Description
Learn Italian with parallel texts: eight articles with accompanying English translations!
How to communicate with a fourteen-year-old Italian daughter who seemed only interested in acquiring every possible shade of nail polish?
What DO teenagers think? Attempts at conversation elicited silence, or grunts.
Only rarely, when money ran short, were words arranged in sentences and delivered in a way I could make out:
“Daddy, have you got any work for me?”
Write some texts for my website, I suggested.
Which she did, so cash was duly handed out.
Four years later, tidying up my computer, I came across a folder named “Hannah texts”…
- .pdf e-book
- original text in Italian / translation in English
- 8 short chapters to read and study
- Suitable for students at any level
- Download your Free Sample Chapter (.pdf)
How do I access my ebook?
When your order is ‘completed’ (normally immediately after your payment), a download link will be automatically emailed to you. It’s valid for 7 days and 3 download attempts so please save a copy of the .pdf ebook in a safe place. Other versions of the ebook, where available, cannot be downloaded but will be emailed to people who request them. There’s a space to do that on the order form – where it says Additional information, Order notes (optional). If you forget, or if you have problems downloading the .pdf, don’t worry! Email us at the address on the website and we’ll help. Also, why not check out our FAQ?
Parallel Texts – How To View The Chapters Side-By-Side!
Viewing the chapters of your parallel text ebook side by side (so as to compare the different languages) is not hard, but probably won’t happen automatically.
There are a few simple, free things you’ll need to do first.
The file is a .pdf so will open with whatever the default .pdf reader on your device is.
These can vary and will probably NOT show the chapters side-by-side, as intended.
For this reason, we recommend the free Adobe Reader, which is installed on many computers in any case.
If you don’t have it, download it here (though I’d suggest un-checking the ‘Optional Offers’…)
Once you have Adobe Reader installed, this is what you do:
- Download the file
- Don’t just click on it or it will open in a browser, which probably works differently
- Instead, view it in your device’s downloads file
- Open with Adobe Reader (right click on the file, choose ‘Open with’, select Adobe Reader)
- In Adobe Reader…
- Look in the menu (at the top) for ‘View’, then choose ‘Page display’
- Choose ‘two page view’ (for the parallel text) or ‘single page view’ for normal documents
- Use ‘View’ / ‘Read mode’ to make the text larger or smaller so that it fits your screen
- Use the ‘zoom’ and ‘page up/down’ buttons to navigate through the book
John Holden (verified owner) –
This book was pitched at about the right level for me – I didn’t have to flick back and forth too often so it didn’t disrupt the flow too much. Re-reading each chapter after checking meanings helped new words to bed in (I hope!). As you say, seeing what a 14 year old chooses to write about when given carte blanche (or should that have been “tavola rasa”?) is almost worth the price in itself.
Tom (verified owner) –
I haven’t finished reading the whole book yet because I like to work through slowly to absorb the language, and there is plenty here to absorb. A very useful resource, thank you!
Bruce H Benson (verified owner) –
Time well spent with eight clever essays that helped my grammar and vocab. I tackled two essays a day, spending maybe 20 minutes on each. The page layouts made it easy to go back and forth between Italian and English. The writer’s use of colloquial Italian cleared up several phrases that had always puzzled me a bit and her topics held my interest.
Jill (verified owner) –
I very much enjoyed the articles in this book.
It is graded as a B2/C1, and like Donna I understood 99% so I guess I’m making progress too.
It would have been useful to have an audio available.
easyreadersorg –
Thanks for the review, Jill. With ‘easy readers’ you get audio, but not a translation. With ‘parallel texts’ we provide a translation, but not audio. In part it’s because of the production costs, but mostly it’s because people who rely on translations don’t need (or deserve…) audio. And students who value audio don’t need (and are best off without) translations. Insomma, different styles of learning, different products. This collection of articles is in parallel text format because the teenage author is bilingual and the editor (her parent) thought it would be interesting to do the translation rather than the audio, so as to compare the languages. There are plenty of others in our shop that do have a recording.
Donna (verified owner) –
I love parallel texts. I love mysteries. I love the idea this was written by a teenager. I love that it had a discount. I have only read the first chapter so far and understood 99% so if the level B2/C1 is correct I guess I’m making progress. Looking forward to reading the entire thing later today. These little books are so much more fun to read than the classic Italian literature and avant- garde fiction I have struggled with. Definitely worth the price.
easyreadersorg –
Thanks for taking the time to write a review, Donna. And the first! I appreciate it.
I’d point out that the articles in this ebook are a mix of topics, there are a few ‘true crime’ type topics but others include horoscopes, palm-reading, and so on. The real mystery here is what interested the writer when she was fourteen…