Bulbulovo links to LibriVox, a site which “provides free audiobooks from the public domain.” The vast majority (689) of the currently available texts are in English, but there are some in German (27), French (11), Russian, Spanish, Italian, Finnish, Chinese, Japanese, Dutch, Latin, Hebrew, Old English, Portuguese, and Swedish (all less than ten items); there is also a “Multilingual” category that includes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights read in a bunch of languages (including Walloon), two “Multilingual Poetry Collections,” and the Irish national anthem, “Amhrán na bhFiann.” If you want to volunteer to read texts, go here; I especially hope Russian-speakers will do so, because I don’t like the way the guy who does all the currently available texts reads (muttering quickly, with no discernable emotion, which is especially distressing with Dostoevsky’s “Notes from the Underground”: “I am a sick man. I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased….”).
Walloon?
Walloon.
Walloon!
Here’s the Walloon – http://www.archive.org/download/universal_declaration_librivox/human_rights_un_wal_ezwa.mp3
LibriVox is good people – the project was started by my friend Hugh here in Montreal. I’ve recorded a couple of things that are on the site, most notably a couple of chapters of Doctor Doolittle by Hugh Lofting which was great fun. They need all the volunteers they can get, especially non-English speakers and people with good reading voices.