SRS data entry from textbooks/magazines/novels etc. - is there a quicker way?

[bobbadeer]

Hey guys,

 

Not sure if this has yet to be addressed but figure it's worth asking. My study routine is pretty reliant on SRS. When I study textbooks I usually take sentences / small peices of text from the dialogues which include the new words for the chapter and put that in anki. Usually then turn these into MCDs etc. Finding this to be very effective (and more interesting than studying individual words) and lets you work through things at a pretty quick pace. The only issue is the data entry - very time consuming. Have tried using the pleco OCR but finding that ineffective.

 

Has anyone got any suggestions? Cheers

[Lanchong]

Many magazines and novels have online editions, which you can copy/paste into Anki.

[bobbadeer]

hey lanchong, cheers yea maganzines are no problem - should have cleared that up. issue is more with textbooks. is anyone aware of any other ocr software or alteratively other websites where you can buy pdf versions of the textbooks?

[Shelley]

There also Anki card swapping clubs where you might find what you want. Not so sure because of your source material but it got to be worth a try.

 

Which text books are you using?

[bobbadeer]

cheers for the heads up. i'm using boya at the moment

[OneEye]

If you have the money, a scanner pen is the way to go. I have a Penpower WorldPenScan BT and it's awesome. Works with over 200 languages and handles simplified, traditional, Cantonese dialectal characters, Japanese, etc. like a charm. I think I paid 4000NT for it, which is about US$135.

[bobbadeer]

hey oneeye, i just took a look at the penscanner - looks like the way to go. cheers! just out of interest, how well does the character recognition work? in what sort of time are you able to get a 2page article done?

[OneEye]

Well, let's see.

 

儒家 — 一個無頭文化

 

假如有人今天批評民主制度，說它是一種罪惡的制度，因為美國在民主制度下實行了九十年的奴隸制，並任意掠奪印地安人的土地，英國在民主制度下向全世界殖民，在非洲屠殺黑人，在亞洲販賣鴉片，絕大多數人一一定會說，這種批評是不公平的。他們會說，奴隸制和殖民主義盥貝圭制度≧嬰並不存在不可分隔的關係，並且，民主制度本身在不斷演進和轉化，不能用過去的污點來抹殺它。

可是，在談到儒家的時候，情況就大不相同了。我們仍然會碰到一些專門喜歡侮辱自己的華人，拿出一些如「三從四德」、1唯女子與小人為難養」、「「君君臣臣」等的陳腔濫調來，把它們當作「國情」，辱罵一番，然後就會突然感到了一種基民王血戰的「精神勝利」。。對此我是感慨良深的。

 

儒家是活的文化

 

在本世紀初，當我們的前輩知識份子面對著他們認為是亡國滅種的危機時，他們的確對儒家思想極盡其破壞打擊的能事。他們恨不能一夜之間洗淨所有中國人腦子裡的「陳腐」思想。這種全盤否定傳統文化的心理是後來毛澤東發動「破四舊」和文化大革命的思想根源。現在回頭去看，他們錯了。但是，考慮到當時的國際環境，和傳統力量的頑強，這種矯枉過正的心情是可以理解的。然而，如果今天還有人去趁七壬生前晚次生論戰的送飯，還在談什麼封建、三綱五常或「君主的絕對權威」等，以刖速盃定儒家，那就是不可以理解的了。這種言論恰好證明了中回國知識份子的「迷失」。

或許應當提醒這些迷失的人，儒家是活的文化，不是死的古代社會，也不光是古書上的句子。當美國著名政治學家杭廷頓（Hungtington）前不久在《外交事務》季刊上把儒家文明列為西方文明在冷戰後最具潛力的對手時，他指的可不是「唯小人與女子為難養」的儒家。他指的是所謂的「儒家文化」籠罩下經濟蓬勃發展的東亞各國和目前經濟成長的中國大陸。其實，不但西方學者把儒家當作活的文化，旦堊翻翻近年來日本和台灣學者對儒家思想的討論壟巫以知道，他們也型儡塞晏起翅...

 

This comes from a textbook (though it was originally published in a magazine called 九十年代), so there are some phrases that are underlined to demonstrate various things. That throws the scanner off pretty easily. I've gone back in and underlined those parts here, and you can see that's where most of the errors are. So it's pretty accurate. Less so with comic book style fonts and such, of course. When you first start using it there's a bit of an adjustment period, but once you get the technique down it's pretty easy and accurate.

 

The whole article is three pages, but I've just scanned in the first page. It took about 8 minutes. That's partly because I was using it via bluetooth, and there's a bit of a delay between scanning and inputting that way. My USB ports are all in use right now, but I guess I could probably do it in half the time via USB.

[Shelley]

Not sure about PDFs or online versions for boya.

 

The pen scanner looks excellent. Probably the best way to go.

[tysond]

I've tried similar things to make MCDs.  Here's some ideas:

 

1. Pleco OCR is OK for reading textbooks if you have a good image.  Using a flatbed scanner can work sometimes, depending on how flat the book is, how much extra stuff is in the text, etc. 

 

2. Better is to get the audio for the passage.  Use WorkAudioBook (see other threads on this) to listen to the MP3s, and enter the text directly (type it in), then match it up with the audio.  Export an SRT file.  Then use subs2srs to automatically make sentence cards with audio.  

The time spent typing in the text is much more valuable if you are also listening to the audio (it's actually best to try to transcribe the audio without reading the textbook).  Helps with listening skills and will drill the sentence in a bit.

 

At first I found typing text was super time consuming... but as my Chinese improved it was actually pretty quick to type in.  Listening to audio and using pinyin input relies on you hearing every sound correctly, and then pinyin input method will select most of the characters for you correctly. 

 

3. Look for the vocabulary words in a large database of sentences instead of using your textbook examples.  I have several movies converted to sentence cards.  I keep them separate to my active study decks.  Then I search for new words and cloze these sentences.  Since I have already converted several films/TV shows I have thousands of sentences to draw from, all with audio.

[hanyu_xuesheng]

Just use LWT "Learning With Texts" and export to Anki.  -> http://lwt.sf.net

[imron]

Learning with texts doesn't do OCR.

[bobbadeer]

oneeye - that's fantastic. thanks for the heads up. ordering one asap. wish i had come across this earlier

 

tysond - i'm pretty much using that exact process at the moment. the audio with the sentences works very well. i normally put the audio file on the answer card and then have an MCD on the question card of the word/particle i'm trying to remember. i'm still finding the data entry very time consuming though. i think if you're studying chinese full time and working on a few textbooks at the same time it's probably not time effective. will try the penscanner!

[Yadang]

Hey OneEye - that sounds awesome. About to get one... I can't decide if I want the one you have, or the C-Pen 3.5, both of which work with Android... Have you tried yours with Android at all (the only reason I need one that supports android is I have a Chomebook. I also have linux, but it doesn't seem to be supported...)? Did you decide one the one you have over any others for any particular reasons? And lastly - did you get it online, or in a store? I'm in Taipei - it would be great to pick it up one day instead of ordering it...

[OneEye]

I ordered mine from 博客來, from which, if you order before noon, it will arrive at your nearest 7-11 the next day. I think some 燦坤 locations carry them if you want to purchase in person. May or may not be more expensive that way.

 

I decided on mine based on a recommendation from a friend who had used it to make Anki flash cards to study for his PhD qualifying exams. I haven't tried it with anything other than my laptop (Mac), so I can't help with your other question, sorry.

[dnevets]

I was given some advice by Martin Symonds, the guy that wrote the Chinese Made Easier books (I emailed, asking for digital copies of the vocab lists from his books): Input the text for new flashcards manually. By doing that you are already doing your first rep, so the seed is already sown in your mind. Yes, it takes longer - but I have to agree now that he was right.

[bobbadeer]

Just got my hands on a penscanner and it is absolutely fantastic. can scan text directly into anki and accuracy is pretty much 100%. has already saved me hours. thanks a ton oneeye!

[OneEye]

Glad it helped!

I've been using mine a lot the past week or so and am remembering how great it is. I actually wrote a blog post about it a year or so ago. http://chinesequest.wordpress.com/2013/06/18/pen-scanners/

[Yadang]

 

Input the text for new flashcards manually. By doing that you are already doing your first rep, so the seed is already sown in your mind.

 

I've heard this argument before, not only for Chinese but for anything one wants to learn... When I was in high school, I had a Psychology teacher who made us hand-write flashcards and graded them, saying that physically handwriting things out has been shown to increase memory recall. I asked him if I could instead just make my cards on Anki and show him them so he could grade them (and I would still be inputting the info - but handwriting not typing it). He said no. I promptly dropped the class.

 

It's not that I doubt that inputting information by oneself improves recall - I'm sure it does. But I think the time that goes into making flashcards, if used instead to study flashcards is more efficient.

 

 

Just got my hands on a penscanner and it is absolutely fantastic.

 

@ bobbadeer: did you get the one OneEye suggested or a different one?

 

@ OneEye, thanks for the link!