Starting a new website- bilingual texts, stories, poetry and lyrics

Welsh General / Questions
#1

Hello happy SSIWers,

I’m delighted to announce that I’m starting a new project and website to present bilingual texts to learners. As someone who considers themselves now a Welsh speaker, I still struggle with reading and I’m aware that other languages have many resources for parallel reading which Welsh doesn’t.

Not being an author, translator or tutor I’m crowdsourcing the content. What sort of content am I after?

  • Contemporary published Welsh language authors- book extracts or short stories.
  • Popular translated Welsh songs.
  • Poetry- as long as it is readable by learners!
  • Out-of-copyright English books with a Welsh translation. For example, a Sherlock Holmes short story is 8-10,000 words; 10 people sharing the translation means 1000 words each.
  • Stories, tales and poetry from existing learners like the fabulous people on here.

As long as it is bilingual and suitable for learners I’d love to present it to the world. All content will have an author bio, picture and link to their website/publisher/Amazon page etc.

My timeframe is to collate some content over the next few weeks, launch the website in November and then work on raising awareness and increasing content over the following months.

What say people here? Good idea? Message me on here and let me know what you think, if you fancy chipping in or if you would like an early preview of the site.

Thanks all!

Neil Rowlands.

8 Likes
#2

I’m not up to the level where I can be of any assistance but I do like the idea. It should be a really useful resource and I look forward to seeing it launched.
Raymond

1 Like
#3

I look forward to seeing it on line, hopefully with reasonably large font with good contrast for bad eyes! And with clear audio! Please let us know when it is available! - Oh, I too, am hoping to use it, not contribute to it!

1 Like
#4

Diolch Raymond. I intend to provide content for a wide variety of experiences. If it helps people get more exposure to the language then that is great.

#5

Shw mae Henddraig. What I am currently intending will be written content, but now that you mention it, audiobooks/spoken versions of texts could be interesting. I’ll give you the link to it now, on the understanding that this is a demo site and not be published elsewhere.
http://parallel.cymru
I’ve not provided a way to change font size, so I’d appreciate you letting me know if it would provide comfortable font size for you.
Diolch!
Neil

1 Like
#6

The darker type is OK, although a very slightly larger font would be better. The fainter type would give me a headache in no time.

#7

OK thanks. For now I’ve got a standard Wordpress template, and it isn’t advanced enough to have text size controls in beyond what is on the browaser. However I’ve added this to my wish list that I’ll look at once the site is live and being used.
I appreciate your comments :slight_smile:

#8

Great idea - I look forward to using it to improve my own reading and writing!

#9

Regarding Sherlock Holmes, the deerstalkers of Welshpool group translated and published the first Cymraeg version of a Holmes story. Might be worth getting in touch with them.

1 Like
#10

Thanks James- feel free to get in touch if you want to write something bilingually or if you have done something interesting and would like to have an email ‘interview’.

That link is awesome- I had no idea someone had arleady got something going in Welsh for ol’ Sherlock. I shall email them soon and ask if they can share some resources with me. Much appreciated!

1 Like
#11

Neil

Is this the kind of thing you are looking for?:
Here is the link:

Caryl Lewis story “Y Llif” (Against the Current) with English subtitles from the short story collection “Y Gwreiddyn”. We used this recently in my Welsh class (Cwrs Meistroli).

Sandra

#12

Hi Neil,

I have an adaptation of a Palestinian story (unpublished) in both Welsh and English. The English is not quite a direct translation of the Welsh, but close enough to be useful, at least as far as I recall. Any interest? I’ll have a rummage and see if I can find them. Can I email you directly somehow? I’m not much use with the computer beyond emails.

1 Like
#13

For me it would work better if the text and translation were shown in parallel column form - would it be possible to have a ‘print’ or download button for each piece?

#14

Thanks for the comment rerab_rerab. For now I am doing a mixture of side by side and paragraph after paragraph. Side by side is the standard way to lay out bilingual content, but many people read websites on mobile phones with small screens, which makes it tricky to read. However, as it is a website I will be able to iterate and improve the format based on feedback.

Ebooks/download options is something that I’ll look into after the site is up and running. I hadn’t considered a clean way to print the article without the headers etc- I will look into how practical this is for my current Wordpress theme- it may that this has to wait until a version 2 of the site with a more advanced (and thus more expensive) Wordpress theme.

Thanks Sandra for the Caryl Lewis suggestion. I can see why you whoomped me on Llyncu Geiriau the other week! I hadn’t come across either Y Gwreiddyn or the New Welsh Review. I shall explore opportunities with them.

Thanks for the comments- keep them coming! So many people that I have talked with have offered ideas or their time to contribute an article- I’m condfident that this will turn into a wonderful resource for learners and speakers of all levels.

1 Like
#15

Sounds like a brilliant idea! One thing might be to put links to Welsh songs that are on You Tube, giving the english and the Welsh lyrics…some vids on You Tube do have the Welsh words or the lyrics underneath, but not all!

1 Like