GREETINGS AND WELCOME TO SELFSTUDYTHAI.COM!
This website offers Thai audio, corresponding transcripts and line by line English translations for news articles from "Voice of America", commonly referred to as VOA. What started out as study tools for myself, I decided that with some extra work could be made useful to others. Also shared are a few other Thai language resources I've found helpful. It's all self study and it's all FREE, though you do need to be able to read Thai to be able to take advantage of this website's content.
Update May 9 2021: I'm continuing my review of this website as my last review only got as far as about 12 articles before I got sidetracked. The review should be finished by the start of July. At that time I'll consider adding an additional 16 articles to bring the webstite's total to 100. Stay tuned...
News articles and audio are taken from the VOA Thai website. In places where the audio does not match the published article, the text has been changed to match the audio, exceptions being the few places I couldn't figure out what is being said, and I've left out particles such as ครับ and นะคะ. Word definitions are taken from the thai-language.com and thai2english.com websites.
All initial translations were done by me, a foreign student of the Thai language and not a Thai language expert. Therefore there are bound to be translation and transcription errors in the articles provided. I have proofread all articles several times and others have gone through them as well. The quality is quite good, just not perfect. So if you do happen to come across any errors, please send an email to selfstudythai@gmail.com so they can be corrected. That way the site will be made better for everyone!
Also for those wondering, audio and text from VOA News are public domain.
How to Use This Site
Access to all articles come from the menu at the top right hand corner of the screen. After selecting the article you wish to explore further, click on the various "Study" rectangles after each paragraph to listen to the article a line at a time and to see the translation for each line. Translations are now hidden by default.
To view the translation for a particular line, just click in the circle with the question mark symbol. To view a dictionary entry for a particular word, just click on the word in question and that word will display in a new tab using Google Translate. Note that you will not be able to do this with all words, only words we've pre-selected. In the past Google has been horrible with Thai translations but for single words it's not bad. And a big plus is that Google is almost never down. If you run across a wrong definition or a word we haven't pre-selected, you'll need to copy and paste the word into the online dictionary of your choice. If you want to access any of the original articles from voathai.com, click the VOA logo at the bottom of any particular article or study page.
Other Free Websites Offering Thai Audio with Transcripts
StudyThaiSubs is selfstudythai's new project for those who wish to learn Thai from movie subtitles. The site currently has 15 movies totalling over 10,000 subtitles and is a great compliment to this website.
aakanee.com, (formerly thairecordings.com) has over 10 hours of Thai audio and transcripts on a whole range of subjects. No translations, but there are short English synopses provided on the content of each audio clip.
Learn Thai from bangkokpost.com news articles. mp3 Thai audio, transcription, translation... An impressive list of news articles from the Bangkok Post. If I had known about these earlier, I might have never started selfstudythai.com!!! :-)
Everyday-thai.com has free online Thai lessons covering all levels. The 10 part series on the 2011 flood crisis, the roo soo flood series, is totally transcripted and translated, though translations are not line by line as is done here.
The Maanii Book Project (ongoing). These are the books Thai children used in the past when learning to read throughout elementary school. Contains Thai audio and line by line transcriptions and translations. Also has "karaoke Thai" for those who can't read Thai. Mia who runs Learn2SpeakThai helped immensely in starting selfstudythai! Thanks Mia!!!
VOA audio, transcript and translation of an article on Thaksin and the Red Shirts from Gaccha.
Websites that link to selfstudythai.com - Thank You!!!
- Learn2SpeakThai, "Free Resources" section
- Stickman Bangkok, Stickman Weekly Column for 23 December 2012.
- Women Learning Thai... and some men too ;-) website under "FREE Resources"
- English Thai Skype Teachers.com under "Free Resources"
- Aakanee under "Links & Papers"
- Lengthy Travel
- SolveThai under "Thai Resources"
And a Very Special Thank You to universe6 for creating this responsive version of selfstudythai!
Contact Information
Please send email to selfstudythai@gmail.com for comments, suggestions, error reporting, etc.