Working through a novel using a translation

[character]

For those of you who have done this, how did you do it? Were both the text and the translation in electronic form, for example?

[katyjo]

I think the easiest way for my daughter to work through a novel is to have a somebody by her side who can read and explain Chinese.

I have worked through a novel the long way, by using MDBG and a pinyin dictionary. The book has to be just the right level, Not too hard that it would be frustrating.

[renzhe]

I have worked through "Legend of the Condor Heroes" like that. I have the hard copy, and there is a fan translation online.

Generally, I'd read 5 pages or so, then I'd refer to the fan translation to figure out the confusing parts and make sure I wasn't missing any important information.

I tried to make sure that I read a chunk in Chinese first, to force myself to try to understand. After a while, I didn't need the translation anymore.

[leeyah]

Were both the text and the translation in electronic form?

Yes, reading in 对照 is very useful at an intermediate level when your vocabulary is still limited. I've read a number of books this way a couple of years back, just after my postgraduate 5 year gap in learning Chinese, and yes, it helped enormously - now I can read almost anything without translation. So I recommend it

But better get an electronic version of the stuff you like to read, plenty of it online.

Talk of electronic, no, you don't need electronic version of the English text. For me it was being able to get the translation (in Chinese version) with one tap on an unknown character/word really made things easier, you can read at a faster pace without much distraction and the memorizing is also much faster this way. Then you just switch to the English version to check how much you were able to understand. But I mean reading it on an electronic dictionary or e book-reader not on PC screen, it strains the eyes.