Soooo, currently having exhausted most translated web novels and being super frustrated with slow updates (no, I'm not blaming any of the translators. They are all godly and kind souls to bless us with translations with their spare times. It's just the innate frustration of having to wait for any good updates), I have decided to tackle Chinese raws. However, my situation is... peculiar? Or maybe normal for oversea-born Chinese people. I'm fluent in mandarin, speaking and understanding. My issue is reading??? This is embarrassing since I'm one of those few who were not carted off to Saturday or afterschool Chinese classes. Instead, I opted for French (yes, I was kinda dumb, but yay for a 3rd language... or 2.5?). Anyway, since I can't read much... how would one be able to start reading? My main motivation are Chinese web novels. Any advice? Or am I a truly lost cause? Thanks :3
I think since you already have a basis in Mandarin, maybe first read some Chinese manhua raws and brush up on common vocabulary. If you have a certain genre you like, some of the words will tend to be similar so you can find raws of already translated novels and then read the raws and compare your interpretation with the translator's interpretation. Also, if you read on the computer, my friend recommended a character recognition software that works on Mozilla and Chrome...erggghhh, can't think of the name right now.
Copy and paste the whole chapter in Google Translate, then they should give you the pinyins (I guess you might be able to understand that)
Insert the Chinese text from the raws into Google translate or something and have it read to you. Also, insert them into online dictionaries. Comprehend along the way.
LOOOL ingenious method, yes I do understand pinyin. But I guess I'm a little stubborn and would like to eventually recognize the characters as well. XD thank you though!
:") I'll definitely take this into consideration. It's a good step-by-step approach, and I think the extension you're thinking of is either perapera? I have it installed and ready too!
<3 thank you, m'dear! Time to tackle the incomplete webnovel translations... *coughs* yaoi included *coughs*
Oooh I used to do that in the beginning but then I got frustrated with how slow it was. If the series you want to read is popular enough, try Ximalaya to see if someone made a proper audio book out of it. Audiobooks are better cause you can adjust the speed and it's not as stilted as Google Translate. If you're fine with basic Chinese and it's only less frequently seen words that stumps you, try the Zhongwen Chinese-English Dictionary browser extension. It displays the meaning and hanyu pinyin of words and phrases when you hover over them. Only downside is that you have to read on a laptop or computer.
Welp your situation is normal i think since I’m also in that situation lol. As of now, I try to read the novel raw and search up the pinyin of the characters I don’t know. Though it takes a long time to finish each chapter, I can still feel myself steadily making some progress. But I have to say, trying to understand the idioms (aka 成语 chéngyǔ）is just torture
This hit me too close to home. LOL I feel ya... my mum actually makes fun of me now that I want to be a little more serious with Chinese. XD I need to get to where you are!! I want to make progress with my reading skills... I'm just using light novels to motivate my laziness :3 Let's keep going then! 加油!
:"D I completely forgot Ximalaya existed... omg, thank you for reminding me!! Google translate sounds... off to me lol But I'll consider this adjunct to learning to read properly.. let my adventures begin! thank you ~
Use text to speech apps. Ai-chan knows a Chinese translator who speaks Cantonese but can't read Simplified use text to speech before and he translates by listening to what the program read aloud.