Resources for Studying Chinese from Online News Sources

[alexamies]

I have posted translations of a couple of articles from the Chinese media, with audio added from a native speaker, on my web site at

中国在改革开放 China Reforms and Opens

and

红色清真寺 The Red Mosque

There are hyperlinks on every Chinese word, audio for most of the words, and a search feature.

I hope someone finds this useful. I will appreciate ANY feedback.

Alex

[madizi]

Very useful, indeed!

Could it be made so, that dictionary definitions open in a new window? It's a little bit unconvenient to press "back" button all the time.

[Long Pan]

Your Chinese friend would not be qualified for presenting the news on CCTV

Just kidding, what you did is very usefull, I have downloaded both articles + MP3 and will listen to them. Especially interested in VOA dowloading as it is not available here in China. Just one point : I am not sure the pinyin part (the whole text in pinyin) is very usefull as 1) clicking on any word we can get the pinyin and 2) I guess people interested by these kind of text are already intermediate / advanced learners and therefore just occasionaly look at pinyin (and never at a whole pinyin text)

[csit]

Great website. Thanks for the effort!

[alexamies]

madizi,

I have been thinking about opening up a new windows to prevent the back-clicking to move back from the detail page to the main page. I think that it would certainly help to be able to see both together as well. What I am thinking about is activating a small bubble within the same window that would be appear when you mouse over. This would be something like the news at Yahoo! and other portals where you mouse over a link and get the first paragraph or so of the news. I need to experiment but this is high on my list.

Alex

[madizi]

That would be even better, so there would not be tons of opened windows.

[alexamies]

I just uploaded four articles to the web site chinesenotes.com. They are

US uses pressure and rushes plotting for rebellion and conspiracy in Myanmar in a supposed illustrious way

Space and weather favorable for “Chang E No. 1” launch in late October

State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration completely denies the romour that “30 Central Enterprises will be Completely Floated on the Stock Exchange”

Three years on Preparation Work for the Beijing Olympic Games is Progressing Smoothly

These articles are all translated from Xinhua publications from October this year and include MP3 recordings and English. Each Chinese word has a hyperlink to an English definition. I hope that someone gets some benefit from these pages in studying Chinese.

I would be interested in hearing any feedback on the pages.

Alex

[alexamies]

I have added a number of new articles to my web site chinesenotes.com relating to the price of housing in China, one child policy, and others. These articles come from Xinhua Net, have translated into English, and include audio, and hyperlinks on every Chinese word to English definitions, pinyin, etc. The new articles are

• If the price of land drops, what about housing prices?
  
• In Bobai County, Guanxi a large number of officials have been punished for violation of the One Child Policy
  
• Cake is sweet - the happy life of orphans at Hainan's School of Compassion
  

The first article discusses the currently hot topic of whether the prices of real estate in China, which some of us might be invested in, is a bubble.

There are also vocabulary lists for commerce, and economics that include links to audio and examples.

I hope the pages help people trying to improve their Chinese in business and related topics. Please give me any comments so that I can adjust or improve the web pages.

[Luobot]

Nicely organized!

[roddy]

Merging three topics, we'll be more nicely organized ourselves if we keep these in one place.

[alexamies]

I have added another article from Xinhua, again hyperlinking every Chinese word and including audio:

Joyfully spending Spring Festival aslo has an environmental protection question

Happy New Year to all! Have fun, treat everyone with respect and patience, and take care of your own health!

[dporter1465]

There's a new Chinese News Reader applet on the Clavis Sinica resources page. You can view short, recent news articles within a text reader window that allows you to click on unknown words and characters to bring up their pinyin and English definitions. If you can't view the characters, try enabling international language support in Java (instructions are at the bottom of the page). Let me know what you think!

--David

[alexamies]

Olympics Articles

I added two articles about the Beijing Olympics. As with articles published before both are from the Mainland Chinese media and both include sound recordings, definition of all Chinese words, and English translations. The articles are here:

A Dedication of “Peace, Friendship, and Progress”: a Beijing's Symphony

20 Days and Counting Down to the Beijing Olympics

Details Reside in the Craftsman's Heart

Touch Every Thing and Every Landscape

The Olympic Essence Permeates Old Beijing

I think that the article A Dedication of “Peace, Friendship, and Progress” was especially interesting. It has a very different perspective than that of the Western media. However, while making the recording my in-laws in Beijing was so impressed with it that they applauded at the end. I think that people only following the Western media will get something out of reading this even if only the English translation.