Are you the sort who likes to dabble in languages? Who practices the learn-by-doing technique? Who believes that “la pluma es lengua del alma”?
If so, you’ll enjoy hours of neuron-growing fun at the Polyglot Project. The idea is simple: the site makes available various literary classics online in their original languages. As you read the text and come to a word you don’t know, you double-click the word and the translation appears on screen.
Obviously, this is a fine way to build your Italian vocabulary, but the site does have its limits. You don’t get very far into a masterpiece before realizing the power of idiomatic phrasing and the poverty of literal translation.
The site requires you to create an account, but it’s free and, hey, where else can you find The Wild Duck in Norwegian?
At this point the Polyglot Project includes French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, English, Italian, Norwegian, and Catalan, with French having the most masterpieces available – 9. In terms of range and literary quality, it would be hard to quarrel with the editors’ selections for English: James Joyce’s seminal short story collection, Dubliners; two Jane Austen novels, Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, and The Turn of the Screw, a ghostly novella by Henry James
Ted the Cat (1994-present) is a domestic shorthair blogger and vers libre poet. He also enjoys sleeping, eating, and lurking. Ted the Cat co-habits with Kaze,
also a blogger at 317am.net.
