BookTitres.com — learn languages for foreign literature in the original, listening and reading

Many people use movies with subtitles to listen to the speech and to read. Want to offer an alternative to listen to audio books and read the text with facing translation and access to each individual phrase. They are available online at BookTitres.com .

Most interesting

Already available for reading books you can find in the section "read and Listen" on the website. The book "the Hobbit" over 11 hours of audio and 13800 phrases. After it fully, you will feel a noticeable improvement in their English. Especially if you repeat aloud each phrase. From other books mostly done the first few chapters. If you want to continue — answer survey and select the desired book.

I'm not so much pursue the goals of PR, how many want to talk about the idea and ask for tips on how to develop it. You can leave suggestions, looking at the site links above. And if you are interested in reading about the origin of the idea and its technical implementation, have a look under the cat.

At the end of the article are questions that I would really like to get answers Habra people.

How did the idea

I've always loved to read books and thirsted for foreign languages, but for various reasons were limited in opportunities to learn and practice them. Not enough patience to study textbooks. I wanted to take in the environment, reading foreign books in the original. Tried to read the parallel book and the translation. Then met with the method of Ilya Frank, where for each phrase of the original is literal translation in parentheses. But there have always been doubts — whether I pronounce the word? Often looked to the dictionary for transcription, and it is exhausting.

As for the sound, separately from the text, it was difficult to perceive, as the main channel of perception — visual, through reading.

Liked the text and sound together. A bundle can be found in the films with subtitles in the original language, or by downloading the book — audio and text version. But then, there were the following difficulties:

the

the
• to combine the texts of original and translation;
the
• to combine text with audio and sometimes a little distracted, and lose the "thread"

on the problematic rewinding to the phrase, which did not hear or want to listen a few times; always hook the extra if you fast-forward;

In General, took a lot of time and effort to it. So the idea arose to create such a format in which each phrase was matched bunch would be:
excerpt audio translation — the translation text

and then one would return to them many times. How to use it in the end?

Did 2 modes: the player and the text.

In the player you can include all the audio and see the text as subtitles, or to switch between phrases. In text mode you can scroll through the entire text and, if necessary, click on phrases and listen to them.

Once everything is divided into phrases, and added dictation where you can set the number of repeats of each phrase and delay in front of them.
A lot of repetition and a little pause — it is convenient to notch the material ("zombie", while simultaneously reading and listening to many times in a row).
Long pause and a few repeats — you can write a dictation (listen to the phrase, and for the duration of the pause — write it, then the next, etc.)

Business equipment

In the end it came down to creating 3 text boxes.

the
1. of the second start and end of a phrase in an audio file
the
2. source text
the
3. text translation

And, of course, provide a link to the audio. What is displayed in the screenshot, the beginning of the book "Great expectations" by Charles Dickens, looks in the code like this:

<div class="time" data-audio_url="audio/gr_exp_01_1" id="ti-1">
0,388889 2,000000 1
2,484127 3,911565 2
4,290023 5,198639 3
10,396145 12,082993 5
12,421542 16,692517 6
16,861451 17,271202 7


Great Expectations
by Charles Dickens
Chapter 1
My father's family name being Pirrip,
and my Christian name Philip,
my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than
Pip.


Great expectations
Charles Dickens
Chapter I
My father's name was Pirrip
I was given the baptismal name Philip,
and because of both my infant tongue could not sculpt anything more clear,
than PIP,


Public script

Everything I have written scripts available for download in the section "Create a book". There will be published guidance, updates and changes. In addition to the front end (player books), there is the editor mode.

The end result is an html file, simple in structure, which contains a breakdown of the book's phrases: their seconds and texts in two languages. You can start a file of books in almost all browsers, including mobile. Also, if you throw the book files on Android, you can start the book from the phone. Have a mobile version and desktop display.

workflow

The following describes briefly the essence of the process, if you want to repeat the process, refer to video rukovodstvo. Just the process of getting seconds phrases in the AEGISUB manual selection, can replace the automatically generated by the program Audacity.

1. timing phrases

The program Audacity contains functions Sound Finder, automatically Vidyalaya time intervals all of the phrases in the audio file. If you want to work with your hands, and certainly, it is possible to use the program subtitle AEGISUB.

2. The alignment of text to audio

When seconds obtained on a special page they turn into squares with numbers, clicking you hear the phrase. And it builds texts. First the original, then the translation.



Create knygotyra much simpler than the usual subtitles, because:

the
1. in the audiobook are almost no extraneous noise, just talking, and you can recognize intervals, phrases programmatically
the
2. the text of the book in advance is, it only remains to wrap lines at audio phrases
the
3. the translation is also there in advance, and often, he follows the original order of phrases

Particular case of when the source text is taken, "the book by Ilya Frank's method", and timing is compiled manually in the program AEGISUB, you can see in this video tutorial: "Create your book".

Main problem

The selection of phrases in audio is done simply, automatically (Audacity -> Analys -> Sound Finder), the original text in any language easily distribute audio, even having zero knowledge of the language (if you are familiar with writing, of course), you just need to listen to the audio and in the right places to press Enter, leaving the text on a new line.

But with the preparation of the translation more difficult. When you have language knowledge (I have in English, for example), to do that just with some translations of the books.

Of 5 English books added to the site, 4 transfer go in the footsteps of the original on-phrasal. And so the work also is to transfer the lines to the right places, and pressing Enter. (This is the "Great expectations", "Pride and prejudice", "Jane Eyre" and "Alice in Wonderland"). Sometimes, in 1 of 50-100 cases, you have to rearrange the phrase in some places.

1 book ("the Life of Benjamin Franklin") does not match the phrase, it essentially has to be translated — but before my eyes there is always a semantic translation, it greatly facilitates the work.

Pagination

In my opinion it is useful to divide audio files into 5-minute fragments. In different languages this passage contains an average of 100 sentences takes about 2 MB. This portion is convenient and for the perception of the student and to download to your device for almost any Internet connection. In operation, when creating knightian too comfortable so the size of the parts.

Collaboration. The copyright owners

I failed to establish contact with Ilya Frank (I think he very rarely looks through the mail), so I decided not to abuse his work and made the demo version available on the website of excerpts of books in different languages which I do not possess. I would certainly use the potential of their adapted books, breathing into them as sound. Of course, by mutual agreement, respecting the interests of their publishers.

In the meantime, I decided to focus on books that are freely available (authors who died 70 years ago and earlier). Most of the books on the website just like that.

As for modern books in Western law, particularly in English-speaking countries, I found such a thing as "fair use" when you use someone else's content in a modified form that does not interfere ultimately to owners. I think it can be applied to our case, because of audio books in unknown tongues to people of little use — very high level of training required to use them. And if you provide them with pauses (by-phrases) and related texts, the interest in them will increase significantly, adding foreign-language audience.

Also I was inspired by what was published on youtube audio summaries of many popular books with hundreds of thousands of views. Apparently they don't block... I don't think we really brought someone damage. And attention to their product to a wider audience and more contributions — it is possible.

I would like to hear your advice about cooperation with rights holders modern books: Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Game of thrones, house of cards called the first thing that came to mind. How to actually get them interested? In any case, you can start the system of torrents, when everyone can post anything, but at the request of owners it is immediately removed.

Collaboration. Who will do knygotyra?

A lot of people do translations of favorite poems, songs, captions, scanning and recognition of the books — purely for fun. Conscientious teachers often prepare improvised teaching materials for students, investing their labor.

I think all these people would be interested in the format knygotyra. They could combine the texts of favorite works with audio and translation, publish it to the website and share with your friends, students or just "fans".

Recently, one referee expressed a desire to prepare the international jury rules in English in this format, then taking advantage of the program to learn them in English and to use for the exam and in the judicial practice.

If you convert to this format popular books, I think it would bring many benefits to students, and the popularity of the service (if to find something to interest holders).

Perhaps you can make contributions of money and different bonuses for adding material, depending on its popularity.
My ideal is to make a convenient interface to create, store and publish "knigomir" online, via the website. Where anyone can post their audio and texts. At the moment it is sufficient to add a simple code with phrases, texts and link to the audio, and it is displayed in the form of player and text phrase navigation. But the registration is not yet open.

Collaboration — habradi

Could you please help me by writing your advice on:

the
1. Design and usability of the program and website
the
2. How to execute the source script (add on github, implementing the code review, publish it somewhere, change, etc.)
the
3. to Establish contact with the rights holders of books
the
4. to Establish cooperation with the potential user of the service: language training, pupils, students, lovers of literature
the
5. to Support financial pre-determined conditions

Article based on information from habrahabr.ru