tastyonions wrote:I have never watched a dubbed movie in French, but the other week I watched Pulp Fiction in English and today I was wondering if the French dubbed version is any good. I bet it would be fun to see how they translated Tarantino's dialogues.
I find that if I pick out a really good English-language movie or book, and then look for the French translation, the results are often hit-or-miss. I've had much better luck using French-language sources like SensCritique or even just seeing what's on French TV tends to direct me to the French media that natives are actually buying. For example:
- When I say, "Babylon 5 is a classic SF TV show," can I find a French dub?", I often wind up listening to truly ghastly dubbing.
- When I say, "Wow, everybody in France is taking about Le Trône de fer," and I try watching it, I wind up listening to top-notch dubbing.
Serpent wrote:Hm, have you found earworms useful for listening comprehension? I think for me they're mostly useful for speaking.
Yes! This was the really startling thing about subs2srs: Because I was working with a single TV series, and Anki was turning the dialog into ear worms, I could understand a surprising amount of dialog even in episodes that I hadn't studied. I mean, even with my French, there's no way I should ever even approach being able to follow 50% of the dialog in the easiest episodes of Avatar after 30–60 hours of study. And yet, I had so many little dialog fragments stuck in my head that it was easy to match them up to some of what I was hearing. And Sprachprofi reported similar results for Japanese. I actually think that there's some sort of "s_allard effect" going on: The most common 300 words and the most common grammar patterns are so frequent that if you can earworm those, you can pick up an extra comprehension bonus.
Now, I don't know if this will work for everybody. But I think there's some interesting unexplored territory here, especially at the beginner level, for people who want to focus on real TV early.
This has been my pet theory of the day.
daegga wrote:The main hypothesis behind this is that listening mostly works through prediction. Through extensive listening you acquire a statistical model of the language much like through reading, but without the additional abstraction of the written word.
Yes, this very much matches my personal experiences: Listening comprehension is really hard until my brain can more-or-less predict what a native speaker would say, anyway.
Φιλόσοφος wrote:I for one have found I cannot concentrate on the speech if I am following the subtitles in a different language. Closed-captioning is ideal, but materials with it are scarce.
That's why I find it preferable to delay watching TV and movies until I have enough vocabulary to, in principle, be able to understand most of what I'm listening.
Yeah, good subtitles are a pain to find. We actually made a list of French films and TV series with good subtitles to help people out. And I can provide suggestions for Spanish, along with annoyingly-hard-to-find accurate subtitles for the Spanish version of Avatar, La Leyenda de Aang and several Spanish movies.
That said, I do agree that TV isn't very helpful unless you already have some way to understand a lot of it. Using native TV as a total novice would give a boost to listening skills, but it definitely requires very sneaky and creative techniques to artificially boost comprehension a lot.
Gaedheal92 wrote:8 disks @ 16€?! Sold! (Though I'd be willing to spend double that based on the intro alone ). Thanks for pointing this out.
Ah ha ha ha! My log strikes again, putting fear into media budgets around the world!
Josquin wrote:OMG, I recognize the intro! I used to watch this show as a little kid (in German dubbing, of course). Thanks for bringing this back to my memory!
Seriously, I sometimes sing parts of this intro for French adults in their 30s, and I swear they all know it.
Arnaud wrote:Ah nostalgia, I was watching it when I was a kid, and one of my friend had the bad habit of calling me Nono, as I'm very tall
Nonetheless, my favorite one was Capitaine Flam, a pure masterpiece, at that time, with the superb music of Yuji Ohno.Au fin fond de l'univers, à des années et des années-lumières de la Terre, veille celui que le gouvernement intersidéral appelle quand il n'est plus capable de trouver une solution à ses problèmes, quand il ne reste plus aucun espoir: le capitaine Flam !
I first discovered Captaine Flam while listening to an MC Solaar video. I actually worked through that video with my wife, bugging her to explain all the cultural references.
Anyway, I've only seen one episode of Capitaine Flam, and I couldn't find a good set of DVDs when I last tried. But as I understand it, "Capitaine Flam" is sort of an archetypal Boy Scout hero in space. (I recall one episode of the French dub of Angel where somebody accused Angel of thinking he was Capitaine Flam. A fun cultural reference added during translation!) Here's the intro, for fans of late 70s children's television:
SladeWilson wrote:Absolutely. Editions LettMotif have a nice little collection of French screenplays for purchase, including the popular Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain among others I don't personally know but might be good. You can buy in print or electronic. I personally opted for the pdf of Amélie (but they come in epub format also).
Oh, this is just wonderful! Thank you so much for this link.
If you want to read my old log, there's actually a "table of contents" on page 1 that breaks it down into 3 sections: "Taking it to the next level", "Wandering towards C1" and "Fresh, fun and effortless media." There are links to various key turning points in those sections. Someday I should organize it all better or produce a "highlights" version!
astromule wrote:One suggestion: would it be possible to see the new posts of the people that you're following in a sidebar or somewhere visible (such as the "follow" of Facebook)? Or is that function already present in notifications?
Look for the "wrench" icon at the top or bottom of the page, click on it, and choose "Subscribe Topic". You will then see all other posts to that topic in your notifications. I hope this helps!