# Forum Learning Russian Language Resources for Studying Russian Dual-Language Books  New Russian-English books in ParallelBook format

## Inego

In this topic I will post information about new parallel texts in ParallelBook format available for download.
ParallelBook format is a new ebook format specifically designed for parallel books used for reading in a foreign language alongside a translation in your native  language.
Its main and unique feature is the possibility to set correspondence not only between matching paragraphs or sentences in the source and translation, but also between smaller parts of sentences.
At present, there is only one reader and editor for this format, namely Aglona Reader (for Windows + .NET Framework), but a free reader for Android is scheduled for development starting in December, 2012.
Aglona Reader is a free, open-source program that can boast of high rendering speed, smart text formatter and a brand new system of color highlighting.
ParallelBook format is open.
All parallel books I introduce in this thread are based on free texts from Public Domain and have been released into the Public Domain themselves, so there will be no trouble with copyrights.
Download free books and the program from the home site of the project: https://sites.google.com/site/aglonareader/home/lang-en (ad free).

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## Inego

The first book is a brilliant romantic short story "Snow storm" by Alexander Pushkin, the genius of Russian literature.
600 fragment pairs.
See the screenshot.

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## kgcole

That's interesting....haven't heard about this format before. Wonder if they're gonna make an iPad app for the reader?

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## Inego

This format is very, very new. It was created in September 2012 and the first (and so far only) program for it was finished in October 2012.
An app for iPad will indeed be created, but definitely later than a reader for Android, and very possibly not by me but by somebody else, because I don't possess Apple hardware neither for developing nor for debugging.   [I may use double negation, I'm Russian  :: ]

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## Lena

> The first book is a brilliant romantic short story "Snow storm" by Alexander Pushkin, the genius of Russian literature.

 It’s a great software, I think. I have just one remark on the text in this screenshot. It’s off the point, though. 
I wouldn’t advise anyone to learn Russian reading "Snow storm", unless your level is proficient. I can see so many obsolete words and expressions here, let alone the grammar forms. 
Достопамятную, во всей округе, по пяти копеек, прочили, предмет, избранный ею, в отпуску, само по себе разумеется, равною страстию, склонность, нежели, всякий день, видались, сперва, весьма, романическому, предаться ему, несколько времени.

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## kgcole

> It’s a great software, I think. I have just one remark on the text in this screenshot. It’s off the point, though. 
> I wouldn’t advise anyone to learn Russian reading "Snow storm", unless your level is proficient. I can see so many obsolete words and expressions here, let alone the grammar forms. 
> Достопамятную, во всей округе, по пяти копеек, прочили, предмет, избранный ею, в отпуску, само по себе разумеется, равною страстию, склонность, нежели, всякий день, видались, сперва, весьма, романическому, предаться ему, несколько времени.

 
That's one of the complaints I have. I learned to read by many things, not the least of which are stories that I got off the internet. And through experience, I find that a lot of the words I use are considered wrong, or archaic. So I don't know what to think most of the time. As a general rule, I want to learn to begin with that vocabulary which is contemporary.

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## Inego

The slightly "archaic" style of this story is not that of Pushkin himself, but of Belkin, a fictional author of "Tales of Belkin". As a matter of fact, this style is more ironic than archaic and a part of the image of Belkin made by Pushkin. As a Russian, I think that the language used in this story is 99% modern Russian. Combined with that the story is fascinating itself I can recommend it for parallel reading even if your level of Russian is below intermediate. Remember, parallel reading doesn't require you to memorize everything you read.
P. S. To be honest, the *very* first book in English and Russian I have finished was "Master and Margarita" by Bulgakov, 17500+ fragments (English translation by R. Pevear, 1997). To my shame, I didn't know that creating a derivative book was violating copyrights of the original authors and translators. When I got to know this I had to remove that book from the list (imagine how much work has been done in vain).

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## Inego

> I wouldn’t advise anyone to learn Russian reading "Snow storm", unless your level is proficient. I can see so many obsolete words and expressions here, let alone the grammar forms.
> Достопамятную, *во всей округе*, по пяти копеек, прочили, предмет, избранный ею, в отпуску, само по себе разумеется, равною страстию, *склонность*, *нежели*, всякий день, *видались*, *сперва*, *весьма*, романическому, предаться ему, несколько времени.

 I have highlighted words and phrases that are perfectly normal in modern Russian.

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## Lena

> The slightly "archaic" style of this story is not that of Pushkin himself, but of Belkin, a fictional author of Tales of Belkin". As a matter of fact, this style is more ironic than archaic and a part of the image of Belkin made by Pushkin. As a Russian, I think that the language used in this story is 99% modern Russian.

 It is not a matter of big importance for a person learning Russian whether it is Pushkin's or Belkin's style. 
Do you claim that the words and expressions that I mentioned are used in the modern Russian language? Which of them? We could count the percentage of them in your passage. But I guess it will be much more than 1%. 
Bulgakov is certainly modern in this regard.

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## Inego

As for the truly modern language, it is very difficult to find a book that is in the public domain together with its translation. Often original books in modern language, being in the public domain, have a translation done much later for which its copyright hasn't yet expired.
I dream of modern fiction that is released into the public domain by its authors from the very beginning. Let them be amateurs, I don't think it's important from the point of view of learning a language. But its translation is also required to be in the public domain. If a translation is done by an amateur it can be of poor quality (as often, but not always, typical for amateur work) and thus not very suitable as a basis for a parallel text.

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## Lena

> As for the truly modern language, it is very difficult to find a book that is in the public domain together with its translation. Often original books in modern language, being in the public domain, have a translation done much later for which its copyright hasn't yet expired.
> I dream of modern fiction that is released into the public domain by its authors from the very beginning. Let them be amateurs, I don't think it's important from the point of view of learning a language. But its translation is also required to be in the public domain. If a translation is done by an amateur it can be of poor quality (as often, but not always, typical for amateur work) and thus not very suitable as a basis for a parallel text.

 I appreciate the problem, Inego.

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## Lena

> I have highlighted words and phrases that are perfectly normal in modern Russian.

 I agree with you on the fact that all the highlighted words are understandable to any Russian person. 
Yet I am trying to imagine who could say them without, maybe, that ironic meaning. 
во всей округе - maybe some older people who live in the country only. Others would say вокруг, поблизости, по соседству, недалеко, во всем районе. 
склонность - no one in this meaning. Симпатия, любовь, привязанность. 
нежели - no one. Чем. 
видались - Hmm. Maybe in the negation like мы давно не видались. Still my daughters would never say that. Не виделись. 
сперва - maybe, though it sounds oldish. Сначала, в первую очередь, для начала. 
весьма - never and no one. Очень, в значительной степени.  
Though, as I said, all these words may be used to make people smile, with irony. 
Mr. Crocodile has recently been quoting professor Preobrazhenskiy's words "В топку ее, немедленно." I'm not that resolute. Let Pushkin's story live, but not on this site.

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## Inego

If you want to help the noble cause of broadening the public library of the parallel books, you can take part in it, provided: Your knowledge of both Russian and English is intermediate or above;You agree that the book you align will be released into the public domain.
The process is following: You choose a novel or story of your liking in Russian, for which an English translation is available in the internet. Both the Russian and English texts must be in the public domain, of course.You send me an email to yanis.batura@gmail.com with the name of that book.I look for the source texts in the internet, prepare them, create an unaligned PBO file and send it to you.You align the book. This will take some time, depending on the size of the book.You send me the finished book.I check the result and if it's OK I publish your book on the site. 
What you get:  You read a story you like in two languages You will be specified as the author of the parallel book on the site Your book will be read by other people not only on Windows, but (later) on other platforms (like Android tablets) and help them learn Russian (or English if they are Russian). 
What I get:  One more book in the public library, making the ParallelBook project more interesting for language learners and potential new supporters. 
The alignment process in Aglona Reader, although manual, is *very* easy and efficient and, I would say, entertaining by itself. It's almost like a video game for linguists  :: 
You can start with short stories like "Snow storm" above. It took me only an hour to create it (of course I am a very experienced user of this program).
The project has just started! Don't lose the unique chance to be among the first people aligning books in the ParallelBook format  ::

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## kgcole

> I agree with you on the fact that all the highlighted words are understandable to any Russian person. 
> Yet I am trying to imagine who could say them without, maybe, that ironic meaning. 
> во всей округе - maybe some older people who live in the country only. Others would say вокруг, поблизости, по соседству, недалеко, во всем районе. 
> склонность - no one in this meaning. Симпатия, любовь, привязанность. 
> нежели - no one. Чем. 
> видались - Hmm. Maybe in the negation like мы давно не видались. Still my daughters would never say that. Не виделись. 
> сперва - maybe, though it sounds oldish. Сначала, в первую очередь, для начала. 
> весьма - never and noone. Очень, в значительной степени.  
> Though, as I said, all these words may be used to make people smile, with irony. 
> Mr. Crocodile has recently been quoting professor Preobrazhenskiy's words "В топку ее, немедленно." I'm not that resolute. Let Pushkin's story live, but not on this site.

 While at the task of learning Russian, I would definitely rather read something in contemporary language. Unfortunately, I'd probably read completely through something like that and not even know it's not current. Then in turn I'd use the words, and people would look at me like I had two heads...lol

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## Inego

> While at the task of learning Russian, I would definitely rather read something in contemporary language. Unfortunately, I'd probably read completely through something like that and not even know it's not current. Then in turn I'd use the words, and people would look at me like I had two heads...lol

 Not at all! They will be very surprised that you use so advanced Russian, because it only shows how serious the books you read are.
When sometimes (rarely) I listen or read "literary" Russian from foreigners I can't help admiring them, for they speak (culturally) better Russian than most of our Russian population do.

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## Lampada

> The first book is a brilliant romantic short story "Snow storm" by Alexander Pushkin, the genius of Russian literature.
> ...

 http://prochtu.ru/uslishu.php?avtor=84&kniga=2  (Слушать.  31минута) 
 Сайт-источник: http://bibe.ru.

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## Inego

The voice of the narrating lady strangely reminds me that of speech synthesis at Google's, so lifeless and emotionless it is (I hope that was not you)   :: 
But this mp3 is very useful to know where to put stress correctly in the Russian text, thank you!

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## Inego

Haha, There is the first volunteer for aligning an English-Russian book. She is my wife  ::  We've just signed a contract, she'll align "Martin Eden". She says it'll take a year to complete, but I am sure it will take much less time.

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## Lampada

> The voice of the narrating lady strangely reminds me that of speech synthesis at Google's, so lifeless and emotionless it is (I hope that was not you)  
> But this mp3 is very useful to know where to put stress correctly in the Russian text, thank you!

 Что нагуглилось, то нагуглилось.  Спасибо им за это!

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## kgcole

> Not at all! They will be very surprised that you use so advanced Russian, because it only shows how serious the books you read are.
> When sometimes (rarely) I listen or read "literary" Russian from foreigners I can't help admiring them, for they speak (culturally) better Russian than most of our Russian population do.

 Sounds like I'll have to have a dual personality. One for speaking in general, and one for learned speech making...lol

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## Inego

The second short story by Pushkin, "The Shot", is finished! 655 fragment pairs.
This time I tried to substitute archaic forms of words and even whole words with their modern equivalents (where possible) to make reading easier. Puskin - The Shot.jpg

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## Inego

Meanwhile in post-Soviet Russia...
Aglona Reader 1.3 has been released! It features a new Alternating mode of representing text.  Alternating en-ru.jpg 
Someone may find it easier to read than the Normal mode. You can switch between Normal and Alternating modes from Settings window.

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## Inego

"Ward No. 6", a depressive, yet very strong and thought-provoking story by Anton Chekhov, was released today in ParallelBook format.
This story was used as an example in a Youtube video showing the three reading modes of Aglona Reader: Normal, Alternating and Advanced.

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## Valda

Я только сейчас доискалась о Aglona Reader. Просто великолепный инструмент. Хотела сказать БРАВО для того, который создал эту программу. Просто молодец!

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## Inego

"The Daughter of the Commandant", a historical novel by Alexander Pushkin, is finished as a parallel book in Russian and English in PBO format and available on Aglona Reader project site.
Although not the biggest book in this format, it is a result of work of several people: Tatiana Batura, who aligned the source texts, and two users of this forum — Sperk and me (Inego) — who translated the parts missing from the original translation by Milne-Home. Also, I have converted all proper names in the English translation according to the modern transcription rules. Today, the English translation from this parallel book is the only full English translation of the novel available in the public domain.
Sperk — thank you very much for your help! Without it, this work could not have been finished!

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## Valda

Inego, you're awesome  ::   
I think to use your software for French-Russian stuff. I just need to find a good novel  ::

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## Inego

Valda, uh, there are currently NO French-Russian books in PBO format.
You can align and share them with the community, but that requires some work  ::  You could start with some short stories.
If you agree, just name me one and I'll send you an unaligned PBO file that you could align. Aligning stories is very quick and rewarding  ::

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## Valda

Inego, you misunderstood! That's exactly what I had in mind  ::  To do the needed work to get it aligned. I'm just not sure which book to pick.

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## Inego

What about Chekhov's stories? They are the best ones to start with  :: 
Maybe "Дама с собачкой"? 
EDIT: Alas, it seems no public domain French translations of this story available... 
EDIT2: here are some French translations from Chekhov: http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Anton_Tchekhov

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## Inego

"The Lady with the Dog" (Дама с собчакой), a story by Anton Chekhov, has been aligned by JamarriJa.
Thank you, JamarriJa, for your efforts to make Russian classics closer to learners of Russian! 
You can download the parallel text from the Books page on the Aglona Reader site. 
Screenshots in Alternating, Normal and Advanced modes:  en-ru Dama s sobachkoi Alt.jpg en-ru Dama s sobachkoi Norm.jpg en-ru Dama s sobachkoi Adv.jpg

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## Inego

*The Hound of the Baskervilles*, the famous crime novel by A. C. Doyle, has been finally aligned in English and Russian. You can download it for free from Aglona Reader site.

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## Inego

"*Silver Blaze*", a story by A. C. Doyle, has been kindly aligned by JamarriJa and is now available for free download on Aglona Reader site.
Thank you, JamarriJa!

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