
| Message 55 of 56 03 April 2011 at 3:48am | IP Logged |
We have sorted out the rights to 'The Little Prince,' Majed is doing a new translation
for the Arabic. This will be as faithful as possible, without being unnatural. We are
also recording it using new equipment.
We have been searching for other suitable 'easier' works for intermediate students. We
are concentrating now on well-known children's literature from western authors, around
70-200 pages, that are suitable for learners. Majed will then do a translation into
Arabic. We were hoping to find something in the public domain to start with, but the
pickings are slim. Most things I have looked at to date are too literary, or uses dated
language. I found Alice in Wonderland very useful in studying German, but I imagine
translating the rhymes and riddles into Arabic would be very difficult. Obtaining the
permission to use the existing Arabic versions could be weeks of work.
Currently I am looking for an abridged version of Les Miserables. Pinocchio also still
reads well, but is a little long at about 45,000 words. The little prince is 15,000
words, and Alice in Wonderland about 25,000. If anyone else has ideas, I would really
appreciate it. I will also see about getting permission to use the works of a number of
more recent children's authors, like Roald Dahl, whose's works could work well.
Here is a reading of part of 'The Fantastic Mr. Fox', by Roald Dahl, on youtube:
link
Still waiting for the permission for Taha Husseins works, very close now, but once we
get it we'll be doing several of his books.
Edited by DavidW on 03 April 2011 at 2:56pm
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| DavidW Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6517 days ago 318 posts - 458 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French, Italian, Persian, Malay Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Portuguese, German, Urdu
| Message 56 of 56 03 April 2011 at 2:48pm | IP Logged |
About the Modern Written Arabic audio for volume 3, probably only a few books are sold
each year on Amazon. But maybe many people download it from http://fsi-language-
courses.org . If we can get some numbers about the number of downloads of the third
volume from the site admin, I could see if it would be worthwhile. I will try to contact
them, although if anyone is in contact with them, that might be easier. I don't have any
personal email addresses.
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