I’t’s not my top priority right now, but Georgian is definitely on my ‘will want to study at some point’ list, and I strongly suspect that it’s also on the list of languages for which there’s not a whole lot available in both audio and matching text for learners, especially at the sort of casual conversational level that you want when you have worked your way through a beginner’s textbook and the full 60 mini stories but are still at the intermediate level and are not yet ready for full high-level literary language audiobooks.
A thing which I have started doing for Breton (which I seem to have by default ended up being the coordinating person for getting the mini-stories translated so that it can be added to LingQ) is trying to coordinate getting native or native-level speakers to have short, unscripted conversations with each other over the internet, then transcribe and translate them. Much in the spirit of the ‘Podcasts met Fasulye’ series that you’ll find on this site if you’re studying Dutch.
I would be happy to try to coordinating the same sort of thing for Georgian, but it is only fair to offer to pay people for their efforts, especially with the transcription since that’s an annoying hassle, and I don’t know if the LingQ staff will be keen to go out of their way to hire people for the task for such a niche language, so I though it was worth asking here: would there be a few people who might be willing to chip in so that we can offer a few native Georgian speakers a reasonable payment in exchange for creating such a set of mini-podcasts? Let me know if you’d be interested.
Hey, I just asked this very same question regarding Norwegian, where there are inexplicably no mini-stories – can we do some kind of community/LingQ match funding to get the mini-stories done at the very least.
I would be interested in contributing funding for beta languages in general, but clearly my primary ask was regarding Norwegian.
I’d like to see something more tangible on a roadmap for missing mini-stories, because Steve talks about utilizing them in practically every video he makes, and again I’d be happy to contribute financially (within reason).
I’d be happy to contribute for Georgian. Sounds like a great idea, especially since the Mini Stories have apparently been done as well. I think this would make the LingQ the only major language learning platform to offer this language?
Great, thanks for letting me know. I’m in contact with one native speaker from Discord, and another from Reddit, and once we’ve figured out what would be a sensible hourly rate to pay people for doing recordings and for transcribing and translating afterwards, I’ll be back in touch. Though if you happen to know any native speakers yourself who might also be interested, please let me know.
I’d be willing to contribute too, maybe we could try and start some kind of initiative? I’m learning catalan for example and there’s 40/60 ministories so not bad but would be nice to have them all. Currently no other content on lingq at all so it’d be nice to see some podcasts and other custom material. Would be willing to contribute for other languages I’d be interested in in future too or indeed just ones I’d want to see represented (for example the other celtic languages other than breton) even if I don’t get around to learning them myself
Have you gotten in touch with any professional translators, voice recorders and the like? Could be worth doing a cost comparison to see how much a professional handling of the whole process might cost. I believe the LingQ staff have experience with getting some of them done this way.
I haven’t, actually. I guess that would result in a more polished product, though if I can make sure that all the participants have access to a reasonable quality microphone, that will at least give a reasonable audio quality to something that will have the advantage of authenticity - it will be a live recording of real unscripted conversations, i.e. the type of language that your brain will need to deal with in the real world
Once I’ve got myself organised with the people I’m in touch with so far, I’ll see how the first recording comes out, and if it needs to be re-done by voice actors to be usable, I can look into that.
Yeah good point - this project should specifically aim for authentic, spontaneous conversations. So spoken first, and then transcribed. Something along the lines of say, the SwedishLingQ or SpanishLingQ podcasts, or Talk To Me In Korean’s “Iyagi” series would be awesome!
It’s easy enough to find prepared materials, and Georgian’s audiobook industry is surprisingly lively. It’s the casual, spontaneous stuff that’s harder to come by.
I may need to ask you to point me in the right direction when the time comes for me to look for audiobooks. I’m currently focussing on Bulgarian, where there is a vast library of books hosted online at Chitanka, and a fair number of them are also available in audiobook form at audiobookbg, so between the two websites, I have as much literary material as I can handle to study LingQ-style by listening and reading along (though, again, not much luck in finding live conversations with transcripts in any convenient place). Does a comparable online library exist for Georgian?
