Today I tried out Google Translate (http://translate.google.com). It lists Chinese among the languages it translates and it's translating into Mandarin Chinese. Since only Chinese (traditional and simplified) is listed I had to type in a few words to find out which dialect of Chinese it was translating.
It also has an option for listening to the translation. It's a computer generated voice but seems to be reasonably accurate. I discovered that it has difficulty with the beginning of words. So if one puts some dummy word in front of the word you're interested in, you'll get a more accurate audio translation. I suppose Google should add a pause at the beginning of the audio or make some other fix to overcome this defect.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Chinese Language DVDs from the library
It occurred to me that I could get more practice listening to Mandarin if I checked out Chinese language DVDs from the library. I went to the San Jose Public Library (Edenvale branch) and checked out The World
. This is a movie set in the Beijing World Park. It seems to be a sort of extended infomercial for the park. It did look like a nice, clean theme park. It also showed some real-life scenes of Beijing. A refreshing change from Hollywood movies that present the characters as living in beautiful locations that they couldn't possibly afford. I was able to decipher some of the spoken Chinese (with the help of the English sub-titles) but in some instances the characters seemed to be speaking a Beijing dialect I couldn't get. It was a worthwhile experience nonetheless.
I think I'll start checking out the Chinese DVDs at random to supplement my language study. I'd be more focused by I'm unable to read (at this point) the Chinese characters on the DVD boxes.
. This is a movie set in the Beijing World Park. It seems to be a sort of extended infomercial for the park. It did look like a nice, clean theme park. It also showed some real-life scenes of Beijing. A refreshing change from Hollywood movies that present the characters as living in beautiful locations that they couldn't possibly afford. I was able to decipher some of the spoken Chinese (with the help of the English sub-titles) but in some instances the characters seemed to be speaking a Beijing dialect I couldn't get. It was a worthwhile experience nonetheless. I think I'll start checking out the Chinese DVDs at random to supplement my language study. I'd be more focused by I'm unable to read (at this point) the Chinese characters on the DVD boxes.
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