Hello from 慢速中文 slow-chinese.com

[roddy]

Excellent stuff. If you've got more people helping out then some 'Slow Conversations' might be good. Great to see you're acquiring even more fans as well.

With music playing in the background, which has something to do with the topic, the podcast will sound more like a normal radio program that we are familiar with.

Actually I would have said that having background music playing behind someone speaking would be more of a Chinese thing - I wouldn't expect to hear it on UK radio, on the basis that the content is what people are interested in. At the start, end and in interludes, fine. But I can't speak for other countries.

[gato]

Actually I would have said that having background music playing behind someone speaking would be more of a Chinese thing - I wouldn't expect to hear it on UK radio, on the basis that the content is what people are interested in. At the start, end and in interludes, fine. But I can't speak for other countries.

Music in the background while someone is speaking is normal for music stations in the US (usually when the DJ is introducing something or just shooting the bull), while for news station, music is usually only played in between segments.

[Weng.Xinyu]

Hi,

I've uploaded PDF files of the first 5 posts (from 端午节 to 数字手势).

You can download them by clicking on the book icon in the first line of the text.

Tell me your opinions!

I'll finish them all if they are useful to you.

Xinyu

[jbradfor]

Third, as you have seen, I added 词汇 below the text, I hope people like jbradfor can thus save time.

Thanks for adding that.

However, it's not in a format that is easy to load into a flashcard program. [At least the one I use.] Yes, it would be great to be able to cut-and-paste a bunch of Chinese word and it will automatically create a word list, but that actually doesn't work for me. If you want to provide a link to a downloadable word list that would be great, or I'll try to create them and post here. [Feel free to post or PM me if you want to discuss further.]

[jbradfor]

I've gone through the provided vocab for lessons 25-32, and turned them into flashcards. [i'll post soon when done.] However, there are a couple of words I couldn't find in CEdict (or other places) I hope someone can help me with. For some of them I guessed or found the definition, but for others I don't really have a clue.

# Lesson 32

法定假日 法定假日 [fa3 ding4 jia4 ri4] /legal holiday/

打折商品 打折商品 [da3 zhe2 shang1 pin3] /discount merchandise/

歡呼雀躍 欢呼雀跃 [huan1 hu1 que4 yue4] /to shout and jump for joy/

吉尼斯紀錄 吉尼斯纪录 [Ji2 ni2 si1 ji4 lu4] /record in the Guinness book of records/

# Lesson 31

涼粉 凉粉 [liang2 fen3] /liangfen (a Chinese dish consisting of starch jelly, usually served cold, with a savory sauce)/

歸功於 归功于 [gui1 gong1 yu2] /HELP HERE/

選秀 选秀 [xuan3 xiu4] /competition/draft (as in selecting new players for a sports team)/

# Lesson 30

為了簡便 为了简便 [wei4 le5 jian3 bian4] /for convenience???/

理科 理科 [li3 k1] /science (department)

同樣的道理 同样的道理 [tong2 yang4 de dao4 li3] /for the same reason??/

填報志願 填报志愿 [tian2 bao4 zhi4 yuan4] /???/

住校生 住校生 [zhu4 xiao4 sheng1] /boarding school student/

走讀生 走读生 [zou3 du2 sheng1] /mobile???? student/

# Lesson 29

對…敏感 对…敏感 [dui4 min3 gan3] /???/

# Lesson 28

信息量 信息量 [xin4 xi1 liang4] /amount of information????/

偽政府 伪政府 [wei3 zheng4 fu3] /puppet government/

不惜一切代價 不惜一切代价 [bu4 xi1 yi1 qie4 dai4 jia4] /to spare no expense/

發自內心 发自内心 [fa1 zi4 nei4 xin1] /from the heart/

鬥智鬥勇 斗智斗勇 [dou4 zhi4 dou4 yong3] /???/

# Lesson 27

受到...的影響 受到…的影响 [shou4 dao4 de ying3 xiang3] /to be influenced by .../

與/和...結合 与/和…结合 [yu4 he2 jie2 he2] /to combine together/

以...為代表以…为代表 [yi3 wei4 dai4 biao3] /representative for/

# Lesson 26

難以入睡 难以入睡 [nan2 yi3 ru4 shui4] /difficulty falling asleep/insomnia/

醉了 醉了 [zui4 le] /intoxicated/

揮别 挥别 [hui1 bie2] /???/

# Lesson 25

拿下 拿下 [na2 xia4] /???/

創造紀錄 创造纪录 [chuang4 zao4 ji4 lu4] /break a record/set a record/

和…有緣/無緣 和…有缘/无缘 [he2 you3 yuan2 wu2 yuan2] /????/

[jbradfor]

Wow, I get three posts in a row. Hello? Is this thing on?

I just went ahead and made my best guess at the meanings. I've attached flashcard lists for the vocab provided by Weng.Xinyu, in both CEDict and ZDT backup format.

One word (warning?) on these words. The vocab lists Weng.Xinyu provided are no longer showing up on the slow-chinese website. [They are still in the .pdf, however.] I'm not sure if this means he no longer likes them? In addition, I noticed that there appears to be some words in the provided vocab lists that do not seem to appear in the lesson. Anyway, YMMV.

Let me know if anyone finds these useful, if you want me to keep posting them.

SlowChinese25-32.vocab.backup.txt

SlowChinese25-32.vocab-list.txt

[Meng Lelan]

Nice job, your files are very useful. Yes, this thread is still on and I religiously read 慢速中文 whenever a new post comes in from Weng Xinyu, in fact there's a new one now about China's population.

[Weng.Xinyu]

well, the domain Chinese-forums.com is still under transfer, hope it get done soon. Good luck Roddy. My Slow-Chinese.com suffers also problems, like having valid feed because of containing bad character or disorder of the posts in readers which I still haven't figured out... I must say owning a website is really headache for me who is amateur and learns to do it only through experimenting again and again...

jbradfor, thanks for providing vocabulary, I thought what you've posted here are more useful than those on my site, and I myself have no idea how to classify the words according to the HSK or some other standard...could you keep posting the words, or please be kind to tell me how to do it, so that I can add them to my texts by myself, and those rare words in dictionary can be explained by me.

Thanks!

[animal world]

I must say owning a website is really headache for me who is amateur and learns to do it only through experimenting again and again...

Please, don't despair Weng Xinyu. You're running a very nice site and in little time you have added many lessons. If it takes too much of your time, feel free to add new lessons at a slower rate. After all, right now there are well over thirty lessons and that should keep any newcomer busy for a good while.

I listened to your lessons religiously until about lesson 23 (the Olympics). Then i got busy with other things. Just now i had a look and noticed you were at lesson 34. I listened to it and, as always, the quality of the presentation (audio and text) was professional. At the end, you spoke in English and i'd like to compliment you on your excellent English.

To get to the lessons you need to click on List Post (or was it Post List)?. To an English speaker that sounds a little odd. How about changing it some time to Lessons or Archive of Lessons?

I noticed the music in the background has been turned down somewhat. It's fine but i also liked it before. Love the Chinese music! I noticed some posts on your site where people loudly complained about the music being too loud or being there at all. They don't realize they have been getting a great service for free! Some people just are very hard to please!

[jbradfor]

Weng.Xinyu, I'd be glad to work with you to develop the vocab lists. If you agree, please PM me and we can discuss further.

I was thinking that it makes more sense for me to actually make the lists. Since I'm already familiar with the process I'm using, and I'm probably more familiar with what Chinese-as-a-foreign language learners want, I think that makes sense. Plus, I'd like to do as much of this as I can to leave you more time to make more lessons for us

However, it would save me lots and lots of time if you could do part of the work. Currently it takes me over an hour to make each list. By far the most time consuming part is breaking the text into words. This is done via a standard "segmenter" (e.g. MDBG's); however, it doesn't always get the word boundaries correct, so I need to go in and read the text and find the errors and add spaces at the correct places to force the segmenter to find the correct boundaries. Plus, there are often words that are not in the dictionary, so it gets confused. If you take any of your lessons and cut-and-paste them into the link above, and look at the output, I'm pretty sure you'll find places where it does not parse the text how you expect. If you add spaces to the text and segment it again, you'll see how it changes it. If you could provide me the text with spaces added so it segments as you want it, plus a list of words that words that are not in the dictionary, the rest of the steps takes me less than 10 minutes.

What do you think?

[roddy]

My Slow-Chinese.com suffers also problems, like having valid feed because of containing bad character or disorder of the posts in readers which I still haven't figured out... I must say owning a website is really headache for me who is amateur and learns to do it only through experimenting again and again...

同病相怜...

If you've got any questions you're welcome to ask them here - we've got quite a few members who run websites or have experience of Chinese-related website issues.

[Ed Log]

Is there any chance of having a 'download all' or download from XX-XX link(s) on the website to make getting the off the web page more easily? Just a Zip file perhaps containing 5-10 texts/MP3s altogether.

People have probably asked before but a Pinyinised version of the text would also help us none character focused learners. I like the format produced using http://www.nightly.annotator.dragonresearch.org/#

[animal world]

Ed Log, i'm sure Slow Chinese would be willing to carry out your requests if you're willing to pay X amount for this service.

I, for one, prefer reading Chinese without having to see any pinyin.

[pancake]

Ed Long: you can use this. The Pleco reader is nice, too.

[Meng Lelan]

I, for one, prefer reading Chinese without having to see any pinyin.

Me too. I don't like seeing pinyin.

[jbradfor]

I don't think Ed Log was asking for pinyin to be added to the text, but rather a separate version. And I don't think he was asking for how to convert a text to pinyin, as his post include a link to one that does.

That said, I do think he is being a bit picky, given that this is a free service being provided.....

[animal world]

I don't think Ed Log was asking for pinyin to be added to the text, but rather a separate version. And I don't think he was asking for how to convert a text to pinyin, as his post include a link to one that does.

That said, I do think he is being a bit picky, given that this is a free service being provided.....

Ed Log's post annoyed me because if he had taken the trouble to read a few previous posts on this page he would have noticed that the webmaster expressed some despair about how much trouble the site was giving him.

Without even thanking the webmaster for his professional and free site, Ed Log said, in essence, only, "Gimme, gimme, gimme..."

Furthermore, most Chinese know very little or no pinyin at all, so for them adding pinyin is a glorious pain in the neck. Since Ed Log probably is more familiar with pinyin than the webmaster, he could easily take care of the pinyin himself. To me, having pinyin added to the site--be it below the text or on a separate page--would just detract from an otherwise impeccable Chinese site.

[pancake]

jbradfor: True, I missed the part where he himself linked to a hanzi-to-pinyin converter. But it does kind of raise the question: if he is already aware of such services then why does he need the pinyin on the Slow-Chinese site itself? To save himself from the copy and paste?

On a slightly more constructive note: it is possible for Ed Long to get the mp3:s very easily by clicking this link. Since the site does not have any advertisements, I guess it is o.k. for me to provide this information, as no ad revenue will be lost.

I would also like to thank Weng.Xinyu for his hard work on the site: the production values truly are outstanding. As a Chinese learner, I have found the site very interesting as an accessible window into Chinese language and culture. Again, thank you so much!

[Ed Log]

to increase revenue from a site you need to increase visitors who 'may' click on advertising.

Having more options and features will get more visitors.

Creating some on-line word lists and quiz's from hyperlinks in PDFs will assist in people re-visiting the site.

More features = more visitors = more advertising revenue.

Perhaps creating a https://uservoice.com/ page may assist the site owner on features that lots of people people really want.

For me for this site

- 3 speeds for each text - super slow, slow and normal

- Article specific Vocab list

- Pinyin PDF's

[Ed Log]

Also although the site is VERY clean with limited visual clutter the solitary google adsense box is positioned in out of the way location that is very unlikely to generate any revenue.

Perhaps if the webmaster has a look at to optimise revenue

http://moneymakingblog.co.za/google-adsense-revenue-three-steps-to-triple-your-adsense-earnings.html

The Slow Chinese site is very context rich so lots possible links for Ads.

Creating sensible forced views of different pages will expose the customer to more ads. Also using alternatives alongside google adsense will increase the potential for customers to click on ads - they wont see the same same same ads. The below link shows other advert providers

http://www.rosswalker.co.uk/adsense_top10/

The site is good but needs to focus on what keeps people coming back and how to increase revenue to make the effort worthwhile. Suggest add some English comments about supporting students learning and loans to get adverts that are higher revenue!

http://www.rosswalker.co.uk/adsense_opt/keywords.htm

So my suggestions to increase the revenue from the site (and make the effort worthwhile)

a) 1 podcast per page with some English comments (to increase content for adverts to be better) to increase adverts per view

B) More and better located adverts (top banner, left and right side, etc)

c) Use aAlternatives alongside Adsense to diversify income

d) Add a uservoice feedback forum to see what customers want from the site

e) Add some web analytics to see who uses your site e.g. http://www.getclicky.com/help/pricing

Edited February 7, 2010 at 11:59 AM by Ed Log