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

Many use films with subtitles to listen to the speech and at the same time read. I want to propose an alternative - listen to audio books and read their text with word-for-word translation and access to each individual phrase. They are available online at BookTitres.com .

The most interesting

Already available for reading books you can find in the section " Listen and read " on the site. The book " The Hobbit " is over - it's 11 hours of audio and 13,800 phrases. Having passed it completely, you will feel a noticeable improvement in your English. Especially if you repeat every phrase after the reader. From the other books there are mainly several first chapters. If you want to continue - answer the survey and select the desired book.

I do not pursue the goals of PR, but I want to talk about the idea itself and ask for advice on how to develop it. You can leave your wishes by looking at the site at the links above. And if it is interesting to read about the emergence of the idea and its technical implementation, then look under the cat.
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At the end of the article are questions to which I would very much like to get answers from habr people.

How did the idea

I have always loved to read books and have a craving for foreign languages, but for a number of reasons I was limited in my ability to learn and practice them. There was not enough patience to study textbooks. I wanted to dive into the environment, reading foreign books in the original. I tried to read a book and translation in parallel. Then he became acquainted with the method of Ilya Frank, where, after each phrase of the original, there is a literal translation in brackets. But there were always doubts - am I saying the word correctly? Often looked into the dictionary for the transcription, and it was exhausting.

As for sound, separately without text, it was difficult to perceive it, since the main channel of perception is visual, through reading.

I liked when the text and sound were together. Such a bundle could be found in films with subtitles in the original language, or by downloading the book - the audio and text version. But then the following difficulties arose:

• combine the texts of the original and translation;
• combine lyrics with audio - sometimes you get a little distracted, and you lose the "thread"
• it is problematic to rewind to the phrase that you did not have time to hear or you want to listen to it several times in a row; always hook up the excess when rewinding;

In general, it took a lot of time and effort to do this. Therefore, the idea arose to create a format in which each phrase would be associated with a bunch:
audio sample - original text - translation text

and then it would be possible to return to them as many times as necessary. How to use it in the end?

Made 2 modes: player and text .

In the player, you can turn on all the audio and watch the text as subtitles, or switch between phrases. And in text mode, you can scroll through all the text and, if necessary, click on the phrases and listen to them.

Since everything is divided into phrases, the dictation mode has also been added, in which you can set the number of repetitions of each phrase and the delay before them.
Many repetitions and a small pause - it is convenient to memorize the material (“zombie”, while reading and listening to it many times in a row).
Big pause and few repetitions - you can write a dictation (you listen to the phrase, and while the pause lasts - you write it, then the next one, etc.)

The matter of technology

In the end, it all came down to the creation of 3 text blocks.

1. seconds of the beginning and end of a phrase in an audio file
2. original text
3. translation text

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

<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
8.081406 10.267120 4
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.




I
,
,
,
,


Public script

All scripts written by me are available for download in the " Create books " section. Guides, updates and changes will be posted there. In addition to the front end (player books), there is also an editor mode.

The end result is an html file, simple in structure, in which the breakdown of the book by phrases is stored: their seconds and texts in two languages. You can run a book file in almost all browsers, including mobile. Also, if you upload the book files on Android, you can run the book from the phone. There is a mobile version of the display and desktop.

The working process

The following describes briefly the essence of the process, if you want to repeat the process, watch the video guide . Only the process of obtaining seconds of phrases in AEGISUB with manual selection can be replaced with the automatic one obtained in the Audacity program.

1. phrase timing

Audacity contains Sound Finder features that automatically extract time slots for all phrases in an audio file. If you want to work with your hands and for sure, then you can use the subtitle program AEGISUB .

2. Text alignment by audio

When seconds are received, on a special page they turn into small squares with numbers, pressing which you hear phrases. And build texts on them. First the original, then the translation.



Creating book titles is much easier than regular subtitles, because:

1. there are almost no extraneous noises in audio books, only speech, and it is possible to recognize the intervals of phrases by program methods
2. the text of the book in advance is, it remains only to transfer the lines of audio phrases
3. translation is also in advance, and often he repeats the original in the order of the phrases

A special case of work, when the “book on the method of Ilya Frank” is taken as the source code, and the timing is compiled manually in the AEGISUB program, you can see in this video guide: “ Create your own books ”.

Main difficulty

Highlighting phrases in audio is done simply, automatically (Audacity -> Analys -> Sound Finder), the original text in any language is easy to distribute by audio, having even zero knowledge of the language (if you are familiar with the writing, of course), you just need to listen to the audio and at the right places to press Enter, transferring the text to new lines.

But with the preparation of the translation more difficult. When you have language skills (I have English, for example), this is done simply with some translations of books.

Of the 5 English books that have been added to the site, 4 translations go next to the original, in phrasing. And so the job also comes down to wrapping lines in the right places, pressing Enter. (These are Great Expectations , Pride and Prejudice , Jane Eyre and Alice in Wonderland ). Sometimes, in 1 out of 50-100 cases, you have to rearrange the phrases in some places.

1 book ("The Life of Benjamin Franklin ") does not coincide with the phrases, it essentially has to be re-translated - but then there is always a semantic translation before my eyes, this makes work much easier.

Breakdown

In my opinion it is convenient to split audio files into 5-minute passages. In different languages, such an excerpt contains an average of 100 phrases and takes about 2 mb. Such a portion is convenient both for perception by the student and for downloading to the device with almost any Internet connection. In the work, when creating bookstores, this part size is also convenient.

Cooperation. Copyright holders

I did not manage to establish contact with Ilya Frank (it seems that he rarely looks at the mail), so I decided not to abuse his work and made demo versions of the available excerpts of books in different languages ​​that I do not own. I would like, of course, to use the potential of their adapted books, breathing soundtrack into them as well. Of course, by mutual agreement, respecting the interests of their publishers.

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

As for modern books, in Western law, especially English-speaking countries, I found such a thing as "fair use" when you use someone else's content in a modified form, which does not interfere in the long run to the copyright holders. It seems to me that it can be applied to our case, since people are of little use to audiobooks in unfamiliar languages ​​- a very high level of preparation is required to use them. And if you provide them with pauses (broken down by phrases) and accompanying texts, the interest in them will increase significantly, and the foreign language audience will be added.

I was also inspired by the audio versions of many popular books with hundreds of thousands of views published on youtube. Apparently they are not blocked ... I do not think that we really would have caused someone damage. And attention to their products to a wider audience and additional contributions - it is quite possible.

I would like to hear your advice on cooperation with modern copyright holders of books: Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, House of Cards - called the first thing that came to mind. How realistic is it to interest them? In any case, you can start using the torrent system, when everyone can post anything, but at the request of the copyright holders, this is immediately removed.

Cooperation. Who will do the books?

Quite a few people are engaged in translating their favorite poems, songs, creating subtitles, scanning and recognizing books - purely for the sake of interest. Diligent teachers often prepare improvised learning materials for students, investing their work in it.

I think all these people might be interested in the format of booksellers. They could combine the texts of their favorite work with audio and translation, publish it on the site and share with friends, students or simply “fans.”

Recently, a sports judge expressed a desire to prepare international refereeing rules in English in such a format, so that later he would use the opportunities of the program to memorize them in English and use them for the exam and in judicial practice.

If you convert popular textbooks into such a format, I think it would be of great benefit to students and the popularity of the service (if you find something to interest the right holders).

Probably, you can make deductions for money and different bonuses for adding material, depending on its popularity.
My ideal is to create an easy-to-use interface for creating, storing, and publishing the book books online, through the website. Where anyone can place your audio and lyrics. At the moment, it is enough to add a simple code with seconds of phrases, texts, and a link to audio, and it is displayed as a player and text with phased navigation. But registration is not open yet.

Cooperation - habra people

Help me, please, by writing your advice regarding:

1. Design and usability of the program and site
2. How to make the script source (add on github, provide the code with comments, publish it somewhere, change, etc.)
3. Establish contact with the copyright holders of books.
4. To establish cooperation with potential users of the service: foreign language courses, students, students, literature lovers
5. Develop a business model (how to promote a website, what books to add initially, in what quantity, how to earn income, distribute it among project participants)
6. Support financially on pre-agreed terms