Listening-Reading materials for French

[alexidsa]

There seems to be problems with both The Master and Margarita (no english-french parallel book, no french audiobook) and The Portrait of Dorian Gray (no english-french parallel book). So Le Rouge et le noire is my best pick at the moment.

[rdearman]

There seems to be problems with both The Master and Margarita (no english-french parallel book, no french audiobook) and The Portrait of Dorian Gray (no english-french parallel book). So Le Rouge et le noire is my best pick at the moment.

I don't know how technical you are, or what operating system you use. But I have sucessfully convered entire books to parallel texts using Lyx and some pdf utilities. Here is how I converted the book Les trois hommes en Allemagne, by Jerome K. Jerome (Three Men on the Bummel). The book is in the public domain as is the translation. I got them both on either Project Guttenberg, and downloaded them as a txt file.

I opened up LyX which will output postscript and pdf files (and just about every other type of document) I opened two new tabs and pasted English version in one and French version in the other tab. Then I removed all the header stuff and went through the book marking chapter and inserting page breaks so that the EN version would break on the same paragrgh as the FR version. You can preview the PDF output with Lyx, so this is fairly straight forward. I think it took me about two hours to do the entire book. Then I ran the script below on the two pdf's using the various utilites below.

This script basically ripps the two books apart and then shuffles them back together with alternative pages. It then does some pdf triming and tidy up. I had some preface stuff on this book, so if you don't want to change the script below you'll have to have a Title page, even if it is blank. LyX is your friend here, because it can output whatever you need.

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash
#################################################
#This is free and unencumbered software released into the public domain.
#
#Anyone is free to copy, modify, publish, use, compile, sell, or
#distribute this software, either in source code form or as a compiled
#binary, for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and by any
#means.
#
#In jurisdictions that recognize copyright laws, the author or authors
#of this software dedicate any and all copyright interest in the
#software to the public domain. We make this dedication for the benefit
#of the public at large and to the detriment of our heirs and
#successors. We intend this dedication to be an overt act of
#relinquishment in perpetuity of all present and future rights to this
#software under copyright law.
#
#THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
#EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
#MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.
#IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR
#OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE,
#ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR
#OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
#
#For more information, please refer to <http://unlicense.org/>
#
#################################################
###
### Programs required are: pdftk - (PDF ToolKit - Opensource)
### pdflatex (Part of the texlive-full package)
### gs (ghostscript 'apt-get install ghostscript')
### pdftops (The Poppler Developers - http://poppler.freedesktop.org)

### Setup variables inputs and outputs.
output='./output'
build='./build'
pages='pages'
roman='Roman'
Book1='Three_Men_In_Germany.pdf'
Book2='Les_trois_hommes_en_Allemagne.pdf'
final='3MenInGermany'
scaling=1.02
oddShift="-0.25cm,-0.1cm"
evenShift="-1cm,-0.1cm"
title='TitlePage.pdf'
bk='Blank.pdf'
rm $output/*
rm $build/*

####################################################
### You shouldn't need to change anything past here #######
####################################################

echo 'Outputting Combined Body Material: Start ... '
pdftk $Book1 burst output $build/EN_%03d.pdf
pdftk $Book2 burst output $build/FR_%03d.pdf
time for i in $(seq -f %03g 1 170) ; do pdftk $build/EN_$i.pdf $build/FR_$i.pdf cat output $build/new-$i.pdf ; done
pdftk $build/new-???.pdf output $build/tmp.pdf
pdftk IntBlank.pdf $build/tmp.pdf BackBook.pdf output $output/step1.pdf
rm $build/*
echo 'End'

echo 'Outputting Paged Body Material: Start ... '
pdflatex $pages
pdftk $output/step1.pdf burst output $build/file_%03d.pdf
pdftk $pages.pdf burst output $build/number_%03d.pdf
time for i in $(seq -f %03g 1 350) ; do pdftk $build/file_$i.pdf background $build/number_$i.pdf output $build/new-$i.pdf ; done
pdftk $build/new-???.pdf output $build/step2.pdf
gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dPDFSETTINGS=/screen -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH -sOutputFile=$output/step2.pdf $build/step2.pdf
rm $build/*
echo 'End'

echo 'Outputting Preface Material: Start ... '
pdftk $title $bk output $output/Preface.pdf
pdflatex $roman
pdftk $output/Preface.pdf burst output $build/file_%03d.pdf
pdftk $roman.pdf burst output $build/number_%03d.pdf
time for i in $(seq -f %03g 1 10) ; do pdftk $build/file_$i.pdf background $build/number_$i.pdf output $build/new-$i.pdf ; done
pdftk $build/new-???.pdf output $build/step3.pdf
pdftk  $build/step3.pdf $output/step2.pdf  output  $output/step3.pdf
gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dPDFSETTINGS=/screen -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH -sOutputFile=$output/$final.pdf  $output/step3.pdf
rm $build/*
echo 'End'


echo 'Outputting Body Postscript File Material: Start ... '
pdftops -level2 $output/$final.pdf $build/$final.0.ps && pstops "4:0@$scaling($evenShift),1@$scaling($oddShift),2@$scaling($evenShift),3@$scaling($oddShift)" $build/$final.0.ps | psbook -s 4 | psnup -2 | pstops "2:0@1.0(-0.00cm,0.0cm),1U@1.0(21cm,29.7cm)" > $output/$final.ps
echo 'End'

# echo 'Outputting Preface Postscript File Material: Start ... '
# pdftops -level2 $output/$End_Preface.pdf $build/$End_Preface.0.ps && pstops "4:0@$scaling($evenShift),1@$scaling($oddShift),2@$scaling($evenShift),3@$scaling($oddShift)" $build/$End_Preface.0.ps | psbook -s 4 | psnup -2 | pstops "2:0@1.0(-0.00cm,0.0cm),1U@1.0(21cm,29.7cm)" > $output/$End_Preface.ps
# echo 'End'

rm $build/*
rm $output/step*
rm $output/Preface.pdf
rm *.log
rm *~

[alexidsa]

Thanks for the advice. Seems like it is less time-consuming than I thought.