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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5868 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 17 of 82 07 September 2012 at 12:38am | IP Logged | |||||
I like to watch Canadian/Quebec TV news on Société Radio-Canada (SRC) and Réseau de l'information (RDI). There is lots of "normal" conversation as well as more formal TV anchor dialogue. I can capture the closed captions to text files and use them to improve my French. However ....... I initially got some good captions and mistakenly thought that the captions were universally good. But I have come to realise that they seem to be universally bad, very bad. The on-screen synchronisation is hopeless. Delays can be 15-30 seconds. Thus the alternative of capturing the CC to text files and recording the audio/video. But the quality of the captured CC is generally horrible. You can hardly recognise that it is supposed to match the audio. The words are often misspelled, distorted, or missing. Many many typo's. Often only one sentence in three is CCed. And very often, the CCs are extremely paraphrased. I don't know how the regular intended audience (deaf, hard-of-hearing) put up with such very low quality CCs. Both SRC and RDI are owned and operated by CBC/Radio-Canada and fall under government guidelines for obligatory high-quality closed captions. I had previously read complaints about the low quality of these CCs, but I didn't realise they were so poor. In contract, the English news CCs on CBC (governed by the same regulations) are outstanding, even for live broadcasts. These are virtually flawless, word-for-word. I recently watched a 20 minute English political news conference, and not a single word was missed or wrong in the whole 20 minute live broadcast. And it was absolutely live. So perhaps Arekkusu and Grunts67 could have a look at the SRC/RDI CCs and speculate on why such low quality is tolerated. The SRC/RDI CCs sure don't provide much help to language learners, and its a shame because much of the dialogue is very conversational. EDIT: I may have partially answered my own concerns. I have been recording these CCs for only a week and always in the late morning, noon and afternoon. I remember reading somewhere that there are different standards for CCs in "prime time". So I just now looked at both SRC and RDI news in "prime time", and both are of excellent quality. Still hopelessly behind the audio, but very good quality. So that helps a lot. I'll watch the evening news from now on, using the downloaded text CCs and the recorded audio/video. Edited by tommus on 07 September 2012 at 12:55am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5383 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 18 of 82 07 September 2012 at 12:58am | IP Logged | |||||
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My impression is that it's automated for live shows and that automation is much more efficient in English. The
odd time, you see a word come up that was oddly parsed (word-parsing in French IS a problem) and then you see a cursor go back and the word is respelled, so perhaps there's actual people assisting the process. For scripted shows though, I find the closed captions to be pretty good. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5383 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 19 of 82 07 September 2012 at 1:04am | IP Logged | |||||
I can't really answer this question, but there are audiobooks produced in Québec, though books tend to be written in standard French. The voice actor might have a slight Québécois accent, and some of the dialogues might be closer to spoken Québécois, but that's probably it. There are lots of popular Québécois authors and although it's a small market, it's quite active compared to the rest of Canada, relatively speaking. On the other hand -- although that's of little help if you want to use the L-R method -- there are lots of movies produced in Québec and if you find the DVD, they are always subtitled. Movies and TV series tend to use very natural Québécois speech. Edited by Arekkusu on 07 September 2012 at 1:05am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Tsopivo Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4473 days ago 258 posts - 411 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Esperanto | Message 20 of 82 07 September 2012 at 2:21am | IP Logged | |||||
:D That's brilliant. I'll have to try this. Also, on the anglicism in Quebec French, I'd be very careful mentioning that around natives. It is quite a sensitive topic for some of them. Edited by Tsopivo on 07 September 2012 at 2:22am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4638 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 21 of 82 07 September 2012 at 2:29am | IP Logged | |||||
Yeah, especially this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTs86ucftfs (a lot of bad language) Also another question: Do a lot of Quebecois understand France French fine? I heard that usually French people can't understand Quebecois but the opposite is true. How can the Quebecois understand France French? Does Quebec get a lot of access to France's TV networks at all? Edited by sillygoose1 on 07 September 2012 at 2:33am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5868 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 22 of 82 07 September 2012 at 4:11am | IP Logged | |||||
The captions I have been capturing to text files for the last week from live news appears to be manually typewritten. Automation cannot paraphrase, and leave out words, expressions and whole sentences. In any case, if the evening news is very much better, that is where I will focus. By the way, could it be harder to produce French-Canadian CCs because French-Canadians speak very fast? Or is it just the perception of fast speech by struggling language learners like me? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5383 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 23 of 82 07 September 2012 at 4:49am | IP Logged | |||||
I think it's an impression. I actually wouldn't be surprised if research showed that QF is slightly slower. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5383 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 24 of 82 07 September 2012 at 5:14am | IP Logged | |||||
First of all, yes, Québécois have a lot more exposure to France French then the other way around, so in this respect, we are more used to the accent. We meet tourists or visitors, we hear it on TV, from singers, or in movies. And in the fifteen years since I left Québec, I can see that French has had an influence. For instance, the word weekend is a lot more common than it used to be. Second, there are grammatical intricacies in QF that makes it slightly hermetic at first, whereas France French uses more or less the grammar we're used to. However, when they start using slang, or if they are joking, I miss a lot. In a show like South Park, I often fail to understand almost everything. In a more mainstream show, there's always some things I don't get. I hear the words, but they mean nothing to me, or they obviously have a different meaning. If you were to test the accuracy of my comprehension, I would probably score higher on an American movie than a French one. The best example I can give is that if I watch a British show, I'll generally understand most of it, but if the accents get thicker or if they use more informal language, then I'll miss a lot, and so will my wife who is a native speaker. It's really a matter of exposure. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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