Hiragana Times Magazine -- Anki-fied

chamcham Member

Registered: 2005-11-11 Posts: 1444

Hey guys,

For those who don't know, "Hiragana Times" is a monthly Japanese magazine that has all articles translated into English AND Japanese(with furigana over every kanji). The magazine itself costs $60/year for the digital edition with includes MP3 files(great for listening practice) for certain articles in every issue. But they do hae a couple of sample pages on their website every month.

The best part is that since it's a PDF, you can actually copy and paste all of the kanji text. So I'm starting my own project to copy/paste all the kanji text and enter them through Jim Breen's translate words page. It automatically creates a vocab list (with word, pronunciation, and meaning) for any text that you paste inside the box.

So I'm starting my own project to create vocab lists for articles(maybe just the sample pages for now) and enter them into Anki. So I'll know ALL the kanji and words that appear in any article I read. Study the kanji and vocab and then read the article knowing all the kanji/vocabulary. An ideal vocab builder IMHO.

I doubt I can actually type in all the sentences, since you're supposed to buy the magazine to read the content.

Anyway, I'll post the Anki file late tonight.

For those interested, here are links to the sample PDFs and MP3 for this month's issue.
http://www.hiraganatimes.com/hp/magazin … nth-E.html

P.S. From my experience, after a few months they just started sending me the magazine anyway(even though I only ordered the digital copy). Not sure if this was a mistake or not.

Last edited by chamcham (2009 May 20, 9:47 am)

ahibba Member

Registered: 2008-09-04 Posts: 528 Website

Nice idea. I have some recent issues (2008, 2007, and some 2009.) I can upload them for you.

Send me a PM.

ahibba Member

Registered: 2008-09-04 Posts: 528 Website

Why don't you add full sentences with their English translations to the deck? It will be more helpful.

When you study the kanji and vocab, you can open the sentences deck and try to read the sentences and to understand them (you know all the kanji and vocab in these sentences). Then you compare them with the English translations from the article itself. That will improve your grammar and understanding of written Japanese.

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bombpersons Member

From: UK Registered: 2008-10-08 Posts: 907 Website

Wow, sounds good If you could post the anki decks with the audio, that would be great

*edit* 100th post

Last edited by bombpersons (2009 May 20, 11:50 am)

fluxcapacitor Member

Registered: 2007-03-08 Posts: 70

I'm not sure if it would be useful for you, but smart.fm has some Hiragana Times lists.
http://smart.fm/landing/Hiragana
http://smart.fm/series/3335

squiggyflop Member

From: usa Registered: 2009-03-19 Posts: 27

huh i didnt know it came in a digital edition.. ive got 2 of the paper editions.. its pretty cool that there are audio files for them.. thanks for the info

ahibba Member

Registered: 2008-09-04 Posts: 528 Website

The audio isn't for the whole magazine. Just for some articles.

chamcham Member

Registered: 2005-11-11 Posts: 1444

Hey guys,

Thanks for all the comments.

Here is a proof of concept:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=RO3ILCGY

Contains the PDF sample for page 6 for June 2009 and an Anki (NOTE: sample page file is freely downloadable from the Hiragana Times website).

For now, I didn't type in the sentences, since it's such a pain to find a sentence using each vocab word.

I didn't check for errors and the formatting may be inconsistent.
Also, I didn't enter an Anki card for EVERY word/phrase in the article.
I left out vocabulary/grammar that I felt people should know by now(for ex. the article is about singing. So it'd except that you at least know what "歌う” means).

Anyway, the idea is to make these files and review them thoroughly before reading the article. Feel free to offer comments and suggestions.

Thanks.

P.S. Does anyone know if it's possible to automatically export EDICT word/pronunciation/meaning information into an Excel spreadsheet? Would really makes things so much easier.

Last edited by chamcham (2009 May 22, 10:33 pm)

Jarvik7 Member

From: 名古屋 Registered: 2007-03-05 Posts: 3946

Ugh, I had never gotten around to reading Hiragana Times before, but their layout makes it really hard to read. Why don't they put furigana over kanji instead of writing the whole thing out again in hiragana. Hell, there is even occasional English word translation over the hiragana, despite there being an English version uptop. It's annoying to have to remember to only read every 3rd line. They really need to take a look at "Breaking into Japanese Literature" to learn how to properly arrange bilingual text.

Guess I won't subscribe

chamcham Member

Registered: 2005-11-11 Posts: 1444

Jarvik7 wrote:
Ugh, I had never gotten around to reading Hiragana Times before, but their layout makes it really hard to read. Why don't they put furigana over kanji instead of writing the whole thing out again in hiragana. Hell, there is even occasional English word translation over the hiragana, despite there being an English version uptop. It's annoying to have to remember to only read every 3rd line. They really need to take a look at "Breaking into Japanese Literature" to learn how to properly arrange bilingual text.

Guess I won't subscribe

They DO put furigana over EVERY kanji.
So maybe you're having some kind of font issues on your machine.

Jarvik7 Member

From: 名古屋 Registered: 2007-03-05 Posts: 3946

chamcham wrote:
They DO put furigana over EVERY kanji.
So maybe you're having some kind of font issues on your machine.

On the one I looked at it they didn't do furigana, they just wrote the entire thing out in hiragana overtop of the sentence in normal Japanese (so hiragana even had furigana!) and then english translations for certain words on top of THAT. The end result is that you only read every third line of text. I don't know if the entire magazine is like that, but the sample I looked at was.

chamcham Member

Registered: 2005-11-11 Posts: 1444

The "multi-level hiragana text" you are referring to is only for articles that have downloadable audio transcripts. It's mainly for the "Insight into Japan" series of articles in every issue.

The rest of the articles look like this:
http://www.hiraganatimes.com/hp/magazine/sample/020.pdf
http://www.hiraganatimes.com/hp/magazine/sample/006.pdf

Personally, I don't like the multi-level hiragana text either.
Hope this clears things up.

P.S. Note that zooming in does not degrade the quality of the kanji font. It scales perfectly. Try it out.

Last edited by chamcham (2009 May 28, 3:09 am)

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Jarvik7 wrote:

chamcham wrote: