Learning with subtitled movies

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bedtime
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Learning with subtitled movies

Postby bedtime » Tue Dec 03, 2019 8:21 pm

Does anyone watch subtitled shows or movies to help learn a language?

I wanted to ask about recommendations for French movies for beginners, but anyone is welcome to post movies in other languages. Perhaps movies or shows where the speech isn't rushed.

Also, I found an easy way to have TWO different subtitles displayed at once. You just do a search for 'subtitle merge online' and give your .srt files to the website to merge. It'll take one language and put it on top of the screen, and the other, below. It makes an .ass file which is the combined subtitles. VLC player will play the format.

I did this with Frozen (2013), and it works great. I watch it with French audio and both subtitles (English + French). The only issue is that many subtitles, no matter what movie or language, are shortened and rearranged for easy reading. Frozen was no exception, sadly, but it is still great to learn from!

Any ideas on films?
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Re: Learning with subtitled movies

Postby dgc1970 » Tue Dec 03, 2019 9:25 pm

https://languagelearningwithnetflix.com/

I learned about this extension from this forum. I think this extension might have been developed by a forum member but I'm not 100% sure.
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Re: Learning with subtitled movies

Postby Kraut » Wed Dec 04, 2019 2:24 am

These here also play two subtitles : Lingoplayer allows you to slowly advance the subtitle lines for study. With SMPlayer you can adapt colour, position and size of subtitles to your liking.
https://oaprograms.github.io/lingo-player/
https://www.smplayer.info/

If you take YouTube clips or films that have subtitles here:
http://www.lilsubs.com/
it will give you also the second language subtitles machine-translated in an srt file(doesn't always work for all kinds of subtitles)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEk0x0VID2U
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Re: Learning with subtitled movies

Postby golyplot » Wed Dec 04, 2019 3:05 am

I usually don't bother with subtitles, but I've tried it a couple times. For example, I watched Maggie & Bianca: Fashion Friends with subtitles when I first started learning Italian (hey, beggars can't be choosers, especially with a less popular language like Italian).

If you want TL subtitles, your best bet is to look at native French productions and look for options with [CC] by the subtitle options. That indicates that the subtitles will likely be accurate. For example, Call My Agent is a great French show on Netflix with accurate subtitles available. But I definitely wouldn't recommend it for beginners. Unfortunately, the shows most likely to have accurate subtitles are also the hardest for beginners to understand...
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Re: Learning with subtitled movies

Postby joecleland » Wed Dec 04, 2019 4:00 am

bedtime wrote:Does anyone watch subtitled shows or movies to help learn a language?

I wanted to ask about recommendations for French movies for beginners, but anyone is welcome to post movies in other languages. Perhaps movies or shows where the speech isn't rushed.

Any ideas on films?


I have been doing this for about 2 weeks now (French) using the resource dgc1970 provided below:

https://languagelearningwithnetflix.com/.

It's a web-extension and in my opinion it works awesome. I currently use it an hour a day watching a show of my choice. You mentioned Frozen (and if you enjoy the film I apologize for what I am about to say). I am a 30 year old man with no kids. At the present time a movie like this doesn't interest me in the least bit. For this reason only, I would suggest choosing a movie/series that you would enjoy watching in your native tongue. Again, if Frozen is it...watch that! I mention because passively watching and actively watching (to learn) are two different things. So enjoying the film is important - IMO.

What I do is turn on auto-pause. After every line spoken it pauses the film. You can play it at 75%-125% speed or replay as many times as you need. Each word will be in target language and native language for the dual subtitles you've inquired about. Those words can be highlighted to save for future instances where the word populates it will later appear highlighted if repeated in the show. Once you have the word learned you can un-highlight. Also, each of the words that come up in the titles you can click and the definition will populate in your target language. You can also just watch the movie/series without stopping just like you would on TV.

As a side note, I would consider myself an upper beginner but watching Dix Pour Cent (Call My Agent) took about 1 hour to get through 10-15 mins of the show. I discussed the show with my tutor and he said that the time will decrease more and more with the more input you get. I only note to not be discouraged if you feel like this takes forever. I have been learning using Standard French and found that trying to watch Marseille (South of France) was rather tricky as I wasn't used to the accent on the show. So I wanted an accent I was used to hearing. If you find something better let me know!

Bonne Chance!
Last edited by joecleland on Wed Dec 04, 2019 3:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Learning with subtitled movies

Postby joecleland » Wed Dec 04, 2019 4:01 am

joecleland wrote:
bedtime wrote:Does anyone watch subtitled shows or movies to help learn a language?

I wanted to ask about recommendations for French movies for beginners, but anyone is welcome to post movies in other languages. Perhaps movies or shows where the speech isn't rushed.

Any ideas on films?


I have been doing this for about 2 weeks now (French) using the resource dgc1970 provided below:

https://languagelearningwithnetflix.com/.

It's a web-extension and in my opinion it works awesome. I currently use it an hour a day watching a show of my choice. You mentioned Frozen (and if you enjoy the film I apologize for what I am about to say). I am a 30 year old man with no kids. At the present time a movie like this doesn't interest me in the least bit. For this reason only, I would suggest choosing a movie/series that you would enjoy watching in your native tongue. Again, if Frozen is it...watch that! I mention because passively watching and actively watching (to learn) are two different things. So enjoying the film is important - IMO.

What I do is turn on auto-pause. After every line spoken it pauses the film. You can play it at 75%-125% speed or replay as many times as you need. Each word will be in target language and native language for the dual subtitles you've inquired about. Those words can be highlighted to save for future instances where the word populates it will later appear highlighted if repeated in the show. Once you have the word learned you can un-highlight. Also, each of the words that come up in the titles you can click and the definition will populate in your target language. You can also just watch the movie/series without stopping just like you would on TV.

As a side note, I would consider myself an upper beginner but watching Dix Pour Cent (Call My Agent) took about 1 hour to get through 10-15 mins of the show. I discussed the show with my tutor and he said that the time will decrease more and more with the more input you get. I only note to not be discouraged if you feel like this takes forever. I have been learning using Standard French and found that trying to watch Marseille (South of France) was rather tricky as I wasn't used to the accent on the show. So I wanted an accent I was used to hearing. If you find something better let me know!

Bonne Chance!
Last edited by joecleland on Thu Dec 05, 2019 2:44 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Learning with subtitled movies

Postby golyplot » Wed Dec 04, 2019 6:35 am

joecleland wrote:As a side note, I would consider myself an upper beginner but watching Dix Pour Cent (Call My Agent) took about 1 hour to get through 10-15 mins of the show.


I can't understand the mentality behind this. Watching TV is about going with the flow and having fun. If you want to spend ages agonizing over every sentence, read a book! As it is, you seem to be getting the worst of both worlds.

You wouldn't pause after every sentence when watching TV in your native language, would you?
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Re: Learning with subtitled movies

Postby DaveAgain » Wed Dec 04, 2019 7:55 am

bedtime wrote:Perhaps movies or shows where the speech isn't rushed.
Documentaries are shows where the speech isn't rushed. One of the first TV series I watched was Enquêtes archaeologiques on Arte, a 30 minute history documentary series. Le dessous des cartes is a weekly 15 minute current affairs programme that I still watch, that might be good for a beginner, you get french subs with that one on the arte.tv website.

You might also want to consider radio, that tends to be clearly spoken, standard french. One of the first radio programmes I remember understanding was Une Vie, une oeuvre about Tolkien, I knew enough about his life to know guess what the programme was trying to say, even where I lacked the french vocabulary: Tolkien, CS Lewis, Dashiell Hammett, Leonardo de Vinci, Jane Austen.

The most important factor is going to be your interest in the subject matter, your brain won't try very hard to understand something you find boring.
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Re: Learning with subtitled movies

Postby Kraut » Wed Dec 04, 2019 2:22 pm

There is tons of interesting material if you take into account the channels you can receive via satellite in Europe, most are subtitled.
It's is also relatively easy to create a second subtitle file - a translation into your mother tongue - with DeepL.
1. Extract the subtitles of your film as an srt file
2. Take the text of the file with the time-stamps to DeepL and have it translated
3. The time-stamps remain intact and you get the second srt file with the translation
4. You could also write your own comments (grammar, conjugations, word families etc ) into the second file ... instead of translations

Problems:
DeepL offers only a limited amount of text translation, you would have to repeat the translation procedure many times for a complete feature film.
DeepL translations are not flawless.

The picture shows the original subtitle in Spanish and the DeepL translation into German
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
Last edited by Kraut on Wed Dec 04, 2019 2:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Learning with subtitled movies

Postby joecleland » Wed Dec 04, 2019 2:26 pm

golyplot wrote:
joecleland wrote:As a side note, I would consider myself an upper beginner but watching Dix Pour Cent (Call My Agent) took about 1 hour to get through 10-15 mins of the show.


I can't understand the mentality behind this. Watching TV is about going with the flow and having fun. If you want to spend ages agonizing over every sentence, read a book! As it is, you seem to be getting the worst of both worlds.

You wouldn't pause after every sentence when watching TV in your native language, would you?


I don't think anyone would pause after a sentence in their native tongue, but I am also not studying my own language. The way I am learning I wouldn't call agonizing but it does indeed take effort. The truth is I really love the show. At my current level, my pronunciation is not the best so my goal is to mimic natives as much as possible. The way an audio book is written is different than how they speak on the show. This is why I selected to go this route. It's as natural as I am going to get, for now. Plus I get to listen to the slang of everyday vernacular while watching the body language and facial expressions (which is quite different). Ultimately, learning a language is like driving a car with headlights on. You can see what is directly in front of you but you may not be able to see the final destination point. What I do know is I am expanding my vocabulary, getting natural input, and have the option to repeat after the speaker if I choose at natural rate or slowed down.

In time we will see where I end up.
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