Hi there, I discovered a new tool to have fun with while learning languages. It’s called Language Learning with Netflix and it adds double subtitles to a lot of movies on Netflix (you can see the catalogue on their homepage https://languagelearningwithnetflix.com/ ), as well as a couple real handy shortcuts to replay subtitles, come back to the previous subtitle, freeze while reading a subtitle, etc.
I’m using this right now to improve on my Chinese and I find that it’s really swell.
It’s nice to see the words I’ve learnt on Clozemaster pop up in an actual story.
Just a rant, but Netflix KILLS me when their native language subtitles don’t match what is actually spoken. It’s like someone took the show, translated it to english, then translated it back to other language.
As someone with a hearing impairment and uses captioning/subtitles a lot, I see language learners complain about this often, usually because they simply don’t understand that subtitles aren’t suppose to be transcriptions.
Subtitles have to be able to be read in the span of time given in a scene, and that means sometimes they are changed from the actual spoken dialogue to make them easier for fast reading. Anyone who knows sign language or is familiar with other tools we hearing impaired rely on will understand why this is necessary. There’s a lot that people without hearing impairments take for granted–time being one of them.
And when you have services like Netflix that provides subtitling and dubbing in multiple languages for the same show, they have different companies/contractors doing translations for each based on the original. They are in the business of making the content accessible to everyone, not in the business of providing a precise tool for language learning. Whenever you use materials not originally intended to be for language learning, you usually have to make adjustments and this is no exception.
For people trying to learn non European languages, you may need to switch the user interface to your target language if you want to be able to select your target language dubbing.
At least, if you select Japanese as your interface language (don’t do this if you don’t know Japanese at all, as it could be hard to go back), practically all “Netflix Original” shows will have Japanese dub and subtitles (but subtitles rarely match).
I complain about this often and I definitely do understand that subtitles are not transcriptions. Your reasoning doesn’t explain why the French audio of “tu me connais” is subtitled as “vous me connaissez”. I could probably go find another 20 examples from the same episode.
When this complaint comes up, it seems there’s usually a person with a hearing impairment who just wants to say the rest of us should accept things as they are because we’re already privileged, and the subtitles weren’t meant for us anyway.
There’s no reason why these companies can’t work together to get the subtitles closer to the audio, and that would benefit everyone.