I enjoyed listening to Tokyo FM's The Last Wave radio drama (http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ap_bank_rad..._LAST_WAVE) when it was originally podcast between 2008 and 2009. I always meant to go through each episode more thoroughly and do the whole dictionary look-up, SRS input game. But I could never be bothered. Until now. Time for a new project: transcribe all 48 episodes.

The episodes clock in at only a few minutes each. I think the shortest one is #28「お金で買えない夢がある」at only 50 seconds or so, once you take away the somewhat tedious intro (believe me, by the time you've listened to every episode, you'll be ready to destroy each and every Tetra Pak you ever lay eyes on). The longest comes in at under six minutes: #21 「セイシュルゾウガメ」. In other words, it should be enjoyable and easily achievable to transcribe such short pieces. It also helps that each story is self-contained and, apart from being set on the last day of the world, unrelated.

I think making transcripts would make them into an excellent learning resource; even though they are native material, some of them are short and easy enough for relative beginners. At the same time, there are more challenging episodes that should offer something for people at the upper end of the learning curve.

I meant to start with the first episode, but for some reason, most likely related to my advancing age, I ended up transcribing Episode 3「2LDK」- a couple lying in bed chatting. Anyway, it turned out to be a very simple 'story', but I picked up one new word: しっくりこない.

You can find the mp3 here - http://podcasts.tfm.co.jp/podcasts/tokyo..._vol03.mp3

And the transcript here - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1831W...y=CNWI6JQK

Feel free to make any amendments if you find any mistakes or omissions. This is the first time I've tried something like this and soon realised I don't know how to write out all those mumbles and sighs and stuff.

Any help will be most gratefully received if anyone fancies giving me a hand. Just pick an episode from here...
http://www.tfm.co.jp/podcasts/apradio/?ym=200805

...and drop your efforts into the relevant file in this folder...
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B3oEJnv...Nzcx&hl=ja

There's no need to complete an episode if you don't feel like it. A few lines, words, or whatever you can manage would be great. It might be a good idea to make your own back-up if you do anything substantial in case anything goes pear-shaped with Google Docs.

And if no-one wants to have a go... well, that's OK. I'll plod along at my own pace and post updates here in the hope that this proves to be of benefit to someone else.

Wow, It's interesting!
I liked listening and reading it.
But perhaps there might be some other radio dramas which already have a transcript available.
This way you wouldn't have to make the transcript by yourself.

Interesting. I'm interested in helping. I'll see what I can do. Although we should get some people to double check to make sure it's correct. Other then that, these would make really good learning resources.

I approve of this project.

I couldn't resist doing one, so I finished ep 21. Man, that voice was incredibly soothing. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to put it up, though, since I can't edit the docs.

jettyke, I'm glad you liked it.
In my experience, it's next to impossible to find transcripts for radio dramas. I've tried and tried searching many a time. It doesn't matter though, I'm actually enjoying this process of exercising my listening skills and putting together something that might prove useful.

Thanks for your interest, ta12121.
I'd really appreciate any help you could give. You're right about getting it corrected. I got a Japanese person to check a couple of the points in the first one I put up, and I'll do the same for any future tricky or contentious points.

astendra, that's excellent!
You've taken care of the longest episode; it's all downhill from here! It's really relaxing to listen to the voice of the giant turtle, though the contents are another matter. I have to say that I love the final sentence.
I've reset the documents page so that it can be edited by anyone. Just click on episode 21, select open, and then paste away. Thanks for your help.

I've now started working on #40 「鬼」- a red and blue demon discuss 節分, which is coming up on February 3rd.

There we go. The turtle did so many pauses I wasn't quite sure how to handle it; I also left out actor names since it's a monologue. Overall, though, it was quite enjoyable, and I dare say I improved my listening with respect to numbers

Might take a stab at another one later.

http://www.mediafire.com/?z93cb0coehgxlg5
I just timed the episode 3 script. So you can "watch" it in Aegisub or convert it to something else that is more useful to you.

- Really great work, astendra. I've just listened and read along to it a few times and found it even more moving being able to follow your excellent transcript.
I just noticed two points. Tell me what you think:

I think this part 「甲羅を下にされると、私たちは逃げる事が出来ない。」
Is perhaps ・・・下に抑えると・・・

Also in 「1766年頃、まだ子供が目立った私は」　
It sounds to me like ・・・まだ子供ガメだった私は・・・

I'd never noticed this phrase before 「日向ぼっこをする」"Basking in the sun" - love it.

*

- Good idea, Daichi. I've been wondering whether to add timings or not. It's useful to be able to listen and have the transcript come up as subs. Thanks for taking the time to do it.

I have a question. I noticed you wrote the woman's name as Ryoko. Hmm, now I'm wondering if I made a mistake when I wrote リヨコ. What do you think?

*

- I've finished up #40 「鬼」. That was pretty tough. They are fast talkers and so I had to use VLC to slow some of it down. I think it's worth listening to their 鬼漫才 routine. Even if it isn't exactly laugh out loud funny.

Also, I have a question for everyone. If you listen at about 1:20 you'll hear the following somewhat amusing line:

いやぁ、子供の笑顔が一番ですが、でも出来ればじょうさまに豆をぶつけられたい。この豆をお前のすべての穴に詰めてとか。

Now, do you think じょうさま is 上様 or 嬢様 or perhaps even 女様?

I've now started work on #13 「2LDK 2] the follow up to 「2LDK」

GreenAirth Wrote:I think this part 「甲羅を下にされると、私たちは逃げる事が出来ない。」
Is perhaps ・・・下に抑えると・・・

I'm not sure I agree with this.

Quote:Also in 「1766年頃、まだ子供が目立った私は」　
It sounds to me like ・・・まだ子供ガメだった私は・・・

Yes, I think this is correct - missed the rendaku.

Quote:いやぁ、子供の笑顔が一番ですが、でも出来ればじょうさまに豆をぶつけられたい。この豆をお前のすべての穴に詰めてとか。

It might be 女王様. AFAIK, お嬢様 doesn't appear without the honorary prefix.
In the line preceding this, I hear something like「不気味がる」, not just 「不気味」.

Hmm, this thread might become a bit crowded if we are to discuss details in here.

Did a couple; they are here.
Feel free to edit/repost them.
森を捨てないで！

astendra Wrote:Hmm, this thread might become a bit crowded if we are to discuss details in here.

Thanks for your feedback. You might be right about things getting a little out of hand here. Perhaps I should set up a 'notes' document or some such, but let's see how it goes for a while.

iSoron Wrote:Did a couple; they are here.
Feel free to edit/repost them.
森を捨てないで！

Those are excellent. Thank you, iSoron, really appreciate you taking the time to help out. I've copied them over into the Google Docs page. Looking forward to going through them in more detail when I've got a bit more time tomorrow.

Posted draft of no 18. Most of it is there, but rather than iron out the remaining details, I'm heading off to bed.

Bumping it because I'd like to see more transcripts.

I'll try to start working on the short ones. Then work my way to the longer ones.

Thanks for your work, astendra. As always, really appreciated.

It's good to hear you're interested in this project, TheVinster. I'm afraid I've been so busy with work this week that I haven't been able to do anything with this. I'll get back on it over the weekend.

ta12121, anything you can do will be a great help. Remember that even a few lines at a time would go a long way.

Hey guys! I like this. I upped episode 35. Check it over as I am sure there are some errors (did it while on the train on my iPhone).

skinnyneo Wrote:Hey guys! I like this. I upped episode 35. Check it over as I am sure there are some errors (did it while on the train on my iPhone).

Nice job, skinnyneo. Consider yourself heartily patted on the back for working away on your iPhone.

I've just completed episode 12 「星の終わり」It has a couple of nice astronomical points.

We've done ten episodes so far. A couple more and we'll be one quarter of the way through.

What do you think is the best way to study with this?

TheVinster Wrote:What do you think is the best way to study with this?

That's a good question. I think it's up to the individual to find the best method that works for them as I don't believe there are any hard and fast rules. For what it's worth, this is how I make use of audio that has a transcript.

- Listen to the audio a couple of times and make sure I can follow the overall meaning if not every word. I'll probably try to look up things I don't know before checking the transcript to help things stick better later down the line.

- Read the transcript looking into anything that's new and attempt to get 100% comprehension. I'll most likely read some or all of it aloud at some point.

- Listen again. I should be getting near to total understanding.

- Listen and read aloud. I'm trying to build speed and rhythm with particular focus on how men speak, being the bloke that I am.

- Shadow the listening without the transcript.

- Make use of some of the points I've learned in conversation as soon as possible.

Sometimes I do all of these steps. Sometimes I only do a couple. Sometimes I do them in a different order. A lot depends on how engaging I find the content. Whichever way I do it, I've found learning with audio plus a transcript is the best way for me.

Another thing you can do with this is make audio sentence cards for Anki. You could take whole episodes, or mine the transcripts for new words and extract the audio for just that part. If, like me, you want to focus on male speech patterns, you might strip out all the male parts and work on shadowing.

If you're really ambitious (in terms of editing), you could strip out one person from the episode and fill in the missing parts. I might try that actually. It's a good way to force you to speak more quickly as you've got to get your part out before the other person starts speaking again.

I hope that gives you a few ideas. Best regards.

I'd have liked to contribute a bit more, but I've been having a slight case of burnout as of late. For some reason, the notion of having random school assignments to do instead of conducting my own studies is doing wonders to crush my motivation.

まぁ、仕方ないな。Bumping this; uploaded #42. Have a good one!

astendra Wrote:I'd have liked to contribute a bit more, but I've been having a slight case of burnout as of late. For some reason, the notion of having random school assignments to do instead of conducting my own studies is doing wonders to crush my motivation.

まぁ、仕方ないな。Bumping this; uploaded #42. Have a good one!

Hey, no problem. Thanks for doing #42. I'm still working away on this but, like you, I've been pulled away by other demands. I'll try and get another run at it sometime this week.

Good luck with those assignments. If I remember rightly, I managed to avoid most of mine back in the day. Not that I'd ever recommend doing the same... of course.

Thank you for putting this all together and giving us the opportunity to practice transcribing, GreenAirth! While the subject gives me the willies, I'm really starting to like this podcast. I followed along with your transcript and thought you executed it very nicely. Everyone seems to be doing an excellent job!

I just did episode 26, "No Smoking" and added it to the list. I have to say, this podcast has some very convincing actors. It was a bit difficult to transcribe quickly without listening over and over since he started talking very quickly while becoming possessed by his desire to smoke... anyway, it was an interesting challenge for me.

I'm very impressed with the amount of people who are participating. Let's keep it up!

TheVinster Wrote:What do you think is the best way to study with this?

read,srs,listen to it countless times.Decode via a srs,etc. It should naturally make sense after a while of doing.

Nuriko Wrote:Thank you for putting this all together and giving us the opportunity to practice transcribing, GreenAirth! While the subject gives me the willies, I'm really starting to like this podcast. I followed along with your transcript and thought you executed it very nicely. Everyone seems to be doing an excellent job!

I just did episode 26, "No Smoking" and added it to the list. I have to say, this podcast has some very convincing actors. It was a bit difficult to transcribe quickly without listening over and over since he started talking very quickly while becoming possessed by his desire to smoke... anyway, it was an interesting challenge for me.

I'm very impressed with the amount of people who are participating. Let's keep it up!

Thanks for your support and enthusiasm, Nuriko! You've done a great job on "No Smoking". I'm also finding some of the parts a little difficult to transcribe and sometimes have to use VLC to slow the audio down. It's the first time I've tried something like this and I've found it's a great way to develop my ear for Japanese.

Thanks to everyone's efforts, we've managed to reach 20 transcribed episodes. Another four and we'll be at the half-way stage. I'm thinking about putting together a complete vocab list when we get to the end, hopefully in frequency order. I might also make an Anki audio deck using Subs2SRS. With any luck we'll be there by the end of March.

Here's Episode 7. It's about comets and stuff.
(there's one line I'm not sure about; it's marked with a question mark ？)