They’ve been a long time coming, its great that they are now available. LingQ is giving us lots of great things this year after the long drought.
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You’re welcome! I’ll try to find the time to translate and record the rest of them over the summer. It takes a bit more time than expected, but I’m happy to hear you enjoy them.
Best of luck learning Norwegian!
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Thank you! Yes, they have been a long time coming. You have done a very good job. I hope that you can continue with the remaining stories in the next few months.
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It has been several months since we received the first installments. Are any more in the works? If so, when can we expect them? Thanks.
Unfortunately we are still on 10 Mini Stories, but I’ll check with the content team where do we stand with the rest of the stories and if anyone is working on them at the moment.
Zoran;
Any update on additional Mini Stories? It has been over 3 months now since the first 10 were loaded.
Thanks.
As soon as my colleague Sahra is back from vacation, she will follow up here and let you know where do we stand with Norwegian.
I’m so grateful you’re doing it for us. Thanks for helping the community, my regards from Brazil 
Hi! I’m the one who recorded the mini-stories in Norwegian. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to finish recording them all.
I don’t wanna go into too many details, but to give you some idea, LingQ has very high standards for the mini stories. I’m Norwegian, and I translated the stories into my native language. Through email, I got challenged by a non-native speaker over my translations, and I felt like I had to argue for them. Also, the requirements are very specific and time-consuming. After recording the initial ones, they emailed me back with requirements that I was unaware of. In total, I have over 30 emails back and forth with LingQ just for the first 10 stories, and it unfortunately made the process quite frustrating for me.
As this is voluntary work, being motivated is key. They do offer some free subscription, but the hours to translate, set up recording, edit, correspond over email, it is time-consuming. I am a full time student, with a part-time job, and I live together with my girlfriend and have other hobbies too. As of now, I unfortunately don’t have time to prioritize it, sorry to everyone who was waiting for the new batch of stories… I wish you all the best in your Norwegian learning, and hopefully LingQ can find a way to complete the stories.
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Obrigado, thank you for the kind words!
Firstly, I applaud you for your contribution and effort Jazzlips!
Secondly, I can totally vouch for what you are saying in relation to LingQ being ‘frustrating’ to work with in relation to content generation.
At my own expense I had a staff member translate + record all 50 mini stories for Swahili, to which the girl who runs their content team told me that the quality wasn’t good enough!
Now this member of staff is Kenyan and resides in the country!
I was gobsmacked as it’s Lingq’s ‘modus operandi’ to, by and large, generate the content for these mini stories via ‘donation’ from motivated members.
Anyone who would like these Swahili mini-stories and recordings, feel free to DM me on here and I’ll share them with you totally free of charge.
Regards and happy language learning to all!
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Hi Jazzlips! thank you again for your efforts and sorry for the frustration caused by the emails. I understand how time consuming must have been for you to prepare those ten stories with high quality. Part of the reason for taking too much of your time was that after you had recorded them we standardized the mini stories in all languages and that’s why I asked you to make some changes in your recordings. My apologies for that. About my comment on the translation, it was not from me (I’m a Persian speaker), I consulted with some native speakers and it was not like your translation was wrong, we generally try to keep those stories natural and smooth with common structures and vocabulary so they can be more useful for beginner learners. It doesn’t mean that we challenged your knowledge in your native language. My apologies if I was not clear enough about this. I hope with all the time you spent on modifying the recordings to match the standard quality and the users that are very happy with those stories, you can translate and record the rest as well.
-sahra
Hi MikeMac, thanks for your efforts but the reason for not approving the Swahili ministories was not translations but the audio quality. sorry for the trouble for you but they were not recorded according to our guidelines for recording, like many other recordings that we have from other volunteers (from before setting guidelines) and we can’t use them on LingQ. Anyway, some other users have helped us with Swahili and they are almost ready now. thanks again for your time.
-sahra
Thank you Sahra for your detailed explanation of the difficulties that Jazzlips, and MikeMac experienced creating MiniStories. But what is LingQ going to do going forward to provide us with MiniStories? If voluntary efforts do not meet the LingQ standards is LingQ willing to hire “professionals” to produce them? Thanks
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If you are interested in creating content in your native Norwegian, one way, which may work for you, is to create user-created content. This would get around the requirements, which you find frustrating. In Italian, several users have created some great user-created content, which I loved. As it’s user-created, you have few limitations and the sky’s the limit.
There would be multiple ways to do this, depending on what kind of content you think is missing from the Norwegian library and what kind of content you want to create. Here are some ideas:
Beginner
- Use ChatGPT to write you short stories for A0/A1 beginners. Edit them if there are any grammar mistakes then record an audio for them. Ask ChatGPT something like “Write me a short story in Norwegian about grocery shopping with a reduced vocabulary of CEFR A1 with lots of repetition and in the present tense”
Upper beginner
- Use ChatGPT but tell to write it for A2s. Something like “Write me a summary of Harry Potter and the Philosopher Stone with a reduced vocabulary of CEFR A2 and in present tense.” Record an audio for it.
- Have short, improvisational talks into the microphone about certain topics using simple, clear language. Transcribe with FreeSubtitles.AI and do some minor edits where the transcription is wrong. https://freesubtitles.ai/
Lower intermediate
- Find a friend and have free-flowing conversations about life and interesting topics. Similar to chatting at the pub, just with clearer audio. Transcribe with FreeSubtitles.AI
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