BBC Chinese Service China Focus podcast is no longer with us

[eya323]

I have been using BBC Chinese Service's China Focus podcast for the last two or three years to improve my listening skills, build my current events vocabulary, and immerse myself in as much Chinese as possible throughout the day. As many of you may know, this podcast is no longer with us as of yesterday.

What do people think of VOA? Are there other options for news in Mandarin in 20-60 minute segments? Any advice is appreciate.

[gato]

Radio France International, Deutschewelle, and Radio Australia still offer Mandarin news programs. VOA is suffering some cuts, too, I think.

[Gleaves]

From the 中国焦点 page:

我们将从4月11日期推出新的《每日播客精选》，内容是有关热点新闻的采访或报道，长度4到6分钟，请大家留意下载。

So I guess they are going to start a new, shorter format? Fingers crossed for transcripts.

[马盖云]

www.imandarinpod.com has a 3-times-a-week news podcast which is produced in association with a Chinese news agency (I forgot who).

It has stories of current events. There are full transcripts available, I think you need to have a login, but the free login works fine for the news podcast transcripts, but you need a paid account for their regular learning podcast transcripts. (the podcast themselves are all free).

The series is called "Special Chinese", click on the "podcasts" link on the menu, then choose "special Chinese"

here, though, is a link directly to the most recent episodes...

imandarinpod special chinese news podcasts

[Long Pan]

回来了 :rolleyes:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/simp/institutional/2011/05/111111_pod_of_the_day.shtml

rss: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/podcastoftheday/rss.xml

没有以前那么好，但是起码有采访，而采访是我觉得BBC以前节目的最好部分

[Gleaves]

Awesome. Thanks.

[Ming Taizu]

Hey all,

Just wondering if anyone knew whether or not there is a transcript of these podcasts available. I checked out a couple of links after doing a generic search but alas, no dice.

Ming

[roddy]

Not sure what your generic search was, but if you can manage to type in a unique phrase from the podcast and search for it in quotes, you'll find a transcript if there is one - the BBC site will be very well indexed.