I think these issues stems form translating to the language you are learning being a bit backwards. It serves a purpose though you learn how to say complicated stuff in an easier way.

I am at a basic level in many languages. Often it is enough to know that I have the gist right: is it "please step out" or "Please do not step out".

You're not wrong but I think there is absolutely a case to be made for these kinds of restructurings as well. For one, giving you the restructured version exposes you to different ways of stating the same content, it might make reading longform content (without falling back to the original source material too often) more fluid, and more situationally, this kind of simplification and restructuring actually happens really often in subtitling, where character count is more leading than the lip movements a dub is based on. e.g. you'll hear one thing, but the sub is that same content often radically redone :)

Is "ateljé" (meaning art studio) really the correct Swedish translation here? I suspect "etta" (meaning one-room apartment) would be more suitable.

My SO has lived in Sweden for a few years, gone through the provided Swedish classes to be eligible for university studies, but really feels the need to consume more swedish text.

The easier-to-read books in the libraries are all too simple, and they don't want to learn by regularly reading a lot of news (which is probably the easiest way to be trickle fed new and niche words), but this seems really nice.

This looks promising for their situation. I'll plop LoTR, Antimemetics Division or something in there later and see how it turns out!

A lot of SVT is available with no VPN. It also has apps, so I tend to watch it on an Apple TV.

I second comic books, though the Swedish tends to be super colloquial and you will get stuff like "dig" rendered as "dej" (which is how it is generally pronounced, but not how it is formally written.) Kalle Anka is always the classic go to for Swedish learners.

NRK on the other hand actively tries to block everyone, which makes Norwegian a lot less accessible.

A method I love, because it is actually a pleasure, is to find music you like in the language.

I love listening to the same songs over and over again anyway, and once in a while I get curious what they are actually saying in a new sentence.

I do this for learning German once in a while, but I am sure it would work fine for Swedish as well.

Markus Krunegård is my favourite right now, and I think he sings with a clear language.

But there are lots of (pop) music in Swedish with interesting lyrics; Veronica Maggio, Little Jinder, Håkan Hellström, Miss Li, Kent. A very random sample from a much much longer list obviously.

And a passive method, so, while it is pure joy, it needs to be complemented with actul studying of course.

Chuck https://lite.cnn.com/ into whatever language you need it in.

Ooh, those simplified news sites/newsletters sound great, I'll have to see if I can find something similar for Norwegian!

It looks great, but I wish these would be more flexible. I'm going to have an extension, I'd prefer one that doesn't do only full translations.

I'd love a similar one to this that'd give you an "make this easier" button that'd start by providing a vocabulary for the paragraph, simplifying the language, or interjecting explanations in simple language, move to replacing words with English translations, and only as a last resort to a full translation.

With current LLMs it ought to be relatively easy to offer a UI with an "stepwise easier" option and just a handful of prompts to direct the "translation" result complexity accordingly...

I don't think news will give you a well rounded vocabulary. Im studying with an Anki deck which got its word order scraped from news.

I know three different words for price (price in general, specific item, and formal) but I have yet to see, say, oven.

I think the idea is to use a book that you have already read in your language, maybe even multiple time (favourite book).

This way your mind already has all the associations stored in your brain for easy access, and you just need to link it to the foreign concepts. Supposed to be a great way to learn new languages after you know the basic grammar and such.

Is it better than DeepL own extension?

Edit: it is.

I've used Claude to help explain Korean texts, but in Korean.

But English is simplified French ;)

With apologies to Dumas ("L’anglais n’est que du français mal prononcé" - "English is little more than badly pronounced French" - spoken by D'Artagnan in Twenty Years After)

The "quick and dirty" solution would be to cut and paste into Claude or ChatGPT, probably in sections to prevent it from going too far off piste/forget what it's meant to be doing, with a suitable prompt.

This looks so cool, I am thinking of building something like this for French.

I am currently planning to take my B1 and it has been super hard.

I'm guessing it is pretty easy to express in Swedish once you learn how to speak about housing, though.

Don't know Swedish, but I'm fully lower-to-mid intermediate with Norwegian (I hit limits, but my workplace is Norwegian). Swedish and Norwegian are really similar. In Norwegian, they don't talk about bedrooms as much as total major rooms. So a studio apartment, the sort that contains a private bath and kitchen area, is a one-room apartment. A one bedroom is a two-room apartment.

And it looks like Swedish (unsurprisingly) is similar: https://www.reddit.com/r/Svenska/comments/16aigvx/question_o...

A studio apartment in Swedish is "en etta", literally meaning a "one room". An apartment with one bedroom would then be "en tvåa", two bedrooms "en trea".

It's not a studio apartment though. The book takes place in some kind of arts center:

"And at exactly the same instant Signor Jacobelli was bursting without warning or ceremony into a studio on the second floor where a model posed."

There is something similar in German, "einfache Sprache" (simple language) and the even easier "leichte Sprache". E.g.: https://www.nachrichtenleicht.de/siege-fuer-schach-spieler-1...

It's worth noting that "easy swedish" isn't just for immigrants, it as also (mostly?) for people with an intellectual disability.

There’s even radio and Swedish ebooks in “lätt” or easy Swedish. Helped me when I learned:

Easy Swedish radio news: https://www.sverigesradio.se/grupp/22720

Easy Swedish books: https://www.bokus.com/cgi-bin/product_search.cgi?series=L%E4...

They also have simplified swedish news broadcasts. It's just easier to understand for immigrants who are still learning the language.

It converts to lätt svenska (simplified Swedish), which is usually intended for beginners / students and I believe is the point here. The translated text is missing a lot of details, though, yes.

> Thirty years ago this had been given over entirely to studios, but now it was broken up into a more profitable mêlée of semi-commercial establishments and light-housekeeping apartments.

From what I can tell, I'd hardly want to read the original. Way too verbose and I highly suspect the rest of the book is similar.