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Advancing Korean, Year 5/6: TAC15 東亞 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4869 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes  Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 185 of 344 17 September 2013 at 11:18am | IP Logged | |||||
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2013년 9월 17일. شهریور ۲۶ ۱۳۹۱.
Korean 한국어 I'm slowly eliminating the Anki backlog with 50 cards per day whenever I don't forget... I'm also watching Good Doctor with subtitles. I've noticed that I once again benefit more from subtitles than from watching without them. I usually listen first and then double check with the translation. This way I can effortlessly learn some new words. I also got the idea to keep a diary in Korean to write more. My first entry was pretty effortless, although I didn't get to write all I wanted to. I feel like doing this without a dictionary, because looking up stuff might demotivate me and I can't do it without a computer and internet. I like talking/thinking to myself in Korean, so writing diary is simply a step to formalise that and make myself more aware of gaps in my knowledge. Persian فارسی I spent the weekend among Iranians and it was a great experience for language learning. I actually sometimes understood them when they were speaking Persian - usually only the topic or a word here and there, but there were a few whole sentences I was able to make out! I'm not even studying Persian formally now, but I'm still improving little by little thanks to my boyfriend. I am motivated to really study to progress faster and get to know the culture better, but I'm still hesitant because I know my Korean study time would suffer. Edited by druckfehler on 17 September 2013 at 11:21am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5536 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 186 of 344 22 September 2013 at 6:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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While I personally need to force myself to watch more unsubbed material now, I agree that early on subtitled material can be much more useful for vocabulary acquisition. That said, the longer I study Korean the more I realize that most translations are poor at best. There are a few really good subbing teams out there (SoshiSubs and WithS2 are probably some of the better ones I've come across), but there are quite a few poor subbing jobs as well which outnumber the decent ones.
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| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4869 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 187 of 344 24 September 2013 at 1:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
I've been mainly watching unsubbed dramas and listening to podcasts without transcript for about a year now. I noticed that it really boosted my listening comprehension at the time. It continues to do so, but for the past few months I didn't feel like I was progressing much in comprehension. At this point I think it's once again more important to be exposed to more vocabulary and in the medical show I'm watching there are a couple of useful words I didn't learn yet. So watching with subtitles seems more beneficial (although in some scenes I more or less ignore them). Besides, my chances for understanding all the medical terminology are a little higher in English than Korean.
I usually watch subbed shows on Viki. The quality is mostly very good (not like dramafever or other official sites - I heard their subs are rather "creative"). The subs done by fans are definitely of higher quality most of the time. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5536 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 188 of 344 26 September 2013 at 4:12am | IP Logged | |||||
Sometimes...I have seen some pretty poor fansubs as well, though. Diadem Subs (from tiaradiadem.com, a T-ara fan site) has released some particularly prime examples of this. That said, I later found out a big part of the reason why. Many of their subs (especially translations of on-screen text) are not translated directly from Korean but rather translated from existing Chinese subbed versions of those Korean shows. Double translation would definitely explain some of the odd results I've seen from those subs. This was particularly notable when I was watching a show (an episode of T-ara Dreamgirls) where someone's name didn't even match the translation at one point. The name given in the English subtitles was obviously a romanized Chinese name, so I wonder if the Chinese version converted the Korean name into Hanja and then the Chinese-to-English subbers simply romanized the Chinese pronunciation of that name. But like I said previously, there some really good subbing teams out there as well. It just takes a bit to learn which ones to bias and which to avoid (or at least watch with a healthy dose of suspicion). Some of the early iSubs translations (a subbing team that focuses on Running Man) are a bit off at times, but the later ones seem to have improved a good bit. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Evita Tetraglot Senior Member Latvia learnlatvian.info Joined 6553 days ago 734 posts - 1036 votes Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian Studies: Korean, Finnish | Message 189 of 344 26 September 2013 at 9:58am | IP Logged | |||||
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Lately I've been getting all my subtitles from Subscene. I love the site because all the new subtitles appear pretty quickly there but usually I don't know where they come from, except when the subtitles themselves contain the source. But I don't care much about the source, I'm just happy someone translated it.
If we're talking about the quality of subtitles, my opinion is that the best subtitles are not those that translate everything word for word but those that make everything understandable even for those viewers who don't know a bit of Korean. It means - no Korean words like oppa and no Korean sentence structures that sound awkward in English. I realize these are high requirements and such subtitles would actually be less useful for the studying of Korean but that's how I think the ideal subtitles should be - for all languages. As it is, the subtitles are good enough for me so I'm not complaining. I have no right to complain anyway because I get them for free. Oh, and speaking of Good Doctor, all the medical terms fly right over my head anyway. I don't even know them in English so I won't be attempting to learn them in Korean any time soon. But I love GD so much! It's definitely my favorite drama of 2013. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Warp3 Senior Member United States forum_posts.asp?TID= Joined 5536 days ago 1419 posts - 1766 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Korean, Japanese | Message 190 of 344 27 September 2013 at 1:18am | IP Logged | |||||
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For those who don't care to learn Korean, sure. However those are the very subtitles I tend to dislike as they gloss over or simply change the real meaning rather than even attempting it. But in some ways it is almost inevitable. Some words and concepts can't be thoroughly explained without a quick cultural lesson. That's probably a big reason why some subbing teams (especially those from fan sites) don't even bother to translate relationship phrases like 오빠, 형, 누나, 언니, etc. anymore and just romanize them instead. In some ways it really does make more sense to just have list of set vocabulary that you need to learn to understand Korean shows, even in translated form, then you can skip trying to translate those extremely common yet tricky words based on context each time (especially since they can become virtually untranslatable in certain contexts).
Personally, as a language learner, I greatly prefer the subs (usually fan subs) that will take the time to insert a translator note here and there to clarify items that simply don't translate well rather than just side-stepping it with a wrong translation and glossing over the real meaning altogether. Someone who doesn't care to learn the language would be happier with "close enough and shorter", though, which is probably why KBS World translates the way they do. It annoys me at times, but I do understand why they go that route since I imagine the bulk of their audience is not like me. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4869 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 191 of 344 06 October 2013 at 1:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
I agree with you, Warp. When I first started watching Korean media I remember being irritated at words like "oppa" and "unni" and other things I perceived as weird idiosyncrasies in fansubs. Back then I had no idea how important these things were for really understanding what's going on on a subtle level. However, I grew accustomed to it and am glad the subs included these terms, as they were my first glimpse into the Korean language and culture. Although I think most concepts in Korean have equivalents in other languages (even if they may not be on the level of grammar), Korean is still difficult to translate into a language without kinship terms, honorifics, etc. Especially problematic cases are wordplay and jokes/comments on terms of address and speech levels. Official subtitles rarely pay enough attention to this and so quite a lot of content can be lost. I'd rather have subs that don't gloss this over, even if they might seem strange for someone not used to Korean. After all, why does anyone who isn't Korean watch Korean TV? If you like what you see, you probably have some kind of affinity with Korean culture and will have or gradually develop an interest in it. In my opinion, if some idiosyncrasies are too much for people to deal with, they either need to become a little more flexible in their thinking (would do them a whole lot of good) or just stick to media from their own culture. Edited by druckfehler on 06 October 2013 at 1:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4869 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 192 of 344 06 October 2013 at 4:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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2013년 10월 6일.
Korean 한국어 I've been spending a lot more time with Korean these past few weeks and it shows. Once again I feel like I'm improving. I notice that I learn new words, I often think in Korean and understanding (reading and listening) is easier than in those periods where I spend less time with the language. There seems to be some sort of threshold between maintenance and noticeable progress. I'm not doing any organised "studying" at the moment. I tried to get back into Anki, but not only does it feel like a chore, it also seems to give me diminishing returns when I could be spending my time getting exposed to important words through native materials. I guess my current experiences with Anki are similar to what TheRealCZ has often been writing about. The problem with Anki is that it works very well in the short term and in the context of the cards themselves, but only helps with long-term memory when I meet my Anki words in other contexts as well. This brings me to my next point. I'm spending a lot of time with native materials, looking up words and grammar points and slowly assimilating them. I've recently finished reading a book of poems for children, which I started ca. 2 years ago. I read through it slowly and leisurely - usually in public transport - and kept a book where I wrote down all unknown words, which I then looked up at home. I then went through the lists once again and marked words I thought might be worth remembering. Of course I haven't remembered all of them, but I effortlessly remembered most of those that actually popped up again in the book. Simply writing down the words and reading through them once again later seems to have given me an edge over only looking up the words. That got me thinking that an adapted form of goldlisting may be worth looking into. Regarding grammar, I would eventually like to study it again a little more systematically and with good explanations instead of free resources and educated guesses. I might buy a comprehensive grammar book if my budget allows for it. I'm sure simply reading through it would already benefit me quite a bit, especially my active skills. Edited by druckfehler on 06 October 2013 at 4:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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