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If you only want to read a language, it can work to make Kindle reading in it your regular bedtime reading, after booting up to a minimum level from Duolingo or

If you only want to read a language, it can work to make Kindle reading in it your regular bedtime reading, after booting up to a minimum level from Duolingo or high school classes. The app's dictionary lookup and autotranslation are mostly good enough -- not up to a custom interlinear translation, but accessible at a tap. You can ramp up from relatively easy and familiar books like Harry Potter in translation. At least I'd call it a success for French and Spanish for me. I did check out books with facing-page translations, but there's just less choice of works in that format that I really want to read. (I'd rather recommend out-of-copyright works on a free reader, among other reasons because you could hack it to try specialized UX like an interlinear translation, or connect it to your favorite spaced-repetition system -- but I'm not familiar with anything with UX as good as the Kindle on a tablet. Suggestions appreciated.)

lioeters 5y ago
Speaking of out-of-copyright works, I checked Project Gutenberg and they do have books in various languages. There's probably some way to programmatically search their archive to list books that are available in multiple languages - which might be suitable for creating "interlinear translations". For example, a list of all their books in Spanish: https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/languages/es https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/languages/es Or Japanese: https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/languages/ja https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/languages/ja This latter is a short list though, and they're old books with a style of writing that are not friendly for learning the language. I suppose manual curation is necessary to decide what kind of books are best for this purpose, starting with a smaller vocabulary of simple words. --- I remember in high school I discovered a book of poems by Pablo Neruda, with the Spanish original and English on pages side by side. It was a wonderful reading experience, and I learned quite a lot from it. Neruda: Selected Poems (Bilingual Edition)
- abecedarius 5y ago
  Thank you for pointing out the Neruda! I have a bilingual book of poetry by Borges -- I feel like for poems the bilingual format is still worth looking for for me, though translations are chancy.

lioeters 5y ago

Speaking of out-of-copyright works, I checked Project Gutenberg and they do have books in various languages. There's probably some way to programmatically search their archive to list books that are available in multiple languages - which might be suitable for creating "interlinear translations". For example, a list of all their books in Spanish: https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/languages/es https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/languages/es Or Japanese: https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/languages/ja https://www.gutenberg.org/browse/languages/ja This latter is a short list though, and they're old books with a style of writing that are not friendly for learning the language. I suppose manual curation is necessary to decide what kind of books are best for this purpose, starting with a smaller vocabulary of simple words. --- I remember in high school I discovered a book of poems by Pablo Neruda, with the Spanish original and English on pages side by side. It was a wonderful reading experience, and I learned quite a lot from it. Neruda: Selected Poems (Bilingual Edition)

abecedarius 5y ago
Thank you for pointing out the Neruda! I have a bilingual book of poetry by Borges -- I feel like for poems the bilingual format is still worth looking for for me, though translations are chancy.