236factorial Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6493 days ago 192 posts - 213 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English*, French Studies: Spanish
| Message 17 of 77 09 August 2007 at 7:50am | IP Logged |
luke wrote:
Still no luck finding e-text for Dangerous Liaisons in English. If anyone knows where to find it, please let me know.
|
|
|
This doesn't follow the original text too closely, and is a "limited preview", so it doesn't have the whole book's translation. It will only get you started.
From google books
3 persons have voted this message useful
|
luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7158 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French
| Message 18 of 77 09 August 2007 at 5:09pm | IP Logged |
Thank you. I had entirely missed that in my searches. It appears to be an image of the page, so I can't exactly turn it into a parallel text. It is better than nothing. Interestingly, neither the local library, nor the Barnes and Noble store have Dangerous Liaisons in English. There has to be an old translation out there somewhere.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7158 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French
| Message 19 of 77 10 August 2007 at 12:22am | IP Logged |
Listen-read a few chapters of Voyage au Centre de la Terre. I wish I'd started with Voyage rather than Tour du Monde, but, live and learn.
Books.google.com thinks their segment of Dangerous Liaisons is to popular to be viewed right now. I wonder how long the ban lasts.
Still no luck finding an unabridged text version.
Read through some Krashen articles. Here are links to some of them:
http://www.sdkrashen.com/articles/eta_paper/index.html
http://www.sk.com.br/sk-krash.html
The dog wants to eat. I've been letting him whine thinking that maybe he'll be tired and let me sleep later on after I feed him.
Edited by luke on 10 August 2007 at 12:22am
1 person has voted this message useful
|
luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7158 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French
| Message 20 of 77 11 August 2007 at 11:45am | IP Logged |
Bought an improved modern literary translation of Around the World in 80 Days. It has some helpful notes at the back, as well as a more accurate translation.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
tmesis Senior Member Mayotte Joined 6601 days ago 154 posts - 146 votes Speaks: English*
| Message 21 of 77 11 August 2007 at 12:00pm | IP Logged |
-
Edited by tmesis on 17 February 2008 at 2:29pm
1 person has voted this message useful
|
luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7158 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French
| Message 22 of 77 11 August 2007 at 7:07pm | IP Logged |
tmesis wrote:
I was unable to find one with a good translation either in my local library or bookstores. I tried to persevere, but I was getting too annoyed with the purgings of entire swaths of the original text. So I decided to move on to the next book. Still, after about 20 hours with the book, I believe my ears opened up a fair amount. |
|
|
Glencross' 2004 translation of 80 Days isn't perfect, but it is excellent. So far, I've only noticed one tiny imperfection in each chapter such as calling 3,000,000 (French Francs implied) 120,000 pounds, leaving out a phrase about Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, or a phrase about who made the best chronometers.
I'd prefer to have this excellent translation in digital form. I know from my earlier experiences, the bilingual text format is very helpful.
The notes in the back of the book are helpful for fleshing out trivial details of the story.
I don't find the characters or plot of 80 days compelling, but the Listening-Reading System is clearly superior to what I was doing with Spanish. The system fits my temperament perfectly. The details are the tricky part.
1) Book you love.
2) Parallel text with excellent literal translation.
3) Unabridged professional recording.
4) Long text (or multiple extended works from the same author)
Even with less than optimal values of those four points, the effectiveness of the system is clear.
One upside of buying Glenncross' book is that with the story is more enjoyable with the good translation.
By the way, Krashen calls 4) above "Narrow Reading", and recommends it as a language learning tactic.
Edited by luke on 11 August 2007 at 7:14pm
2 persons have voted this message useful
|
luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7158 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French
| Message 23 of 77 12 August 2007 at 4:25pm | IP Logged |
I think I mentioned that I bought the French paperback Le Tour du Monde en 80 Jours. I got it from Amazon, and didn't pay too much for it. The cover is like this, but my copy has about 320 pages. ISBN 2-253-01269-6. I mention it because the book has the original illustrations and a map of the voyage. I've seen the illustrations on the net, so buying the book isn't necessary. I find the illustrations helpful for making the story come alive.
Another thing I do to make the story more vivid is look up the obscure references in Wikipedia. As I mentioned in the previous post, Glenncross' book has some good notes. In addition to those, I find it helpful to find pictures of the art of Angelica Kauffmann, fellahs, zebus, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, etc are all helpful for fleshing out the back story.
Today I started holding the two paperbacks side by side as a poor man's parallel text. This gives the benefit of the good Glenncross translation, as well as cognizance of the pictures in the French book. Jumping back and forth between the two books is a bit more active than just following the English translation.
The Librivox recordings vary in quality. A couple of the narrators are quite good and natural sounding. Another speaks very slowly (about 1/2 speed). There are a couple of narrators who don't seem to be native speakers (check out chapter 14). It would be interesting to hear what a native speaker thought of the various narrators. There are about 6-7 of them in the Librivox recordings. One narrator per chapter.
Edited by luke on 12 August 2007 at 4:25pm
1 person has voted this message useful
|
luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7158 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French
| Message 24 of 77 13 August 2007 at 10:03pm | IP Logged |
I listened to Tour du Monde in the car and the two-language playlist of the same at work today.
At home I listen-read a few more chapters with my poor-man's parallel text. I'm currently on chapter 20 and would like to complete a couple more runs through the book; although it's challenging because the characters of the story seem dull. I'm sure it will pay off to carry on. I have a tendency to quit before the appointed hour and will try to resist that temptation.
I listen-read CD1 from Using French. The memory curve suggests the Assimil course should be reviewed this week as it's about 30 days from when I burned through it before. Assimil is challenging my interest as well. I think it works better in the recommended small daily dose, which I have been slowly plodding through whilst I shave in the morning. I haven't been reading or reviewing the notes or anything, but have continued to move on to the next lesson each day and listen to the previous 3-4 lessons.
No FiA videos for a few days. This just means I haven't been exercising, which isn't good.
The bright spot is that I returned to Dangerous Liaisons this evening. I found a professional recording at telerama, and the Penguin Classic translation seems quite good.
The visit to Assimil and Dangerous Liaisons are breaking the "narrow-reading" rule, but at least Dangerous is coming closer to fulfilling the joy/wonder rule.
Occasionally I can crank through some Jules Verne with reasonable satisfaction, and there is a sense of accomplishment when I'm understanding the story in the car without the aid of a book. That's not bad for 30 days into this thing.
By the way, I had a year of Spanish at the U too, so, although my French was more advanced than my Spanish back then, and my Spanish studies over the last few years helps my language learning today, I still feel that the listen-reading system is head and shoulders above the other methods I had been using.
Edited by luke on 14 August 2007 at 4:57am
1 person has voted this message useful
|