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Accessing interesting AND challenging reading material easier! - Printable Version

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Accessing interesting AND challenging reading material easier! - s0apgun - 2013-03-06

皆さん、こんにちは！

Today I present a simple alternative to sub2srs for the purpose of just reading practice.

The problem: Finding interesting and challenging reading material outside of n+1/graded readers that is available in digital text that can be parsed fast with the use of Rikai-chan.

My solution: Use the .SRT (subtitle) files from your favorite anime or drama you're currently watching. I am currently watching Uchuu Kyoudai so I will use that for the example.

When you open a .SRT in your text editor it will appear something like this...

1
00:01:18,275 --> 00:01:21,344
（南波六太）＜宇宙飛行士候補生→

2
00:01:21,344 --> 00:01:25,515
通称アスキャンとなった私達は
他の国の候補生達との→

3
00:01:25,515 --> 00:01:30,504
合同基礎訓練が行われるアメリカ・ヒューストンへとやってきた＞

4
00:01:30,504 --> 00:01:36,593
＜ケンジ　せりかさん　北村さん
新田　ＪＡＸＡのオカンこと→

Lots of good stuff in there right? Lot's of junk too huh...

Okay so all you have to do is use the replace function! You can remove all the numbers, symbols, and line breaks to leave you with just a beautiful wall of Japanese.

In the "Find what:" field enter a number or symbol (copy paste) and leave the "Replace with:" field empty. To remove paragraphs enter ^p in the find what field. After that you should be left with something like this from my example.

（南波六太）宇宙飛行士候補生 通称アスキャンとなった私達は他の国の候補生達との合同基礎訓練が行われるアメリカ・ヒューストンへとやってきた＞ケンジ　せりかさん　北村さん新田　ＪＡＸＡのオカンこと...

This turns a 30~ page .SRT file into a 3 page word document or about the length of 3 NHK News articles that you can read in a sitting. From here you can just copy paste the wall of Japanese and e-mail it to yourself for use with your rikai plugin in your browser for fast dictionary look-ups. I know my method is crude but I hope it might help someone on here! Thanks for reading, let me know what you think?

Note: I used Microsoft word for the ^p thing... not sure if that works with other text editors.

NOTE: Sub2srs rules... this is just a mediocre option for relevant reading practice outside of SRS.

Edit: Site I used to grab the Japanese .SRT files. http://kitsunekko.net/subtitles/japanese/ There is also software to extract embedded .SRT files from your media.

Accessing interesting AND challenging reading material easier! - Stansfield123 - 2013-03-06

How did you measure "interesting", to come to the conclusion that subtitles are it?

Accessing interesting AND challenging reading material easier! - Aspiring - 2013-03-06

This is a great alternative when you're too lazy to re-time subs.

Thanks!

Accessing interesting AND challenging reading material easier! - Isbilenper - 2013-03-06

s0apgun Wrote:From here you can just copy paste the wall of Japanese and e-mail it to yourself for use with your rikai plugin in your browser for fast dictionary look-ups.
Why have I never thought of this myself.

Thanks for the thread by the way, I'll probably give this a shot in the weekend.

Accessing interesting AND challenging reading material easier! - s0apgun - 2013-03-06

Stansfield123 Wrote:How did you measure "interesting", to come to the conclusion that subtitles are it?
By "interesting" I mean relevant to your interest in that anime or drama. This is just a nice and free way to get some fast reading practice in where you already know the jist of the plot. How much interesting and consistent reading practice can you get from just Japanese websites? (The key here is being efficient with Rikai-chan) This technique is also really nice to learn the lyrics to the intro songs, again outside of SRS.

By the way, I came to this solution after watching the video from this thread. http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=10581

Their conclusion is that reading A LOT of compelling material that challenges you is the best way to achieve fast language acquisition. The problem is that in textbooks the material is often too easy and uninteresting where as the interesting material is written for natives and is far too challenging. My solution is a nice in-between by being able to skim fast over words or grammar you don't know with Rikai and thus bringing the "far to challenging" down to an easy level!

Accessing interesting AND challenging reading material easier! - shinsen - 2013-04-29

s0apgun Wrote:Note: I used Microsoft word for the ^p thing... not sure if that works with other text editors.
It's easy to do this in the Unix terminal, e.g. on OS X. To simply remove timecodes (this is a long command that should be on one line):

Code:
cat episode01.srt
|cat "$@"|tr -d '\r'
|grep -v '^[0-9]*$'
|grep -v '^[0-9][0-9]:[0-9][0-9]:[0-9][0-9],[0-9][0-9][0-9] --> [0-9]'
> episode01.txt
To remove timecodes and linebreaks:

Code:
cat episode01.srt
|cat "$@"|tr -d '\r'
|grep -v '^[0-9]*$'
|grep -v '^[0-9][0-9]:[0-9][0-9]:[0-9][0-9],[0-9][0-9][0-9] --> [0-9]'
|tr -d '\n'
> episode01.txt
Instead of emailing the text just start a simple webserver in the same directory:

Code:
python -m SimpleHTTPServer
And access the text in the browser at localhost:8000/episode01.txt

Accessing interesting AND challenging reading material easier! - gaiaslastlaugh - 2013-04-29

I do something like this for subtitle files. If a subtitle is in SRT, I first convert it to .ASS (heheheheh) format using Subtitle Edit, which gives me subs in a nice tabular format:

Dialogue: Marked=0,0:00:25.98,0:00:29.97,Default,NTP,0000,0000,0000,!Effect,（山里）　随分とまた\Nメルヘンチックな夢ですね。
Dialogue: Marked=0,0:00:29.97,0:00:34.48,Default,NTP,0000,0000,0000,!Effect,（志岐　貴）　意識の抑圧が緩和され\N精神年齢が下がってるんだ。

I then import this as a CSV file into Excel or Google Docs, and then select just the column containing Japanese text. I paste this text into a file to get myself a nice, readable transcript with all of the timing info stripped out. With just a little additional formatting using Find/Replace in Notepad++, I can get something like this: http://www.gaiaslastlaugh.com/n/akumu1.html

I can then listen to the ripped track on my iPhone, and check out the transcript if I can't for the life of me understand a given sentence. Plus, when at home, I can use Rikai-chan on my HTML file. I enjoy that a lot more than using subs2srs.

-J-

Accessing interesting AND challenging reading material easier! - shinsen - 2013-04-29

gaiaslastlaugh Wrote:I first convert it to .ASS (heheheheh) format using Subtitle Edit... I then import this as a CSV file into Excel or Google Docs, and then select just the column containing Japanese text.
You could use Aegisub and export directly to .txt, it will strip the timings and save you a step.

Accessing interesting AND challenging reading material easier! - gaiaslastlaugh - 2013-04-29

shinsen Wrote:
gaiaslastlaugh Wrote:I first convert it to .ASS (heheheheh) format using Subtitle Edit... I then import this as a CSV file into Excel or Google Docs, and then select just the column containing Japanese text.
You could use Aegisub and export directly to .txt, it will strip the timings and save you a step.
Thanks for the tip. You're right - exporting as TXT from AegiSub is a lot faster.

Accessing interesting AND challenging reading material easier! - Daichi - 2013-04-29

I think NukeMarine mentioned this exact thing in one of his YT videos. Expect of course using Aeigisub to export with.

Accessing interesting AND challenging reading material easier! - howtwosavealif3 - 2013-04-29

shinsen Wrote:
gaiaslastlaugh Wrote:I first convert it to .ASS (heheheheh) format using Subtitle Edit... I then import this as a CSV file into Excel or Google Docs, and then select just the column containing Japanese text.
You could use Aegisub and export directly to .txt, it will strip the timings and save you a step.
Great tips everyone.

Accessing interesting AND challenging reading material easier! - astendra - 2013-04-30

Why start a web server when you can just do: file:///path/episode01.txt

Accessing interesting AND challenging reading material easier! - gaiaslastlaugh - 2013-04-30

astendra Wrote:Why start a web server when you can just do: file:///path/episode01.txt
I put mine on the Web so that I can pull them up on the go using Safari or Wakaru.

Accessing interesting AND challenging reading material easier! - shinsen - 2013-04-30

astendra Wrote:Why start a web server when you can just do: file:///path/episode01.txt
This will work, although in Chrome you'll first need to go into settings and the allow the Rikaikun plugin to access local files. Also, Dropbox may be a good option for easy access to these files on the go.