Many pages of simplified script for children? Fun to read?

[Rowley]

Hi,

I'd like to study Chinese by reading thousands of pages of PinYin. (Marking the words in the dictionary that I don't know, and letting someone put it on tape so I can learn the pronounciation)

( http://www.adsotrans.com converts simplified characters to PinYin, but does not so good a job with traditional characters. Does anyone know a program that does this for traditional characters?)

So now I am looking for thousands of pages of easy to read simplified Chinese script.

The ideal would be BOOKS FOR CHILDREN, but anything you can find that resembles this I'd be happy to learn about ...

Thank you!

[selfconstruct]

Hanconv, a free program, is good for conversion (simplified<->traditional, pinyin, code pages, etc).

http://www.users.on.net/~aliceyeung/software.php

[trevelyan]

You're right -- there's clearly something wrong with the way Adso is handling traditional->pinyin conversion. Will see if I can fix that later tonight.

More on-topic, is there any reason you're choosing to study pinyin over characters? If you're simply planning to learn conversational Chinese a focus on pinyin makes more sense, but it will quickly become a hurdle to learning the language if you don't know any characters.

If you do go the pinyin route, be careful not to use a computer program that provides evenly spaced pinyin character-by-character. When you start learning Chinese, most courses teach single characters and you'll only know one or two words with each pronunciation, but as you get more and more fluent, this will become a problem. I get a headache from reading evenly-spaced pinyin anyway: its difficult to figure out where text segments, and a pain to sort out exactly which character/meaning is meant unless you have some help with the spacing. Just a heads up.

Suggestions? There are lots of children's books available in China that tell stories where they print the pinyin above the Chinese characters. Many come with accompanying audio CDs. So you may be able to find some at a Chinese bookstore if you have one nearby where you live. They're intended to help Chinese children learn to read but work for foreigners as well. ;) Does anyone know any online stores that sell these?

[Rowley]

Hi selfconstruct,

I've seen your screenshot of Hancov. I'm tempted to go with trevelyan and say that your program translates to pinyin character by character, and that is not a good thing. I'll show it to some of my Chinese friends though, and let them judge if it is useful. Thanks

Hi trevelyan,

I'm planning to go to China shortly, and I'll be sure to look for the books and CD's you mentioned.

As I have some books on my computer in traditional script, I'd be happy if you'd let me know when Adso does work well with traditional script. Do you know any programs that do now already work with traditional script?

The reason I wish to study pinyin and not characters: if I study pinyin, learning Chinese will be like learning any other language; if I'd be learning the Characters aswell, I'd be feeling like I was studying two languages at the same time. Although, as I will encounter the characters in the dictionary, eventually I will learn the characters aswell, I imagine. And can then switch to reading normal books ( it just takes TOO long to look up the characters in the dictionary, now.).

Thank you for your reply

So, now my questions become:

(1) Does anyone know a program that converts traditional characters to pinyin, but not character-by-character?

(2) Where can I find texts in simplified script ( (children's) books, or long texts for children) that I can input into http://www.adsotrans.com ?

[stephanhodges]

Both mandarintools.com 's DIMSUM and ZDT will convert. They're both free. Should be links in the "Links" section.

[Rowley]

Both mandarintools.com 's DIMSUM and ZDT will convert. They're both free. Should be links in the "Links" section.

I am now using a public computer, so can't check. But is DIMSUM for traditional characters? And ZDT too?

And, say you see a page of pinyin, can you tell and is it important if the original was in traditional or simplified script?

[chinesetools]

DimSum fully supports both traditional and simplified characters. It supports conversion in both directions also. For simplified to traditional conversion, it uses context to pick the most likely candidate.

[stephanhodges]

Sorry, I missed your reply. Dimsum will also add Pinyin to the characters, mixed in (characters for a word, followed by pinyin for a word, etc.). This means that Dimsum is doing word break analysis. You may notice that Chinese text (characters) are often run together, without spacing between words.

Dimsum also has a web browser built in, which can add pinyin (or replace) on a page.

Zdt has a web browser which does "yellow box" style definition pop ups when you cursor over words, etc. Zdt source is also available on SourceForge.

They both (developers) respond quickly to questions and bug reports, etc.

Let us know if you develop some good reading sources. I'd be interested in them also, especially if you find sites with a lot of reading using repeated vocabulary (I.E. children's readers).

[Rowley]

Ok, thank you. I'll be using DIMSUM or adsotrans when I can get a friend of mine to run either of the programs on their computer.

Does adsotrans now work with traditional charaters, trevelyan?

Let us know if you develop some good reading sources. I'd be interested in them also, especially if you find sites with a lot of reading using repeated vocabulary (I.E. children's readers).

I'll be sure to post that here, though that might take a while and be not entirely legal. Do you still want it then? In the meantime you could look at http://www.gutenberg.org to see if that has something.

Any texts that I find, I will convert to pinyin and then run through a word count program. To see what words are frequently used and so are useful to learn (beforehand). To find such programs type words like "word," "count," "frequency" in a search engine. I found this: http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/ballc/webtools/web_freqs.html

I find that I learn words that are used a couple of times in relative short succession(?) in a book. Many words are used dozens of times in books, so just by reading the books and looking up the words, you can learn many words. This way you can also learn how the words are used, and in what contexts.

[trevelyan]

Does adsotrans now work with traditional charaters, trevelyan?

They *should* be. Just specify your input and output encodings on the advanced page and everything should happen automatically.

That being said, have been slowly ironing out some problems over the last two weeks and its possible there are still problems lingering in the code. I'm fixing these as I become aware of them so if you run into any please forward a note and I'll get on them.

[roddy]

Let us know if you develop some good reading sources. I'd be interested in them also, especially if you find sites with a lot of reading using repeated vocabulary (I.E. children's readers).

Have you seen this - might be what you are looking for.

[stephanhodges]

Thanks all for links. I didn't realize project gutenberg even had Chinese texts.