Further to the post I made several weeks ago titled "Core 6001 to 12000" (see here: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=6782), I'd like to get started making both English and Japanese audio recordings of vocab and sentences found in ALC's list of Daily Expressions (see 3/4 of the way down this post by Katsuo for the list which contains 6000 expressions and 12000 sentences: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...0#pid43560)

This is my idea...we get a team of people, both English and Japanese native speakers, to make the recordings. This way the project will be useful for native English and Japanese speakers. Each person is assigned a set number of rows to record (e.g. rows 1 to 500). For each row the native Japanese speaker will record individual mp3 audio files for 'expression' and 'example sentence (J)'. Likewise, the native English speaker will record individual files for 'example sentence (E)' and 'example sentence (E) alternative'. We should forget the 'bonus sentences' for now as it's a bit overkill. However, I think there should be a single word vocab equivalent (or at least a brief explanation) in English for the Japanese 'expression'. These can come from either the expression used English example sentences, the ALC dictionary, Jim Breen, or just a normal dictionary if need be.

The file name structure will be vital for hooking it up with Anki but we could use the number in 'no. overall' plus 'a', 'b', 'c' etc. to distinguish which sentence/expression it is referring to. E.g. 432a.mp3 would be a recording of '一時期', 432b.mp3 would be '一時期は、コーラにはまって、毎日のように飲んでたよ。', 432c.mp3 would be a recording of 'For a while, I was really into cola -- drinking it every day.' etc. Also, because the project is so huge and will take months (years?) there should only be one recording for each item. Of course it would be nice to hear different variations in accents or whatever but the first goal should be to just get all the recordings done and stored somewhere.

So we'll need an army of volunteer recorders, a task delegator, a techie to explain to people how to record mp3s and how to structure the file names, somewhere to store the files (I'm sure Gmail or Google Docs can store zipped files), and maybe a quality checker to make sure people have recorded the right expression to the right file name. Oh, we'll also need people to go through and create the English equivalent for each expression. I can do English recording, task delegation, and the English equivalent, but I'm not sure about how to actually record my voice to mp3. I have a headset but can someone suggest a free program (and perhaps the same program should be used by everyone)? One thing I'm lacking also is Japanese friends since I don't actually know (m)any Japanese people and don't live in Japan.

Ok, suggestions, feedback, volunteers etc all welcome. In the mean time I will get started on the equivalent English expression.

I like the sound of the project in that it would be nice to have more audio sentence cards - at the moment they are pretty much all I'm using and I'm running out of them. But finding Japanese people to record more sentences - that's by far the hardest part of the project. It seems that a more fruitful way to generate large numbers of audio sentences would be to take them from existing resources which have J-audio and E + J text. Like from Jpod101 line-by-line dialog, or from the JW bible stories (missing out the god parts), or from educational resources.

If you do decide to go ahead with it, making the English audio is really simple. I reckon I can record 500 audio sentences in under 3 hours just using Anki. 10 people, 3 hours each, that's 5000 English sentences. Anki is actually good software to use for this, since the add card dialog lets you record sound directly and stores a reference to it in a database along with the text. You don't need to keep a separate reference as long as it's in an Anki db, and you can export the info if you need it. Plus Anki is free.

First you would need to make a spreadsheet with the equivalent sentences, then import to Anki, then you could split the deck with tags and give different tags to different participants to record their language audio. Then send the completed part of the deck to the person recording the other language.

I dunno if you need a headset, my MBP records amazing quality audio using the built in microphone, and iPhone headphones have a surprisingly good microphone too.