#reader tools

The app has several short novels and also some articles, and provides them in parallel texts. It also provides audio for both the languages you select (so you could pick a story with chinese/English text or french/Japanese etc). It also has the ability to look up words with a click dictionary. I'm not quite sure how to utilize that feature though, as the way my phone is set up Google Translate is always an option go highlight and translate text so that's what I end up doing in that app.

It's basically a really convenient app for reading, reading listening, getting parallel texts for an upper beginner/lower intermediate learner where you can start to push into non graded materials but aren't ready to give up some support tools and would like to start with something on the easier end (a lot of the novels on here are stuff i read from 8th grade to 10th grade in school or stuff I've seen read in another language as first novels in a class - The Little Prince, Around the World in 80 Days, Alice in Wonderland etc). Each of these novels is between Around 1-3 hours of audio so theyre short listens/reads, and even if you spend 3x the time just looking up words and figuring out each sentence, one of these novels is not a huge time commitment (for fun, zhenhun is at minimum 26 hours of audio... so zhenhuns a significantly bigger time commitment even if I never pause at all ToT).

I plan to try a Listening-Reading Method experiment with Duoreader app in Japanese at some point, just because I think I can manage it with a short novel. I'd do step 2 (Language 2 audio/Language 2 text), and step 3 (Language 2 audio/Language 1 text follow along). Then doing L2/L2 again slower with pauses/repetition to catch a lot of words I can figure out with the context if I just slow down. I may do the initial step 2 slow too, since I can comprehend a lot more Japanese if I slow down to break up the sentences mentally and figure out the grammar and word amount (then with a parallel text and Kanji I can figure out some word meanings). Alice in Wonderland takes about 1 hour to read, I'll give myself 1.5 hours for all the relistening to some sentences. Maybe 2 hours for the step 2 sessions where I slow down and try to break down sentences. So 5.5 hours to L R Method with Alice and Wonderland. Even if I double that and do some steps more, it should be a 1-3 day project. Certainly something I can do within a week and see if it works. I've often mentioned Wasabi Japanese websites lessons, because one of their courses is basically intensive listening reading repetition with short passages to learn and I love that style of study (and their other courses similarly work in a way that works well for me). Well L R Method works a lot like that for me when I put the effort in.

This is what Duoreader looks like:

So as yall know, I recommend various alternatives for reading ebooks in the language you're studying:

Pleco - if you're studying Chinese this is one of the best options. It allows you to read web pages, and ebooks pdfs etc, has generated audio for words and the entire text, great definitions, and can Google translate passages.

Kyreader - free ebook reader for ios. Features a good click dictionary/translation of words, generated audio for the entire text. Can generate audio and recognize text on pdf files which is nice. I've tested it for chinese, French, japanese and it worked well for all 3.

Moonreader+ - one time purchase ebook reader for Android. Features a good click dictionary (once you figure out how to set it up), generated audio for entire text. Seems to work as well as Kyreader. (Only thing is I do notice I need to go in and manually change my phones text to speech language whenever I change the language I'm reading and want generated audio).

Idiom - free web page reader and YouTube video dual subtitle tool. Features click dictionary (its as good as lingq but not as good as Pleco), generated audio for text, and for youtube videos features translations for each line and ability to replay any line/skip to various lines. It is less perfectly tailored for chinese than pleco, but overall for Any Language Immersion I recommend this app. It works about as good as lingq, but Idiom is free. (Only thing I do notice is on android I have to change my text to speech language on my phone settings depending on the language I'm reading in Idiom if I want generated audio, on iphone the generated audio automatically spoke in whatever language I was reading).

Now. There are a couple particular reasons I do like lingq and Kindle in... some ways for language learning.

Lingqs coolest feature, in my opinion, is how it COUNTS the amount of words you've learned/looked up. So you can track your progress. However, lingq has a lot of weak spots in my opinion. I prefer to recommend dongchinese for chinese learners if you want the word learned tracking feature, or perhaps Readlang for language learners generally (though I have not explored Readlangs features much).

As in tools where you can click for word definitions, for txt documents, webnovels (websites), pdfs? For the computer, or for the phone? Any Reader apps?

I primarily read on my phone or on paper, so I’m mainly looking for apps or web browser tools that will work on a phone web browser. Though I don’t know of ANY japanese reader tools so please if you know of computer ones let me know. (I know of LingQ app but I do not want to use it if possible, since its definitions were iffy for chinese and I imagine the same is true for japanese, also it cost $12 a month).

I know of https://www.japanese.io/ but I have never used it, and I’m not sure how much you can do with the free version. 

I know of Idiom app - but it only works with websites, and its definitions can sometimes be iffy (great alternative to LingQ though since I find the quality of definitions is similar, but this app is free)

I can use imiwa dictionary app to copy/paste in text, and get an annotation of the definition of words below it. That’s not the same as a quick click-definition for just unknown words though.

The events of the last few weeks with Lore.FM have made a few things glaringly clear:

1) There is a need within fandom to utilize TTS technology for a variety of reasons

2) Many folks (through no fault of their own) are unaware of what TTS technology is available how that to improve their experience

3) Podfics are not as widely known and circulated as I assumed

In light of that, I have made a very basic guide. It is in no way a finished product or definitive, just my effort to make a positive out of a negative. It covers iPhone built in TTS, Edge Browser for mobile and desktop, Android Reading Mode, other user-suggested Android apps, and podfics. I would love to add more and encourage you to contact me with suggestions or feedback. This was put together in a wild rush and based* off of mine and my family’s experience with these tools, so I fully expect deficiencies and flaws. The Edge and iPhone options contain a demo with a short snippet of my own work to show how it functions. I don’t have one of these for Android but if someone would like to coordinate a recording, I am happy to add it.

Special thanks to the users on the AO3 subreddit who suggested apps and podcast archives or were willing to test. Y’all rock. The original link now contains a link to take you to the updated guide.

Whew!

So without further ado…

Using Text-to-Speech Tools for Fanfiction

It also gives you: a count of unique words in a book, count of total words, list of the unique words by most common to least common, tells you how often you click for the meaning of words, tells you how many words you are reading per minute, gives you an estimate of how long it will take you to read. These features are great when trying to track how difficult a book is, to prestudy using the word list by frequency, to see improvements in reading speed (as estimated time to read decreases and wpm read increases) and vocabulary (when you start looking up words less often).

I think the app can also generate an Entire parallel text file, if say you had a novel in chinese and just wanted an entire copy in mtl English (maybe this would be useful for people desperate to just read a translation even if it's machine translation?). But I haven't used that feature, as i would prefer to read in my target language and just show the parallel English translation of sentences when I'm confused.

Here's some screenshots:

The 3rd picture below shows the quality of machine translation in the app. As you can see (and I mentioned in a prior post) Smart Books app has some translation weaknesses (with chinese) when it comes to how to phrase English translations of Chinese sentences with verbs that have no explicit subject/object. This sentence more or less meant "Pupu, what was written [there on the car in the last sentence]?" The machine translation in the app also occasionally messes up he/she/it pronoun for another one, especially when the pronoun is not specified in the sentence. These are fairly common issues in mtl for chinese though, so I'd say the translation quality is overall around the quality of DeepL.

Pleco has the Clipboard Reader function for free, which has all its Reader functions. These now include: excellent word translations, full Google machine translation of the entire page, dictation of words, dictation of whole page aloud.

Readibu has for free: word and phrase translations, dictation of words. If you want full translations of sentences you have to pay a subscription. I do not see a full dictation of page option. It has way less translations than Pleco. It does not let you copy paste any text/use any source text like pleco. Readibu has pre selected texts it includes, then if you do some messing around you can get it to Google search a url you want to read, then view the url in Readibu. But it is not as easy to import in a url page as Pleco (and one time cost pleco feature can import pdfs epubs etc too).

Other nice free options (though I think pleco ultimately is the Best one right now features wise):

Mandarinspot.com. you can copy paste text in and it will give you click translations and pinyin. Alternately you can use their annotation bookmarklet and just click that bookmarklet link while on any Chinese page and suddenly all text will have pinyin over it and click definitions. Definitions are generally good.

Idiom app. Can dictate words, dictate entire page, open any url, also has pre selected texts if you don't want to find a url, click definitions (not always ideal though in the free version), and sentences translations using Google translate. A very easy to use free option with many features. Its paid subscription version just includes better translations (somewhat - Pleco still has the Best translations as its also a huge dictionary app). If you had to pick a paid model, I'd recommend Idiom over Readibu. Because Idiom also has a TON of shows and videos and you can find videos in it, all wirh English Chinese dual subtitles, Chinese subs wirh click definitions, ability to repeat lines over and over. And that's all free (subscription only pays for slightly better translations and sentence translation so it's optional). It's a very fast easy to use video and reading immersion app. It also works for Many languages, not just Chinese. So while Pleco is slightly better for Chinese, this is a very good equivalent if you're learning French Spanish Japanese etc. It's free translations are about as good as LingQ, so I recommend Idiom over LingQ since Idiom is free for all these features while LingQ costs monthly subscription fees. And idioms subscription model is cheaper, and includes improved translations over LingQ. So either way it's an improvement. I wish more people used Idiom tbh it seems very convenient for people immersing.

Addition - Moonreader app: it's a ebook reader app. It does cost a one-time fee for the dictation feature. It can do Google translate on individual words, phrases, sentences (so like Idiom free version but also with sentence translations).