Absolute beginner: understanding text with instant translation

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mentecuerpo
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Absolute beginner: understanding text with instant translation

Postby mentecuerpo » Tue May 11, 2021 2:25 pm

When the language learner is an absolute beginner, instant translation creates the comprehensible input.

Machine Translation using DeepL and Google translate will slow you down significantly, and many times, the translation does not make sense.

The translation can occur via a tutor (I have done that, paying a teacher once a week to read together) or via parallel text.

Another variation to the parallel text is to listen to the audiobook in your target language while you read the book in a language that you know well.

For example, I am a native Spanish speaker, and I live in the USA for thirteen years. My English is a high level for reading. I have low-level German.

I can read one paragraph of the Harry Potter book in English or Spanish, then read the same paragraph of the Harry Potter in German and go on until I finish the book.

Or, I can hear the Audiobook Harry Potter in German (I would not call it listening because I don't understand the sounds) as I am simultaneously reading my Harry Potter book in English or Spanish.

Check this website:

paralleltext.io
Learn languages by reading
http://paralleltext.io/

Hopefully, I would think, by reading this way, daily preferably, learning will take place and progress will be made.
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bolaobo
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Re: Absolute beginner: understanding text with instant translation

Postby bolaobo » Tue May 11, 2021 10:29 pm

Keep in mind that for paralleltext.io, the German translations are quite old due to being open-domain. You will see dative -e ending, lots of genitive, some dated vocabulary...but overall this is a great site.
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mokibao
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Re: Absolute beginner: understanding text with instant translation

Postby mokibao » Wed May 12, 2021 12:19 am

Unfortunately the audio TTS is hilariously bad, I actually laughed out loud upon hearing it for the first time. But still, very cool resource, thanks.
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thelazyoxymoron
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Re: Absolute beginner: understanding text with instant translation

Postby thelazyoxymoron » Thu May 13, 2021 9:01 am

mentecuerpo wrote:Check this website:

paralleltext.io
Learn languages by reading
http://paralleltext.io/
Thank you so much for recommending this website!
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