Ereader Easy Swedish

cubbic | 114 points | 2mon ago | ereader-swedish.fly.dev

pivic|2mon ago

I believe this type of 'translation' can't help with learning a language unless the person who's reading already knows a lot of idiomatic expressions, grammar, and knows both English and Swedish on an everyday-conversation level. Let me show you what I mean.

Here's the first paragraph in English:

> The town studio of Signor Jacobelli faced the west. It was situated on the top floor of an old eight-storied building in the West Fifties. Thirty years ago this had been given over entirely to studios, but now it was broken up into a more profitable mêlée of semi-commercial establishments and light-housekeeping apartments.

Here's the first paragraph in the Swedish translation:

> Signor Jacobelli hade en ateljé högst upp i ett gammalt hus med åtta våningar. För trettio år sedan var huset fullt av konstnärer, men nu fanns där både butiker och lägenheter.

I get that the translation is to a 'simplified' version of Swedish; translations of fiction are often restructures of the original language, but this is to a point where one not only needs to know what the words in Swedish mean, but be able to interpret them based on a vast restructure compared with the original.

Compare with a Kagi (DeepL) translation of the text:

> Signor Jacobellis ateljé i staden vette mot väster. Den låg högst upp i ett gammalt åttavåningshus på West Fifties. För trettio år sedan hade detta uteslutande varit ateljéer, men nu var det uppdelat i en mer lönsam blandning av halvkommersiella etablissemang och lägenheter med enklare hushållning.

Kagi maintains the original structure, which makes it far easier to compare words and the original structure.

I could be wrong but to me it seems far easier to learn a language when a translation doesn't come with a vast restructure of the original content.

pastage|2mon ago

I think these issues stems form translating to the language you are learning being a bit backwards. It serves a purpose though you learn how to say complicated stuff in an easier way.

I am at a basic level in many languages. Often it is enough to know that I have the gist right: is it "please step out" or "Please do not step out".

zersiax|2mon ago

You're not wrong but I think there is absolutely a case to be made for these kinds of restructurings as well. For one, giving you the restructured version exposes you to different ways of stating the same content, it might make reading longform content (without falling back to the original source material too often) more fluid, and more situationally, this kind of simplification and restructuring actually happens really often in subtitling, where character count is more leading than the lip movements a dub is based on. e.g. you'll hear one thing, but the sub is that same content often radically redone :)

ftrobro|2mon ago

Is "ateljé" (meaning art studio) really the correct Swedish translation here? I suspect "etta" (meaning one-room apartment) would be more suitable.

BurningFrog|2mon ago

Yeah, 99% sure it's an apartment in this context.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_apartment

Kiro|2mon ago

No, it's not. The book is taking place in some kind of arts center for music and art.

"And at exactly the same instant Signor Jacobelli was bursting without warning or ceremony into a studio on the second floor where a model posed."

tapland|2mon ago

My SO has lived in Sweden for a few years, gone through the provided Swedish classes to be eligible for university studies, but really feels the need to consume more swedish text.

The easier-to-read books in the libraries are all too simple, and they don't want to learn by regularly reading a lot of news (which is probably the easiest way to be trickle fed new and niche words), but this seems really nice.

This looks promising for their situation. I'll plop LoTR, Antimemetics Division or something in there later and see how it turns out!

dehrmann|2mon ago

The problem with learning Swedish is 95% of Swedes speak English and are more than happy to speak English.

amarant|2mon ago

And will switch to English as soon as we detect the slightest hint of a foreign accent, in a often misguided attempt to be helpful.

cycomanic|2mon ago

Except when asked if they speak English, where they then very hesitantly say (in perfect English btw) "a little bit".

Quite interesting cultural differences btw. In my experience, if you ask the same question in Denmark, the answer is "of course... Everybody here speaks English"

stevesimmons|2mon ago

When I was learning Dutch, I found the same gap between kids' books that were too simple and proper novels that were too complex.

Newspapers were the easiest and best way to bridge that. They made it easy to pick a story where you had both some interest and enough background context.

I started with De Telegraaf, a popular newspaper, with short, simple stories and lots of photos. And over the course of 18 months worked my way up to serious papers like NRC Handelsblad and de Volkskrant.

So I'd give newspapers (and magazines) a go.

Back then, I'd sit in a cafe with my dictionary, reading their newspapers, and handwriting lists of words to learn. Nowadays it would be reading the paper's website on my laptop, pasting paragraphs into GPT, and adding the words to Anki etc :)

marssaxman|2mon ago

Funny timing - I just finished today's episode of "NOS Journaal in Makkelijke Taal". I have not regularly followed "the news" in many years, but this channel offers a pleasant way to get some daily practice; it's simple enough to follow along, with a few new words and phrases to learn each time. I'll check out De Telegraaf as well - thanks for the recommendation.

mistrial9|2mon ago

news is uniquely terrible for learning a language IMHO. One word changes meaning substantially.. lots of long form statements when a short form would work; lots of references that take local, political or cultural context to know; lots of ideas and words, very fast.. etc..

triyambakam|2mon ago

I also learned Swedish, which I think is very interesting, because Sweden has 1/4 the population of California, but has a relatively large influence on Western culture. At least in my mind.

Regarding learning a language, I recommend looking into Dr Krashen's theory of language acquisition, specifically comprehensible input. His favorite resource is comic books. For Swedish, I really like SVT with a VPN.

memsom|2mon ago

A lot of SVT is available with no VPN. It also has apps, so I tend to watch it on an Apple TV.

I second comic books, though the Swedish tends to be super colloquial and you will get stuff like "dig" rendered as "dej" (which is how it is generally pronounced, but not how it is formally written.) Kalle Anka is always the classic go to for Swedish learners.

NRK on the other hand actively tries to block everyone, which makes Norwegian a lot less accessible.

cess11|2mon ago

For those with VPN, here's SVT:

https://www.svtplay.se/

Swedish public service television also has an educational branch, which is here:

https://urplay.se/

I use comic books to teach my kids to read, I agree it ought to be a good option for foreign adults too.

On SVT I'd recommend Landet runt (Around the country), it shows a lot of feelgood stories from local news and is aimed at a broad audience, including kids and the elderly:

https://www.svtplay.se/landet-runt

There's also a news program for kids I think could be a good option to learn from:

https://www.svtplay.se/lilla-aktuellt-och-lilla-aktuellt-sko...

While I don't watch any of them myself, perhaps competition programs might work too:

https://www.svtplay.se/lista/svtId_jQ7LrRQ/tavlingsprogram

memsom|2mon ago

SVT Play (app or web) is a very good resource, and it is mostly subtitled in Swedish, which helps a lot. From the UK (at any rate) it is pretty rare to find many of the shows with georestructions, I do not find many. It is worth trying it without a VPN first, as you might be able to save money.

As I mentioned above, NRK is not so great. Most of the content is geoblocked, and you need a norwegian digital ID to watch it outside of Norway (or at least, Skandinavia) without a VPN. They also regularly block VPN's, so as an example, Tunnelbear used to be fine (and gives a fairly generous free tier if you play the "invite friends and do some tasks" game), but last time I tried, it was no longer working with the NRK TV app.

yeyeyeyeyeyeyee|2mon ago

There is also a short news episode for adults, but in easy Swedish.

Nyheter på lätt svenska: https://www.svtplay.se/nyheter-pa-latt-svenska

fifilura|2mon ago

A method I love, because it is actually a pleasure, is to find music you like in the language.

I love listening to the same songs over and over again anyway, and once in a while I get curious what they are actually saying in a new sentence.

I do this for learning German once in a while, but I am sure it would work fine for Swedish as well.

Markus Krunegård is my favourite right now, and I think he sings with a clear language.

But there are lots of (pop) music in Swedish with interesting lyrics; Veronica Maggio, Little Jinder, Håkan Hellström, Miss Li, Kent. A very random sample from a much much longer list obviously.

And a passive method, so, while it is pure joy, it needs to be complemented with actul studying of course.