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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 105 of 170 12 November 2014 at 4:01am | IP Logged | |||||
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Maybe your old laptop can handle the VLC player better?
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| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5207 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 106 of 170 12 November 2014 at 11:29am | IP Logged | |||||
Yep, it handles VLC just fine :). Hence the idea of combining the subtitles, so they can be used with a "normal" media player like VLC. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5532 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 107 of 170 12 November 2014 at 1:30pm | IP Logged | |||||
Since there seems to be interest in this, I've added a "Dueling Subtitles" tutorial to the wiki. You'll probably also want to see the Subtitle Edit tutorial, which talks about finding and preparing subtitles. The results are pretty cool: 
You can change the position and color of the subtitles, if you want to make one subtitle easier to read, and another more challenging. victorhart, would something like this be an allowable addition to your experiment? It would provide a nice half-way step between plain video, and video with English subtitles. You might be able to process the Chinese subtitles with a pinyin insertion/conversion tool, too. If you're looking for a theoretical justification for something like this, you could always think of the pinyin as a replacement for a parent who speaks slowly and clearly, and who uses pantomime. :-) 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5207 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 108 of 170 12 November 2014 at 3:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
Great, thanks, exactly the sort of thing I was looking for! When I have some time I'll devour a few double-subtitled Spanish films. Edited by garyb on 12 November 2014 at 3:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| victorhart Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States mandarinexperiment.o Joined 3707 days ago 66 posts - 155 votes Speaks: English*, Portuguese*, Spanish, French Studies: Mandarin | Message 109 of 170 13 November 2014 at 3:03am | IP Logged | |||||
s_allard, I fundamentally disagree with you. The only reason that I’m watching movies with subtitles is because of enjoyment. I am able to decipher many words without any subtitles, simply from context. I could already give you dozens of examples in Mandarin of terms I have learned purely from visual/audio cues. You are simply wrong in thinking that is not possible. The “links between sounds and meaning” are already there. Yes, subtitles provide more links and thus facilitate deciphering words. That is an advantage. On the other hand, it is equally true that the brain cannot concentrate nearly as well on the audio while it is simultaneously trying to read in L1. That is an obvious disadvantage to the use of L1 subtitles. The question is which you give more importance or which weighs more heavily in terms of effective language acquisition. In the short term, extracting more vocabulary may give you an apparent advantage in terms of efficiency. In the long term, from my experience, fully immersing in L2, without reference to L1, is more important. I am absolutely open to debate on that balance. I can definitely understand the argument that with such a radically foreign language, and at a beginning level, using translations would be a good thing. From my own experience thus far, I’m not sure. Again, I pick up words more easily with the L1 subtitles, but I do a lot more careful listening without L1 subtitles, and the terms I pick up that way seem to stick better. And even at my ridiculously low level of Mandarin, I often find that the translation provided by the subtitles is misleading, and that I can understand a new term better by simply paying attention to its context. Simply ignoring the advantages of pure listening seems rather silly for an experienced language learner. And while I respect people using subtitles and other types of translation at higher levels, I would never do it. At higher levels, in my experience, the drawbacks far outweigh the benefits. I don’t want to memorize hundreds or thousands of translations in a language. I want to speak fluently and elegantly. I want to be able to negotiate and debate on par with a native and, in certain settings, I want to be mistaken for one.
Emk, thanks very much for the suggestion. I agree with you that one can consider subtitles a type of proxy for mediation. However, I want to stick as much as possible to pure video, both to isolate variables better and because I believe pure listening is very effective in the long term. I have acknowledged that using English language subtitles is a compromise and does change the nature of the experiment somewhat (even if much less than someone like s_allard would argue). However, my preference is to gradually move away from that, not add more extraneous elements such as pinyin subtitles. Edited by victorhart on 13 November 2014 at 3:04am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5236 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 110 of 170 13 November 2014 at 10:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
This appears to have been removed in the latest version 3.4.3 I'd like to do this, so can you tell me what version you are using and I'll downgrade my version? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5532 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 111 of 170 14 November 2014 at 12:10am | IP Logged | |||||
Version 26.3 (09-16-2012), apparently. Note that "Dueling Subtitles" produces subtitles that work well in VLC, and poorly in several other players I've tried. It wouldn't be very hard to build a better version of this feature—the only tricky part is dealing with different numbers and timing of subtitles in the two languages. I think generating *.ass subtitles that way "Dueling Subtitles" does is a mistake. It relies on several features of the format that aren't widely supported. A better solution would be to use *.srt subtitles and insert font and styling information. Of course, with *.srt subtitles, both languages will be stacked at the bottom of the screen. But I've decided that's actually better. If I figure out a good workflow, I'll let folks know. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 112 of 170 14 November 2014 at 1:38am | IP Logged | |||||
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There seem to be ways to use double subtitles in VLC too though.
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