Book suggestions in languages other than English

Piotrek81 · Post by **Piotrek81** » November 10th, 2011, 12:45 pm

Today as I was searching for projects affiliated with Project Gutenberg, in hope that they might contain more works in Polish, I found PG Europe- http://pge.rastko.net/
Unfortunately, I'm unable to connect to data base servers. Does any of you have any experience with this site?

According to the announcement on the page they are moving their contents to another site.

neckertb · Post by **neckertb** » November 10th, 2011, 12:51 pm

Yes, in 2003 they were moving... Wonder what happened then? I'm not so available tonight, but remind me to look into it tomorrow if no one else does.

Post by **Availle** » November 10th, 2011, 1:30 pm

There is actually a link to it from gutenberg.org under "Partners, Affiliates and Resources".
And there it says: "This site seems to no longer be active or functional."

So, you'll probably have to try your luck somewhere else, I'm sorry...

ETA: There are 30 books in Polish on gutenberg.org - but I'm sure you found those already. A number of them seem to be short stories by Adam Mickiewicz, so it would be a possibility to make your own collection of "Short stories by..." and read several of them for one project. Just sayin...

Piotrek81 · Post by **Piotrek81** » November 10th, 2011, 2:13 pm

Pity about PG Europe

As to the works of Adam Mickiewicz, there are some good candidates on PG, e.g. the cycle of sonnets "Sonety Krymskie" (I rembemer learning one by heart in the secondary school

) or the cycle "Ballady i Romanse" plus a few other items, short enough to be included into a collection.
Others mentioned there are probably too long given how few Polish speakers seem to be active here.

Most works on the list are fables, poems or plays. I remember learning about each of them in school

There are only 2 prose works (neither of which I'm familiar with).

I did notice them before, as you said, but your post made me look closer at them as possible candidates for audiobooks. Thanks

Takver · Post by **Takver** » November 17th, 2011, 6:52 am

hello again! i found this page http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/languages/el. You think i can suggest a book from here?

neckertb · Post by **neckertb** » November 17th, 2011, 7:05 am

Yes! No matter which language, all project Gutenberg's books are PD for the US, thus usable for librivox. The only thing you have to check is that they are PD where you are. Some works may be PD in the US but not in Greece, for instance, depending on when the author died. If you are in EU, usually the rule is death + 70 years, so any author dead at the latest in 1941 should be safe.
Which book were you thinking about? We can check copyright together, if you want!

Takver · Post by **Takver** » November 17th, 2011, 7:52 am

Well i was thinking about this http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17995. Euripides is an ancient Greek writer so he is long dead, actually he died 406 BC.
Translation into Modern Greek by Angelos Tanagras. Published as it say on 1910. The language is modern Greek. The book is Electra and its actually a theatrical play. If its ok i should read only the play or i have to begin with the introduction?

neckertb · Post by **neckertb** » November 17th, 2011, 10:05 am

It would be good to know when the translator died, since his translation might be protected by copyright rules too.
I found this: http://www.answers.com/topic/angelos-tanagras but I'm not sure it's the right guy.
Where are you located, Takver? That would help

Isa54 · Post by **Isa54** » November 18th, 2011, 1:16 am

Projekt Gutenberg is really a good resource! You can find a ton of copyright free books there and I use it quite often

I read all Kafka short stories there *hehe*
It would be nice if such sites would be online for all countries. It's very useful. Although I don't like reading on the screen. I prefer books.

Takver · Post by **Takver** » November 18th, 2011, 3:02 am

Angelos Tanagras the translator died in 1970.
I am Greek and i live in Athens.

Thank you so much for you help. I hope that works

neckertb · Post by **neckertb** » November 18th, 2011, 9:09 am

I'm sending you a pm.

Piotrek81 · Post by **Piotrek81** » November 19th, 2011, 10:06 am

I think I've just found what I've been looking for

http://literat.ug.edu.pl/zulu/zasad.htm this virtual library of Polish literature explicitly declares that its contents are public domain.

This website is part of UNESCO’s "Publica" series.
UNESCO promotes a strong public domain in which information and knowledge is accessible for all. Communication and information technologies can largely facilitate this access, particularly to classic works of world literature. UNESCO’s "Publica" series, which is constituted by a collection of digitized texts from the world’s literary heritage, makes them available free-of-charge on-line
(on the Internet) and off-line (CD-ROMs).

I guess this is enough, right?

It doesn't seem incredibly well-stocked, but it definitely has MUCH MORE Polish-language content than PG.

Cori · Post by **Cori** » November 19th, 2011, 10:24 am

Yes, we've used that source before -- I remember the retro HTML look of the page.

Seems okay to me (not that I'm a lawyer, etc. and I'd now stick to the pre-'23 US guideline just to be double-sure it's okay.)

Piotrek81 · Post by **Piotrek81** » November 19th, 2011, 10:30 am

Cori wrote:Yes, we've used that source before

Which makes me think of the idea I've had recently. Maybe we should create a topic (preferably a sticky) with links to resources such as this one? This may save the users whose native language is not English (and who, as result, don't always find PG to be useful) quite a lot of leg- and mousework

Cori · Post by **Cori** » November 19th, 2011, 10:47 am

We do have a page in the Wiki -- http://wiki.librivox.org/index.php/Book_Resources#Non-English_Languages -- but no-one's added Polish yet.