Brief April update (2)

[nnozomi]

Just a couple of quick things.

・solo and a couple of other people asked if there were tasks people not confident in their Chinese which certainly includes me too could take on. One thing I thought of was coming up with some beginner-level practice sentences (in English) spoken by or about the Guardian characters etc.--"I have a black cat. He likes fish," "My favorite color is purple," "I am thirty-two years old" (and/or "I am ten thousand years old"), "My girlfriend likes flowers," "She lives with her grandmother," "They are students at Dragon City University," etc etc. Using these and their Chinese equivalents would allow some Guardian-related practice while not delving too deeply into the native-speaker level content of the actual script. I don't know; what do you think?

・tinny, thank you SO MUCH for the patient Anki support. I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get to grips with this, but I think I've got it! I was able to download Anki okay on Windows, but got stuck at the new-card stage, finding it unintuitive. However, thanks to your hints I have finally figured out how to copy your template and make new cards with hanzi, pinyin, and English! I think the next step is to work out how to import a file and make a bunch of cards at a go (that is possible, right?). During my Ankiphobia I've been working on creating an episode-based word list, so I will try to figure it out by the time I have that finalized.

・Edited once again for practical reasons; thank you, people working on transcriptions.

I've slightly updated the GoogleDocs as well; let me know if anything comes up, and be safe.

Comments

[tinny]

Yes, it is possible to define cards in a csv file, afaik, and then import. I have never done it, though.

I just googled it, and the first example is Chinese. :D

https://superuser.com/questions/698902/can-i-create-an-anki-deck-from-a-csv-file

This youtube vid isn't all bad, either:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwGNP3GXmxg

[nnozomi]

I'm sorry this reply is so delayed, but thank you (as ever) for the useful information! If I can a) finish my tentative Excel file (sometime next week-ish for all 40 episodes, I'm thinking) and b) turn it into a csv file (never done it but I know people who have, lol), this should do it. Will keep you posted. As always, patience and useful info much appreciated.

[qisforqubit]

Hi! Thanks very much for starting this community. I've been lurking in Guardian fandom for a while and I'd really like to get involved with this :) I'm only learning Chinese but I've been using Anki for a couple of years now, so I'd be very happy to help out with Anki-related stuff.

I've had a look at the google doc for tasks and I could also help with typing up non-ZYL/BY parts of the subs (my knowledge of Chinese is still limited so this would be slow, but it's something I have done before to try and understand videos which didn't have English subs at all).

[nnozomi]

Hey, thank you so much for jumping in! Excellent. I will keep you posted on Anki tasks as they come up; very reassuring to have someone else familiar with it.
If you wanted to work on typing up some of the parts not included in any of the transcripts so far, that would be wonderful! I would say, anywhere from episode 7 on that you think would be interesting/helpful/easy to memorize/your own favorite parts, etc. Let me know how it goes and feel free to update the google doc at will.

[qisforqubit]

Awesome :)

I've now signed up for transcribing on the google doc. Happy for any extra help, of course. Maybe we can add an episode list to the google doc where people can list which episode they're working on so we don't accidentally duplicate work?

Anyway, since I was officially off work yesterday, I may have got slightly carried away and already transcribed the entirety of episode 7. It's currently in subtitle form, both because I used a subtitle editor and because this should make it easier to double-check for mistakes against the hard subs. I must admit I have no idea where to put the file though -- any suggestions?

[nnozomi]

That is amazing! Thank you so much. I've sent you a message with an email to which, if you send the file, I'll put it up in a Dropbox folder where everyone can get at it if wanted (along with the other script-related pdfs, etc.). (Is there a way to have a Dropbox everyone can add things to? If you send me an email address in return I should be able to add you...)
I've also slightly edited the Google doc to reflect your suggestion. Thanks again.

[qisforqubit]

Great, I've emailed you! I may have also done episode 8 because I still have a fair amount of spare time and am really enjoying the transcribing. I'm a strange person... I'll try and keep the google doc updated with my progress, though I'm sure I won't keep up this speed for long :P

[fangirlishness]

If transcribing is something you enjoy, would you consider doing it on Viki?

I've been working on captioning Dreamlike Life for ages, but I'm very slow. I am considering also doing it for Guardian, because I think the demand is much higher than for Dreamlike. I could ask the channel manager and we could do it together? (But I am very very slow.)

Viki offers perks (i.e. a free VIP account) for all volunteers, so you get something out of it, too.

[qisforqubit]

Thanks, that's an interesting idea, let me think about it? I'm very happy to do the subtitling as a fannish thing, but some company earning money off my free labour feels weird. On the other hand, I've also benefited from the (English) subtitles created by volunteers on Viki...

As a second potential issue, I have basically just been transcribing the hard subs from the youtube videos, would that be allowed for Viki? My Chinese is definitely nowhere near good enough to do this without the hard subs.

[fangirlishness]

I sent you a message!

My Chinese is definitely nowhere near good enough to do this without the hard subs.

Neither is mine, but captioning luckily doesn't require more language knowledge. As long as you can differentiate the characters well enough to correctly transcribe them, that's good enough.