Hi,

For people who can read in french (personally I read french though far slower than english or my native romanian) these are 3 sites with (legal) e-books in french.

Ebooks Libres & Gratuits - like Guttenberg but has many books that are not available there (at least the last time I checked)

http://www.ebooksgratuits.com/ebooks.php


Gallica - the french national library - has some books that I could not find anywhere else

http://gallica.bnf.fr/


La Bibliothèque électronique du Québec

http://jydupuis.apinc.org/index.htm


Liviu

Merci beaucoup Liviu. Ce sont des sites, tout près, que je ne connaissais même pas!

I'd love to see e-books with side by side translations. I took enough French in school to recognize a few words here and there, and it would be neat to have the French and English sentences right next to each other. In fact, if that had been available to me when I still actually remembered some French, I probably would have kept reading in French. (I did it for a while in the past, but it was just too slow to keep looking up so many words.)

Surely that's a way to kill three birds with one stone... learn a language, encourage reading at the same time and provide a new application for e-books.

Translating to french is difficult.
Because of a federal law in Canada, every official text has to be issued in both official languages. So has every commercial wrapping, owners manual and whatnot sold in Canada. My brother has made it his life for the last 20y. He's still learning it.
The main difficulties arise from the fact that some words have no precise equivalent in the other language. Worse, grammar concepts don't apply either. The worst for anglos, and funniest for us is the memorisation of gender for every noun.

BTW there is a very funny movie showing right now, "Bon cop, bad cop" It was made in the two languages, pretty unusual because after 200y. there is still quite a bit of animosity between the two cultures. As we say " Que veux-tu? Rome n'a pas été faite en un jour!" But the movie is a sellout in Québec and lukewarm in the rest of Canada.

I'd love to see e-books with side by side translations. I took enough French in school to recognize a few words here and there, and it would be neat to have the French and English sentences right next to each other. In fact, if that had been available to me when I still actually remembered some French, I probably would have kept reading in French. (I did it for a while in the past, but it was just too slow to keep looking up so many words.)

Surely that's a way to kill three birds with one stone... learn a language, encourage reading at the same time and provide a new application for e-books.

I have 2 bilingual print books (romanian-english - poetry though) as you mentioned, left page original, right page translation, line to line, and my feelings are mixed about the usefulness, though it's true I speak, think and switch at ease in both languages (with my wife I talk in romanian, but with my son in english since while he understands romanian but living all his life here, he prefers english)

Ultimately to read in a language, as long as you know a little bit, you gotta bite the bullet and read something you really want to read and have no other choice of languages. It's not that easy as I can tell since I still have not gotten around to reading some books by M. Dantec that I really want to read but cannot find myself to summon the energy for. Only for the amazing Les Bienveillantes (prix Goncourt and prix du Academie Francais 2006, written by an american!! in french), I recently found the energy to slog through.

Liviu

c'est sympa de repondre en francais ca me fais au moins une reponse que je peux lire

I am new to the Ebook world but I have been looking for a site with French novels on it. Ta...

Merci pour le informacion...

hidari

I am new to the Ebook world but I have been looking for a site with French novels on it. Ta...

Merci pour le informacion...

hidari

Hey! No swearing on this site! :laugh4:

merci beaucoup pour cette links! :)

I'd love to see e-books with side by side translations. I took enough French in school to recognize a few words here and there, and it would be neat to have the French and English sentences right next to each other. In fact, if that had been available to me when I still actually remembered some French, I probably would have kept reading in French. (I did it for a while in the past, but it was just too slow to keep looking up so many words.)

Surely that's a way to kill three birds with one stone... learn a language, encourage reading at the same time and provide a new application for e-books.
When I decided to really read in english, I started with books (paperbooks then) for children/young adults, and some Agatha Christie's and Sherlock Homes.
French editors are way far behind for ebooks... So you'll have every difficulty to find books like these. :smack:
I'll try classical ones (public domain then), like Jules Verne and La Comtesse de Ségur. :D

La Bibliothèque électronique du Québec

http://jydupuis.apinc.org/index.htm


Did anyone read the different articles/texts from the guy who run this site ?
He's gone totally crazy with a conspiracy theory (or is he right?) and I've still to decide if he wrote this as fiction or if he's convinced of telling the truth...
Definitively weird...

I'd love to see e-books with side by side translations. I took enough French in school to recognize a few words here and there, and it would be neat to have the French and English sentences right next to each other. In fact, if that had been available to me when I still actually remembered some French, I probably would have kept reading in French. (I did it for a while in the past, but it was just too slow to keep looking up so many words.)

Surely that's a way to kill three birds with one stone... learn a language, encourage reading at the same time and provide a new application for e-books.

I don't think side-by-side translations are very useful. Usually when you are reading in a foreign language, you will have a problem understanding a word or an expression, sometimes a grammatical construction. In a side-by-side transaction you won't get any answer to your questions, just a translation of the sentence you are reading. It may not be easy to identify which word or expression translates the one you stumbled on.

IMO a format with notes indicating the translation of words, or explanation of grammatical structures, is much more useful.