I’m looking for novels in Japanese I could import in Lingq (pdf, html, ?). But I don’t necessarily want stuff written in Japanese by japanese authors. In fact, I’d rather read novels I already know in english or french, so I’ll be more familiar with the context and everything, so I could fill in what I don’t understand strictly by reading. For instance, I’m reading now 2001 a space Odyssey, in english. I’d be glad to find it in japanese.
Lately I’ve been reading only wikis in Japanese. It’s great. But it lacks the conversation-colloquial lexical material everyone should also be learning.
Two more questions: I’m wondering if its possible to import kindle books into lingq. I’d have first to convert the kindle file to readable text file. I ask because I’m not familiar with kindle.
Also, do you know web sites that offer free downloads for pdf formats? Copyright is not necessarily a problem: I don’t mind reading old classics for the past centuries. I just need content I’m already familiar with.
Turns out, I tried to buy kindles on amazon, but I get “Currently not available” for every book I look, including ‘2001 space’. I’d be willing to buy, I’d find some ways to import the content into lingq. Is it normal to get this message all the time? Do you know other places I can buy ebooks in Japanese?
Regarding the above links, thank you. I tried many of them. But if I’m not wrong, only a short segment is offered for reading. For instance:
In the past, I found thousands of free epub on bittorrent or other sources. The problem is I have much more difficulties doing research for japanese material. For instance, I want to find books translated in japanese. As soon as I type the japanese keyword, google finds books about learning japanese. I tried the keyword “bittorrent/download/epub/ebook/free”, and also tried them translated in katakana. Very hard to find anything. I must say the foreign language itself make it difficult to find my way throught the sites themself once I get there, even with google auto-translation. I found some sites (like aozora.gr.jp), but It nearly empty compared to what I would want. Lets say i wanted to read Monte Cristo (a book free of copyright, for the sake of the argument), I can be sure to find it for free in english and in french very fast on google. In japanse though, I feel I need a little help
I just checked on piratebay; specified Japanese as a language, and found many interesting results. But when I checked the descriptions, all books were in english. Basically, the language choice is just for the user interface. Bottomline, I need to find good japanese sites that offer other stuff than mangas (which I’d be glad to read, however the problem is it is not convenient for lingq).
for the record, I’d be even more happy with mangas, if I’d be possible to import them in lingq. Because mangas are about dialogs; and the storyboard/mages make the stories more memorable and I believe its better for langage acquisition. I believe we retain words better when we can associate them with anecdotes, storylines, images, emotions, etc. I actually read some mangas in the past. But it poses problems. 1) impossible to import in lingq. 2) therefore, I need furigana 3) therefore waaaaaay less choices 4) again because I cannot import in lingq, I waste so much time looking for kanji.
I found Fusigino kunino Arisu Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,
Kagamino kumino Arisu Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There. Need it? They are in TXT and PDF. What is your favourite manga? May be I can help you with that.
And I found too : Approx. 5200 Japanese Books ( This collection is comprised of: approximately around 60% are fiction novels, 30% light novels, ~8% reference books and the rest are categories not mentioned (like story dialogues from games like Higurashi, Tsuyokiss, etc).All this books are in TXT.
wow I’d be more than interested with the collection you mentionned. Are they free to download and in integrality (Because I found lots of books online that were just 1 page long. For instance: 図書カード:奇巌城)? Or maybe I just can’t find the correct links. On this site, I find an html version and a zip version, and most of the time I believe it’s only a couple of pages long. I had found Alice (on aozora.gr.jp). Though I’m not sure it was the complete work. Do they include western novels translated in japanese?
About mangas, I’d love to read mangas from Naoki Urasawa, like 20th century boy for instance. However, like I said, the problem is that most manga dont have furigana. So we’re left with tons of kanji with no clue for their pronunciation, and that’s slowing me down quite a lot.
Yes, they are include western novels translated in Japanese. For example, there are Herbert Wells and Virginia Wolf,A.Lloyd etc. The link (but it is a russian torrent and you will need a registration to download from it) : http://rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3463221
Or I can send it to you by email or Skype. It weights about 600 Mb (11 Rar archieves). Choose your destiny :).