I’d like to start reading more German literature here at LingQ, but there doesn’t seem to be that much. I was wondering if it’s ok for me to share free public domain books from librivox.org and vorleser.net here? It seems like Librivox is ok, but I haven’t seen any audio from Vorleser. Does anyone know if they’re ok with this?
Also, are there any guidelines I should follow while sharing these books? Any tips?
Leider dürfen wir von Vorleser.net keine Hörbücher importieren, da die Lizenz das nicht zulässt.
Ich gebe zu, dass ich persönlich kein Fan dieser “schönen Literatur” bin, auf die Gefahr hin, hier als Banause zu gelten, aber ich persönlich mag lieber aktuelle Literatur mit lebensnahen Texten. Ich persönlich habe nichts dagegen, wenn jemand alte Literatur mag, weise aber immer wieder auf die Gefahr hin, sich einen antiquierten Wortschatz, altmodische Redensarten und eine unnatürliche Sprechweise anzueignen. Wer sich dieser Gefahren bewusst ist, kann natürlich diese Literatur auch durchaus genießen. Außerdem gab es seither mehrere Rechtschreibreformen, so dass diese auch überarbeitet werden muss.
Es gibt einige wenige eingestellte Hörbücher bei LingQ, aber das Interesse ist äußerst gering, so dass sich der Aufwand meiner Ansicht nach nicht lohnt. Für Anfänger sind die Texte zu schwierig und Fortgeschrittene suchen sich oft selber Ihre Quellen.
I have only ever provided my own material for the library, but have read some of the Librivox books available here in the French and Spanish libraries. You will have to take care when importing these, they often have OCR-based (?) mistakes in texts: words running together, the odd letter appearing as peculiar symbols, etc. I wish you lots of interested advanced German learners.
Over the last year or so I have re-read two classics on my Kindle: Selma Lagerlöf’s “Die wunderbare Reise des kleinen Nils Holgersson” and Hermann Hesse’s “Siddharta”, both of which I enjoyed very much again. Actually, the Swedish children’s classic was much more interesting to me as an adult as when I read it as a child. Hesse is wonderful to read at any age! (I think @alleray also re-read and very much liked “Nils Holgersson…”. I trust his taste implicitly.)
@Elric I’ve downloaded some novels and fair tales in German, but not so many for the Lingq library: T. Fontane ‘Effi Briest’, H. Zschokke ‘Die Warpurgisnacht’, some “Märchen” der Brüder Grimm, some German poems that I like to read and some translations into German: A. C. Doyle “Späte Rache”, A. Puschkin “Der Postmeister” and “Der Schneesturm”.
Einerseits hat Vera Recht, dass es in allen diesen Werken einige veraltete Wörter und Redewendungen gibt, andererseits kann ich mir die guten Sprachkenntnisse ohne gute Bekanntschaft mit der Literatur der entsprechenden Sprache gar und ganz nicht vorstellen.
Was mehrere Rechtschreibreforme in der deutschen Sprache während letzter 100 Jahre betrifft, so waren sie meiner Meinung nach sehr gering, dass alte deutsche Texte ganz nicht so schwer sind und kein Sprachgefühl beschädigen können und kein Ihr Vergnügen vom Lesen verderben.
I’m going to go ahead, and import a few books from Librivox I’m interested in and let’s hope that other learners who love 19th century literature will use them too. I don’t worry about words and expressions being oldfashioned or obsolete because the main reason I learn languages is to be able to gain direct access to great literature. I want to be able to read Kafka, Mann, Goethe, Heine, Hilke and others in the original.
http://www.lingq.com/learn/de/store/82801/ - Hier ist der Link zu “Effi Briest” von T. Fontane http://www.lingq.com/learn/de/store/89415/ - Hier ist der Link zu guter deutschen Übersetzung von 2 Puschkin´s Geschichten.
Enjoy them!
Leider kann ich nicht die moderne deutsche Literatur in die Bibliothek wegen des Urheberrechts (70 Jahre nach dem Tod des Verfassers) hochladen.
I listen to loads of audiobooks and study the transcripts using LingQ. Librivoz and others often have books from the early 20th century, I can live with sounding that antiquated
Jules Verne is good, he wrote loads of books, they have been translated into many different languages. and they are mostly at LingQ’s advanced 1 level.
Pity that only librivox makes it their mission to provide audio copyright-free.
skyblueteapot, I love Verne, and I’ve read a couple of his books in the original already. I think Librivox has some of his works in German too. I’d rather read the original than a translation, but it’s still an option.
I’ve just imported and shared Kafka’s “Die Verwandlung”. Here’s a link: Login - LingQ
Helen, in re Jules Verne: http://www.unesco.org/xtrans/bsstatexp.aspx?crit1L=5&nTyp=min&topN=50 . Every time I read this list I am amazed. (Actually, JV and Dumas were the reasons I learned to read French, and I’ve certainly never regretted it, although I haven’t read much Dumas since 3 mousquetaires.) There are several sites, as you probably know, that offer audio of works by 19th and early-20th century French authors, some of it very good, but I do not know if they allow the files to be imported and shared on LIngQ; however, for private use they’re great.
Ernie, litteratureaudio has a note on their site saying that some readers have issued their recordings under the Creative Commons license. I wonder if they would mind us importing some books to LingQ and if anyone has already contacted them about it.
Here are other French language audiobook sites that I just found out about:
Hi Elric, I’ve done lot of research to find free German books but beside Librivox they all are protected under a license that doesn’t give us permission to share them on LingQ. Usually they have mentioned no license (in Germany the law says everything is protected that way under the “Urheberrecht”) or under a license that excluded commercial use (and LingQ is considered as commercial). On my blog for German learners you can find some links to resources that I’ve found.
I’ve asked several of the providers and I’ve explained that all the content is free, but with no positive result. And as long as some of the services at LingQ are commercial it is considered commercial all over all. The content of the providers who gave me permission is available in the library. For example the “Crimepod”, a podcast with crime short stories or the christmas tale.
Instead of listening to audiobooks you could buy e-books and let some device read them to you. I have no idea about iPads or iPods, but I know on Android there are some e-book reader apps with text to speech functionality. It’s not the same as a reading by a human being, but if you use svox voices instead of the built-in voice the result should be quite acceptable.
It’s not something I have done myself, I have to admit. But if you have an Android device, you might give it a try. I use Svox voices in Anki on my Android phone, by the way, and find them excellent.
Erbse, that might be useful for the visually impaired, but for language learners it’s not as good. German has pretty straightforward pronunciation rules, so in my case I can do well without the audio, but I was hoping to find audiobooks to import to the Lingq library for everyone to use.
That’s odd, I never thought of German spelling and pronounciation as straightforward. I find them rather inconsequent, especially in comparison to Italian or Spanish. I also think that’s the reason German kids have to struggle quite a bit with spelling rules.
