Anyone interested in forming an online book reading group?

[fenlan]

I know it is possible to look up every character and get the meaning of a Chinese passage, but I am often left with additional questions relating to 1) vocabulary not found in dictionaries; 2) problems parsing some sentences, etc. I have occasionally had time to read a few paragraphs from the 中国农民调查 but have also had other things that I had to get through in Chinese so I could not devote my full attention to it. Is anyone interested in joining an online group reading a couple of pages of this book a week? This could either be through a separate forum on this site, if the powers that be approved, or through a Yahoo! group, or any other similar option. We could take it in turns to post vocabulary lists, and keep a gradually expanding master list of vocabulary in Excel format that anyone could download at any time. We would gradually produce our own translation and iron out comprehension problems.

[nipponman]

Count me in.

[necroflux]

You guys are a bit above my level but I would love to try to join you.

[necroflux]

Actually I had an idea to do something like this with beginner material - comic books, simple stories, etc. Perhaps we can do this project on two levels for the benefit of all? I would be happy to put together and host some sort of web site for the endeavor. I think I could probably even program a simple form based wiki-pedia style interface for group editing, unless a pure forum interface would work better.

[gougou]

I'd be interested in joining, but as I still struggle to understand the concept of working a whole day (and five days a week, can you imagine?), I'm not sure how much time I could devote.

[roddy]

We had a test install of an Adsotrans annotated weblog up and running on Adsotrans.com's server a while back - basically it looked a lot like newsinchinese.com, but users would be able to publish their own content, which would then be annotated and could be discussed in the comments. I think that might be ideal for what you are talking about - assuming it got set up ok, you could publish a book chapter by chapter and have it annotated, classify stuff by genre and difficulty, etc.

I can't remember how far we got with that project, I'll have another look into it.

I'm quite happy to provide what support the forums can, as long as there's demand.

Roddy

[atitarev]

I'd be interested in joining, but as I still struggle to understand the concept of working a whole day (and five days a week, can you imagine?), I'm not sure how much time I could devote.

Same with me - I am interested but time is problem. I would have a go and see if it works for me and the rest of people. Of course we may have different rates of translating. I think if each section is thoroughly translated and explained it could become quite useful for everyone to join in.

Here's a good text to start with, unless if you have other suggestions:

井底之蛙

一口废井里住着一只青蛙。有一天，青蛙在井边碰上了一只从海里来的大龟。青

蛙就对海龟夸口说：“你看，我住在这里多快乐！有时高兴了，就在井栏边跳跃一

阵；疲倦了，就回到井里，睡在砖洞边一回。或者只留出头和嘴巴，安安静静地把

全身泡在水里：或者在软绵绵的泥浆里散一回步，也很舒适。看看那些虾和蝌蚪，

谁也此不上我。而且，我是这个井里的主人，在这井里极自由自在，你为什么不常

到井里来游赏呢！”

那海龟听了青蛙的话，倒真想进去看看。但它的左脚还没有整个伸进去,右脚就已

经绊住了。它连忙后退了两步，把大海的情形告诉青蛙说：“你看过海吗？海的广

大，哪止千里；海的深度，哪只千来丈。古时候，十年有九年大水，海里的水，并

不涨了多少；后来，八年里有七年大早，海里的水，也不见得浅了多少。可见大海

是不受旱涝影响的。住在那样的大海里，才是真的快乐呢！”

井蛙听了海龟的一番话，吃惊地呆在那里，再没有话可说了。

About annotations, Roddy, which ones do you mean - grammar explanations, pinyin transcriptions?

[roddy]

Off the top of my head, it would probably be how newsinchinese.com works just now - you get the Chinese text shown, and if you need help then you can get pinyin and English by mouseover. There's no complete translation given, although if there was call for it then Adsotrans could output its machine translation for human polishing (idly making promises which he thinks Adsotrans can make come true)

I don't think it's necessarily a good idea to have a fixed schedule that people have to stick to - that is likely to discourage people from committing. If any one participant wants to do two pages a week or something, then fine, but flexibility is likely to be key to keeping people interested.

Subject matter is also an issue. Something like the 中国农民调查 is long and in-depth, and at two pages a week you are looking at quite a long process - chinastudygroup.org have an ongoing translation of this I think, and last I looked it was still going on, and on, and on. An essay, or short story, per week (or comic books as suggested above) will be more managable, and will allow people to dip in and out as they are able, without having to do a lot of catching up if they have to drop out for a week or two.

Roddy

[atitarev]

This dictionary produces both annotation and translation:

http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php (check links: Advanced and Translate).

Beginning of the annotated text (abbreviated):

井底之蛙

jing3 di3 zhi1 wa1

一口

yi1 kou3

废

fei4

井

jing3

里

li3

...

it is followed by word list with translations

Here's the machine translation:

"In a shortsighted person abandoned well is living a frog. One day, the

frog has bumped into in the well the big turtle which comes from the

sea. The frog on to the sea turtle boasted: "You looked that, I live

in here am joyful! Sometimes happy, jumps nearby the curb; Weary,

returns to in the well, rests nearby the brick hole a chapter. Or only

remains raises one's head with the mouth, peacefully soaks the whole

body in the water: Or disperses in the soft mud one 回步, also is

very comfortable. Has a look these shrimp and the tadpole, who also

this not on I. Moreover, I am in this well master, is extremely free

in this well, why in your Chang Daojing doesn't swim enjoys!"

That sea turtle has listened to frog's speech, pours really wants to

go in has a look. But its left leg does not have entire to put in,

右脚 already stumbled. It hastily retroceded two steps, tells the

sea situation the frog to say: "You looked crosses ocean? Sea general,

which stops the great distance; Sea depth, which only thousand ten

feet. Ancient time, ten years have nine year big water, a nautical

mile water, certainly did not rise how many; Afterwards, in eight

years had seven years very early in the morning, nautical mile water,

also not necessarily shallow how many. Obviously the sea is does not

suffer from drought the waterlogged influence. Lives in such sea, is

really joyful!"

The narrow-minded person has listened to a sea turtle's speech, is

startled stays in there, again did not have the speech to be possible

to say."

[fenlan]

I don't think it's necessarily a good idea to have a fixed schedule that people have to stick to - that is likely to discourage people from committing. If any one participant wants to do two pages a week or something, then fine, but flexibility is likely to be key to keeping people interested.

Subject matter is also an issue. Something like the 中国农民调查 is long and in-depth, and at two pages a week you are looking at quite a long process - chinastudygroup.org have an ongoing translation of this I think, and last I looked it was still going on, and on, and on. An essay, or short story, per week (or comic books as suggested above) will be more managable, and will allow people to dip in and out as they are able, without having to do a lot of catching up if they have to drop out for a week or two.

Clearly doing a couple of short articles from the press would be easier - but the achievement would be much less too. China study group doesn't seem to be doing the Peasant book anymore - or at least I couldn't find it last time I looked. I actually translated a couple of pages for them, but I can't find that now. I don't think speed of progress through a book matters per se - if slower at the start that is because more new words are being learned, and so that is all to the good. The aim is not to translate the book!!!! It is learn Chinese by reading the book in Chinese! I am not interested in focusing on polished translations into superb English. I am going to create a thread, post one para of the peasant book with what I think is the required vocab and see if anyone has any questions. If it dies a death, so be it.

[atitarev]

Count me in too, Fenlan. If there will be no strict commitment but participation when possible, I will be for it.

[wushijiao]

I'd be interested in this project as well. I've aleady bought the book.

[johnmck]

If you are going to put a paragraph on the forum then the following site is extremely useful for word to word translation, try it and see, http://www.popjisyo.com/WebHint/Portal_e.aspx

[fenlan]

If you are going to put a paragraph on the forum then the following site is extremely useful for word to word translation, try it and see, http://www.popjisyo.com/WebHint/Portal_e.aspx

You misunderstand. It is not a translation exercise.

[trevelyan]

Hi everyone,

I'd be happy to join any online reading group, but would second Roddy in recommending against picking something like the Nongmin Diaocha. Although I also think the book is too long (unless people commit to 30 or so pages a week) the main reason is that I've actually read it (the first half...) and while the first few chapters are interesting, the book is repetitive and depressing as it wears on.

Picking a variety of short stories would alleviate this problem, give the group a variety of reading styles (literary, documentary, poetic, etc.) and cater to a broader range of reading levels. I stumbled across a high-school Chinese literature site a while ago that had some interesting selections. Will see if I can dredge it up....

On the annotation front, Adso can do everything needed if desired. I don't see too much use for machine translation here, but it would be easy to arrange some sort of site like Roddy mentioned above which stored annotated versions of random texts for easy reading. If we went this route, the burden of whoever choose to lead might simply be preparing the text for others to read. This would probably be about 30 minutes of work for a short story. Could also tweak Adso to automate flashcard extraction, although there would always be the need for human editing to ensure the group isn't learning 是 every week....

Atitarev -- MDBG is a nicely put together dictionary. The machine translation is Babelfish, however, and isn't connected to the dictionary backend. If you want a machine translation service that lets you add/edit terminology, you're stuck either with Adso, or with creating an individual account at Systran.

[fenlan]

Well, I'm personally not interested in just reading the odd article - if people don't want to read a whole book, then the answer to the question in this thread's title is "no". Wading through a book is an experience that cannot be compared with reading the odd article. Whether the book becomes depressing or not in the middle is neither here nor there - it would be being used as a *language* text. Adso is as far as I am concerned an irrelevance. Its current format does not produce vocabulary lists, and so Wenlin is more user-friendly. At least you can create a vocab list document, keep it open and copy the vocabulary across.

[nipponman]

Can't we just use NJstar for that?

(as you can tell, I don't have wenlin)

[trevelyan]

if people don't want to read a whole book, then the answer to the question in this thread's title is "no".

Fenlan,

I sympathize with what you want to do, but I honestly think you'll have trouble keeping people going after chapter two if you end up organizing a reading group for 农民调查, that's all. I say this because I'm very interested in taking part in any reading group that can broaden my horizons by introducing me new authors.

I wasn't trying to proselytize Adso so much as think about ways we can expand the sorts of stuff we're doing to help language learners. Everything we do is volunteer driven so the site naturally has rough edges. If you're curious about the sorts of things we are doing with vocabulary lists and flashcards, you can visit a work in progress at the following site. This site is not even beta, but it shows promise:

http://www.adsotrans.com/vocab/

That being said, you're right... this is a bit of a distraction from what this thread is about. Good luck with 农民调查.

[fenlan]

Well, trevelyan, I suspect you are right that people will not want to continuously read a book, but as you knwo I am moving to China in Feb and will have more time to read it anyway myself. But if you think back to A level French etc, you have to read whole books. I think the breadth of language in a whole book is wholly differnt to a newspaper article.

[atitarev]

I also think it would be much more interesting to have various types of reading, be it articles or short stories of different levels of complexity. People could join and quit at any time and the site would just grow. It would definitely be more interesting than any particular long novel, however if you or the majority decide to use a book, I will join too.