I have a defense language institute supplementary book with translation exercises. It is good but carries topics that are of no interest to me. For example: "He is bleeding badly. Do you know how to stop the bleeding?". Besides it was published a long time ago in cold war period, year 1971.

Apart from famous Paiboon Publishing are there any good texts to translate from English to Thai with answers to exercises? Preferably with more of a business context or with fun casual conversations.

Why not search out some of the dual language books (more like booklets actually) out there. I have moved on from buying these myself but when I started out reading Thai I found a whole series of Scooby Doo, Disasterous Dez, Pickle Hill Primary and other titles, Not sure what is in the shops now because I dont think they get reprinted often, so when they sell out they are hard to find.

These books are designed to help learners of English, but due to their colloquial American or UK English they must be difficult for Thais to understand. However the Thai translations are in my opinion simpler to understand.

I also found you have to look hard for them in bookshops because they have very thin spines and get shelved all over the place.

I have never been patient enough to read a book of more than 100 pages (in any language), but I do like short stories.

My favorite writer of Thai short stories is วินทร์ เลียววาริณ. Maybe try: สิ่งมีชีวิตที่เรียกว่าคน

His book are also nicely illustrated, the stories are nice to read and I think they are also good for translation exercises. Of course, you would have to do the translation part yourself.

Edited January 26, 201412 yr by kriswillems

I have never been patient enough to read a book of more than 100 pages (in any language), but I do like short stories.

The 'books' I recommended are about 60 pages with about 10 lines of Thai text per page. The Scooby Doo series are published by Nation Egmont and there are at least 24 titles in the series. I must have read about 20 of them before' moving on'.

Now I have been reading Jack Reacher, the character created by Lee Child (acted by an totally mis-cast Tom Cruise in the film of the same name). I have read 6 of the titles and now will shortly be starting the 7th recently translated book. Although one needs a relatively advanced Thai reading skill for Jack Reacher, I find that JRs logical approach to sorting out problems makes his actions easy follow in the translated versions.

Any other Jack Reacher fans out there????