Buffy the Vampire Slayer in Italian

[diplomaticus]

Hi all,
Has anyone ever had luck studying Italian with Buffy the Vampire Slayer? I know our beloved emk has had success with it in French. I wondered if, before I went on a fool's errand poking around, anyone knew for certain that it could work as well in Italian.

emk, is the main idea that I'd buy the series dubbed into Italian and then use a subtitle program to watch it with Italian subtitles while listening to the Italian dubbing? Or is the idea sort of like Listening-Reading and I'd be watching with the words in English subtitles first, etc...Thanks!

[garyb]

It could be worth checking out eyðimörk's log on the old forum, she used Buffy for Italian and seemed to find it useful and enjoyable. The log is focused on using it with subs2srs, which is optional and not everybody's thing, but it means that dubbing and accurate subtitles are available.

I think it's a good approach if you enjoy Buffy. Watching TV/films while reading subtitles in the same language has been the most useful thing I've done to improve my listening comprehension.

[emk]

emk, is the main idea that I'd buy the series dubbed into Italian and then use a subtitle program to watch it with Italian subtitles while listening to the Italian dubbing? Or is the idea sort of like Listening-Reading and I'd be watching with the words in English subtitles first, etc...Thanks!

Huh, I thought we had a page on the wiki about how to use TV to help you learn, but we don't. Basically, there's a bunch of things you can do:

1. If you can already follow a lot of the dialog (perhaps a bit less than half) and if you can already read the subtitles with decent comprehension: You may be able to intensively study a few episodes, and then just watch the series straight through, dropping subtitles relatively early on. Based on my experiences, those of Cavesa, and those of some people I know in real life, progress can be pretty rapid—I started around 40% comprehension, and I could understand 70% of the dialog by the end of the first season, and 90+% after three seasons. TV can be great for this, because it's basically narrow listening.
2. If you're not at that level yet: I dunno, actually. I really like TV as a language learning tool, but if it doesn't provide lots of comprehensible input, it's not going to help. I have some pet theories about how it might be possible to use TV early on, but I'm reluctant to recommend them until I figure it out. But if this interests you, you could look at my log for my ongoing experiments. Just don't confuse one of my off-the-wall learning experiments with actual good advice.

A big part of the trick is finding something easy, enjoyable and with good subtitles available. I don't see an "Italian TV" page on the wiki, but you could ask around if Buffy isn't to your personal tastes. Usually you can just log into one of Amazon's European sites using your regular Amazon account and password, and just buy a DVD box set without any problems.

Does anybody else have any suggestions on how to use TV as an intermediate student?

[iguanamon]

One reason why we were so reluctant to make the move to a new forum was the wealth of information in the archive of HTLAL. Member eyðimörk, inspired by emk's use of Buffy and his subs2srs experiment, worked with the series and wrote about it in her log Italian the lazy way. Bear in mind that eyðimörk already spoke fluent French and English in addition to her native Swedish.

Does anybody else have any suggestions on how to use TV as an intermediate student?

How I worked with a series at intermediate level was without subtitles. Brazilian series often don't have them. I did have a tutor and I worked intensively with a 79 episode (40 minutes to an hour) novela. I would watch and listen first and try to understand as much as possible. Then my tutor had me write down unknown words/phrases (or time stamps where they were) and she would got to the time stamps and tell me what was said and we'd talk about it. Then, armed with that knowledge, I would watch again and take notes for writing and telling a review. I had to pause a lot and re-watch again. It was hard, but I kept at it. I'd go over my review with my tutor (who had already seen the series). The first third of the episodes was difficult. Then, I noticed my unknown words and phrases were becoming fewer. I didn't have to watch an episode four times any more. I was down to three times, then two, then at the last third just once. I sped through the last third of the series with ease doing three episodes in two one hour sessions with my tutor.

There are ways to "cheat" without a tutor. You're lucky, Buffy has subtitles in English and Italian. This is where the subtitles can serve as a substitute for my tutor. You can watch the episode without subtitles and do as I did. Try to understand as much as possible at first. Next watch again. Take notes this time (remember pen and paper, using your own personal shorthand). Write down what you're doubtful of and the time on the video where the unknown speech occurs. After this, watch again with the Italian subtitles and you will clarify your doubts about what was said.

If you have the computer skills to do so (most of us don't), subs2srs would be useful, but there are ways around that. At opensubtitles.org you can download the English and Italian subtitles and make your own parallel text by copying and pasting the text into a two column one row text document to make your own parallel texts. It sounds hard but it really isn't. Once you do a few of these you can manually align 30 minutes of a show in less than 5 minutes time. That's not a bad price to pay for something that can be quite useful. You can do many variations with a parallel text- read first then listen, listen first then read, etc., etc. The subtitles can serve as your check, your tutor and a loose dictionary. They can be used outside the video. When you download and open the subtitles, on a windows machine they open in Notepad. Copy and paste the Italian into the left column of a table in a word/open office document and the English in the right.

I know this sounds intense and it is... but it works. YMMV

[garyb]

In addition to the above I'll point out that subs2srs has a "duelling subtitles" feature to make bilingual subtitles, and assuming your subtitle files already match each other and the video quite well, it's fairly easy to use and shouldn't require too much technical knowledge. You can even make the subtitles for each language come up in different positions and colours. Explanation: http://subs2srs.sourceforge.net/#dueling. I think it's a good approach if you don't want to do the full-on Anki thing and would rather just watch the series normally, but still want to enjoy the benefits of L1 and L2 subtitles.

[diplomaticus]

Wow, thanks for all the great posts! It is probably also worth saying that I've never watched Buffy in any language, haha. I am just not afraid to copy what seems effective for others, and I remembered emk's use of Buffy in French.

If Mad Men has good Italian subtitles and dubbing, that might be the ticket for me! That is a show I enjoyed immensely in English and that I am extremely familiar with, having watched it many times over.

subs2srs looks fascinating.

I am much closer to absolute beginner than to intermediate, though. So I think I'd likely be better served to stick with things like short news clips that I can get both translations of along with Italian audio for now. This is definitely a thread I will revisit in the future, though.