About a month ago, I got an e-mail from an interesting start-up called Interlinear Books. They offer what they call “subtitled books”. At first, I was unsure. Would the English “subtitles” get in the way of reading the books? I don’t know any of these stories, will they still be good? Let me tell you my opinion: this is the future for language learning.
Immerse Yourself
I love to travel, but I also love languages. I started learning Spanish when I was 12 years old and I’ve picked up and experimented with other languages along the way. For so long, I thought my Spanish was amazing. Then, I realized it wasn’t as good as I had thought. To fix this, I began immersing myself in magazine, books, and TV shows.
When I first started reading in another language, I was scared. What if I don’t under the words? Interlinear Books takes away this fear. The target language text is written in a normal size, and if you don’t understand what’s going on, you can look under the words for the tiny English text. Interlinear Books is like training wheels for reading.
One of my fears was that have bilingual text would be distracting. In reality, it wasn’t a problem at all. Like I said above, the target text is written in a normal-sized font and the English text is written very tiny. I didn’t even realize it half the time. But, it’s there if you need it.
Now, I bet you’re wondering about how the translation works. According to Interlinear Books’s website, they “translate the ‘minimum possible unit’ which makes sense when translated”. Usually each word is translated, but there are also phrases that are translated. I also really liked how they didn’t rearrange the word order to make sense in grammatical English. As they state, the translation complements rather than replaces.
Also, all translations are human-made rather than computer-made!
For All-Levels
My Spanish is advanced, so I decided to try out the Portuguese story. I took a semester of Portuguese in college (my senior year … I wish I could have continued!) and I’ve wanted to brush up for a while now. At first, I was intimidated to start the story, but as I was reading, I discovered something: this is for all levels!
Really, it’s what you make of it. For advanced levels, it helps to brush up. It’s a safety net. Maybe there’s a word you’ve never seen before, a word you always forget, or a phrase you’re unsure about. Interlinear helps you out and you get going on your way. For intermediate levels, it helps you to expand your vocabulary and test your conjugations. I promise you, you will learn so much from pushing your language levels. For beginners (like me), you can still learn so much. You can so easily learn new words. The vocabulary is all right there. You’ll start to naturally learn conjugations and grammar.
I think that’s what I like most. It’s natural learning. You aren’t learning from a textbook, you’re learning through real life experience.
Eight Languages and Growing
Right now, there are eight languages available: French, German, Greek, Spanish, Lithuania, Portuguese, Russian and Swedish. I was a bit disappointed when I saw there was no Italian, but their brand is growing. This is a start-up, so there are still great things to come. They wanted to provide a wide variety of languages, not just the Romance languages. Look at that diversity! Lithuanian! That’s awesome.
If you don’t see your interested language, don’t fear! They are working on producing more languages.
Sign Me Up!
The books can range from short stories to books. For example, my Portuguese story was a short satire, only about 100 pages or so. The German book is a bilingual translation of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. Or the Lithuanian book is a compilation of several short stories.
Most of the books are between $12-$20 (Swedish is $30). Easily affordable. It’s like getting two languages for the price of one! When you purchase your story, you’ll be given the options to choose which way you want to consume the material. You can read it on a desktop, an e-reader, or your phone. I downloaded it to my Kindle and it worked great! It read just like a normal book.
What are you waiting for? Go read!
If you have any further questions, don’t hesitate to ask! I think this is such an interesting idea and a peek into the future of language learning. I 100% recommend this to anyone who wants to learn a language or improve the one they are learning now. Now go read!
Thank you, Interlinear Books, for this wonderful opportunity!
