LibriVox Community Podcast #119: Poetry on LibriVox

[annise]

I have answered - is it still there

Anne

[bobgon55]

No, it's gone now. I see what you mean. Interesting. Thanks, Anne.

Bob

[EglantinaOwl]

An enjoyable listen. Well done, Bob!

[carolb]

I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to cause confusion - just felt silly, because I thought I hadn't noticed the link to the podcast.

In future I will just add an edit.

But I didn't know that Bob had seen the post then added the link - communication is a wonderful thing!!

Carol

ETA - Ah, I've just read your earlier post, Bob, and see that it was an archive.org delay!

[annise]

It wasn't confusion , Bob has learnt something he didn't know , and I was reminded of something I had half forgotten.

Anne

[Piotrek81]

Nice broadcast. I'll do my best to stay "incredibly active"
I'll be happy to contribute to the one about Multilingual collections. Btw. it would be cool if you could dedicate one of the future installments entirely to non-English projects.

[bobgon55]

Thank you, Ruth. As usual, in my experience so far at least, there were all interesting and well-spoken contributions. And some more ones ready for release next week.

Anne, yes, it was great to learn about the ability to delete a post.

And Carol, it's great to have someone so keen to receive the podcast. It was actually Cori who added the link in this forum post because I forgot how to do that. I remembered later that, for this year at least, it's the exact same url as the other podcasts except for the different number. So I will be able to post the link for next week's as soon as post the show notes. By that time usually Cori has already uploaded the file to archive.org. (Have I mentioned how fabulous Cori is?)

Nice broadcast. I'll do my best to stay "incredibly active"
I'll be happy to contribute to the one about Multilingual collections. Btw. it would be cool if you could dedicate one of the future installments entirely to non-English projects.

Thanks, Piotrek. Just pace yourself so you don't ever "burn out." That is actually a show or at least part of a show in itself: "How does one avoid LibriVox burnout?"

I think to do a show dedicated to totally non-English projects we would need multiple hosts, because the likelihood that one person could understand all the languages is slim. That's assuming we could have contributions in five or more languages. Of course, a single host could present a totally non-English project podcast if s/he didn't have to understand all the languages. (By the way, I almost played a section of your shorter poem in the multilingual poetry, but I thought that it would not be kosher to release it with the podcast before the project itself was catalogued.) Keep making suggestions. I'm looking forward to the time when the podcast planning thread is brimming full of ideas and volunteer contributors and hosts so that we can have a steady stream of shows being released. As Jim Mowatt said in either podcast 117 or 118 (have a listen to those when you have a chance, as well as the ones at least from this and last year, if not to all the rest of the podcasts in the archive), the podcast is even more important now than it was when he first started it because LibriVox has grown so huge that some tool is needed to help maintain the sense of community across the entire project.

And have fun with your multilingual poetry project and your new solo, Piotrek. I think at least part of your contribution to the multilingual show could be about that Polish and English collection of poems you are doing with Algy.

Cheers, everyone!
Bob

[Piotrek81]

Just pace yourself so you don't ever "burn out."

No worries. Right now I'm at the stage of searching for (and often finding ) interesting new PD texts in Polish. The queue is getting longer and longer

As to the show devoted entirely to other languages and problems related to it: A host (not necessarily a multilingual person) could gather contributions from different volunteers. These would include, for example, a fragment of a text as well as a short introduction by the user who proposed it. For example, person X saying: "Here's a cool text in German. I recorded it because.... It's about...", person Y saying "This one is in Portuguese. What I love about it is that.... It tells a story of ...." and person Z saying "I chose this one in Italian as my solo/whatever because... It presents....". Of course the host might find it slightly awkward to play stuff s/he doesn't really understand but there probably are ways to go around this.

(By the way, I almost played a section of your shorter poem in the multilingual poetry, but I thought that it would not be kosher to release it with the podcast before the project itself was catalogued.)

You might have to wait quite a bit to be able to record something done by me, because we still need to find (D)PLer(s) who can understand Polish...

[bobgon55]

As to the show devoted entirely to other languages and problems related to it: A host (not necessarily a multilingual person) could gather contributions from different volunteers. These would include, for example, a fragment of a text as well as a short introduction by the user who proposed it. For example, person X saying: "Here's a cool text in German. I recorded it because.... It's about...", person Y saying "This one is in Portuguese. What I love about it is that.... It tells a story of ...." and person Z saying "I chose this one in Italian as my solo/whatever because... It presents....". Of course the host might find it slightly awkward to play stuff s/he doesn't really understand but there probably are ways to go around this.

This is a great format. It's actually somewhat how the multilingual show will be formatted, along with talking to people (like yourself) who speak and/or can record in languages other than English. I am not fluent in Spanish enough to converse, but I can read it aloud fairly well, especially with time to look up words and pronunciations I don't know. I've recorded two Grimm fairy tales in Spanish and am working on another as well as a small part in a play in Spanish (Calderón de la Barca).

And I would not find it too awkward to play clips in a language I do not understand, especially if it's already in the LV catalog. I'm sure I will be doing that anyway for the multilingual show.

You might have to wait quite a bit to be able to record something done by me, because we still need to find (D)PLer(s) who can understand Polish...

I meant to suggest in the earlier post that you consider recording a short piece in English, maybe the weekly poem. And perhaps you will need to recruit some of your friends to join LibriVox in order to PL your recordings in Polish. An idea that I have had for a long time now is to do a bi-lingual poem translated interlinearly, that is, translated one line at a time. So it would go like this: line a in one language, line a in the other language; line b in the first language, line b in the other language; etc. all the way through the poem. This way, listeners of each language would have a sense of continuity and this would even help with learning a little bit of the language one is less or not familiar with. It could be done by one bilingual reader or by two readers and edited like one edits a play. Something to think about and work out the production logistics for. Not to mention getting approval from the admins.

Bob

[carolb]

and if Carol can do it it can't be a Mod thing

!!!

Carol

[Piotrek81]

An idea that I have had for a long time now is to do a bi-lingual poem translated interlinearly, that is, translated one line at a time. So it would go like this: line a in one language, line a in the other language; line b in the first language, line b in the other language; etc. all the way through the poem. This way, listeners of each language would have a sense of continuity and this would even help with learning a little bit of the language one is less or not familiar with. It could be done by one bilingual reader or by two readers and edited like one edits a play. Something to think about and work out the production logistics for. Not to mention getting approval from the admins.

Sounds interesting, although I think it would be easier if one person read both versions. Otherwise individual lines could turn out a bit tricky to separate and then paste.
In fact the bilingual project we're doing with Algy Pug ("Sonnets from the Crimea/Sonety krymskie") is done the same way, the only difference being that an original sonnet is read in its entirety and only then followed by the translation. The final mix hasn't been done yet, though, because the Polish version is awaiting PLing and after that both version will be conjoined.

[Cori]

Not to mention getting approval from the admins.

Hey, we're not some bunch of grumpy gatekeepers, who approve or disapprove randomly. We try to apply our mission statement: to record every work that's in the public domain. There's a heap of fantastic audio projects that don't quite fit within that (creative commons licenced books, dramatic works with sound effects, etc.) ... that's not to say no-one should ever do those things, just that here probably isn't the best place to do it. (In fact, we'll often refer people to the places where other kinds of audio would be welcome!)

With the interleaving, the thing would be to find a poem that is already published in that way! I'm pretty sure there's a bunch of Latin out there that does it, and it must be available in other languages too. If not, then of course it'd probably be easy enough to create a mixed-language poem like that ... but as a new edition, that would then be best uploaded directly to archive.org as Community Audio. [Just my thoughts; so, if a text is proposed, it'd be important to see what other admins thought too! I don't always get it right. ]

[bobgon55]

Not to mention getting approval from the admins.

Hey, we're not some bunch of grumpy gatekeepers, who approve or disapprove randomly. We try to apply our mission statement: to record every work that's in the public domain. There's a heap of fantastic audio projects that don't quite fit within that (creative commons licenced books, dramatic works with sound effects, etc.) ... that's not to say no-one should ever do those things, just that here probably isn't the best place to do it. (In fact, we'll often refer people to the places where other kinds of audio would be welcome!)

With the interleaving, the thing would be to find a poem that is already published in that way! I'm pretty sure there's a bunch of Latin out there that does it, and it must be available in other languages too. If not, then of course it'd probably be easy enough to create a mixed-language poem like that ... but as a new edition, that would then be best uploaded directly to archive.org as Community Audio. [Just my thoughts; so, if a text is proposed, it'd be important to see what other admins thought too! I don't always get it right. ]

Cori,

I would NEVER in a bazillion years ever portray the admins as grumpy gatekeepers. I don't see any admins as grumpy at all. In fact, I even considered whether phrasing the sentence you quoted that way would imply that. And, of course, it did. Yes, admins do recommend podiobooks and Internet Archive for all projects that do not fit the LV objective. And of course LV should have some criteria by which to judge applicability. The criteria of published public domain texts is pretty broad as it is; it doesn't need broadening, especially when you consider that "choice of voice" allows for expanding the catalog with multiple versions of the same text. Nevertheless, admins are gatekeepers of sorts, are they not? It's not a bad thing at all to be gatekeepers, is it? I mean, there has to be some agency that keeps the project on track. All organizations have them. And I think it's great that it is a collective agency, rather than the decision of only one person.

Anyway, these are just ideas for projects. God knows there is enough already on my plate just at LibriVox that it will certainly not dim my enthusiasm for this oasis of literate audio energy because one idea or even twelve are found unsuitable.

Bob

[Lucy_k_p]

Great podcast Bob, really interesting. Thanks for putting it together. (And thanks to all the other contributors.)

[bobgon55]

Great podcast Bob, really interesting. Thanks for putting it together. (And thanks to all the other contributors.)

Thanks, Lucy. Great contributions all around, including the ones we'll hear next week.

Bob