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Do subtitled Mandarin TV series exist? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| junnis22 Newbie Joined 5163 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 1 of 12 23 September 2010 at 7:40am | IP Logged |
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I am trying to organize the practicality of using the same method for learning Chinese that I used when I was starting out with Japanese, which is to internalize the phonetics by listening to hours and hours of it--and deductively trying to understand grammar and vocabulary by matching English subtitles to spoken lines. Because there is a sizable community of English-speaking fans of Japanese comics, anime, and soaps who are responsible for the existence of a comparatively huge and readily available online network of subtitled Japanese TV shows, it was relatively easy to always have something to watch this way. (Since this is only my second post to the forum and I don't want to be pegged as someone discussing illegal file-sharing, it should be noted that this material is readily available, perfectly legally, from streaming sites like hulu.com and others, in subtitled Japanese no less.)
I know nothing of Chinese media, however, or how much of it is as readily viewable in its original language, set to English subs. What I do know is that there are grades of intelligibility, and cartoons of all sorts tend to be the most comprehensible. I think that's because the voice actors have to be absolutely precise in order to compensate for animated lips' lack of precision. Documentaries are the next most comprehensible (you can't even see any lips moving, so documentary narrators also speak clearly), followed at a distance by live action movies and TV shows. Documentaries tend to be boring, speaking frankly. Therefore, I would like to start out with Chinese by watching a bunch of Chinese cartoons set to English subtitles. Is it practical? I do have a Netflix account, but like I said, I'm not too keen on live action, which is most of what they have. Any thoughts? Edited by junnis22 on 23 September 2010 at 7:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6377 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 2 of 12 23 September 2010 at 8:13am | IP Logged |
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I find cartoons in general to be unclear, because there are usually lots of funny voices involved. This wouldn't apply so much to japanimation, which tends to be more directed at adults, but cartoons in other languages are often like this. I find that the best movies are the dubbed ones. The translation process tends to make the language a bit simpler and less rich in slangy terms. The sound is recorded in a studio and often there's less background noise. In addition, if you get the DVDs, you'll often have both audio and subs in several languages.
As for Mandarin material, there's a lot of kung fu soap operas that are absolutely wonderful to get lost in. There's a large fan community which painstakingly subtitles these dramas that are otherwise not available to people who can't understand spoken Mandarin or read Standard Chinese. There are two problems here, though: 1: The language of these series is sometimes a bit archaic, as they're set in historical times. Usually this varies, with the hero and the spunky girl sidekick speaking mostly modern Standardized Mandarin and the old master and the emperor speaking half-Mandarin-half-Classical-Chinese. 2: Though these dramas are simply unavailable by any other means and copyright in China is pretty much a joke, I suspect they're still technically illegal. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Soulglider009 Newbie China beyondbounds.or Joined 4971 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: Mandarin | Message 3 of 12 23 September 2010 at 9:06am | IP Logged |
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You're probably a bit out of luck here. China doesn't produce very many cartoons, and
when it does as Ari said the voice actors speak in a very animated way - it's definitely not somewhere that you would want to start. I wouldn't watch those kung fu soap operas - VERY little of what is spoken you are going to be able to use, although they do speak quite clearly. Instead I would watch some regular TV Dramas, like 奋斗、我的青春谁做主 etc. There is a drama that I started off watching that is very childish but still entertaining called 醋溜族。 As for English subtitles.. I'm not sure. Good luck finding them though. I watched them all with Chinese subtitles and looked stuff up. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| junnis22 Newbie Joined 5163 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese | Message 4 of 12 23 September 2010 at 9:35am | IP Logged |
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Thanks. Good to know about the cartoons. I'd assumed all countries would make cartoons like Japan and America where you have clear speaking by the voice actors, but if they're not worth checking out, then I'll look into other avenues. I forgot all about Kung Fu. Is there a lot of that in Cantonese that I should learn to keep apart from the Mandarin ones?
I could care less if something has expressions I'll be able to use or not. As long as it uses Mandarin sentence structure and Mandarin phonetics and it's interesting. At this point I have no interest in using Chinese subtitles and a dictionary. If it's not fun and easy, I won't enjoy it; and if I don't enjoy it, I won't do it. If I don't do it, I'll make no progress. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6265 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 5 of 12 23 September 2010 at 9:51am | IP Logged |
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www.mysoju.com has a whole bunch of subtitled Mandarin TV programs, both from Taiwan and
the mainland. You may want to pick one set in modern times. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6377 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 6 of 12 23 September 2010 at 10:01am | IP Logged |
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You might want to check out YesAsia.com for DVD purchases.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 5845 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 7 of 12 25 September 2010 at 7:44am | IP Logged |
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Look at this study
http://www.language-education.com/chi/doc/LF/E035.pdf It shows that standard subtitling is actually the least effective, even less effective than simply listening to L2 audio. Reverse subtitling was found to be the most effective in vocab comprehension. Your brain simply ignores that L2 audio over the L1 subtitles, whereas in reverse, the L1 audio gives the brain time to devote processing power to dissect the L2 text in terms of the instantly understood audio. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Jezrul Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5027 days ago 27 posts - 44 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 8 of 12 25 September 2010 at 8:15am | IP Logged |
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Google sugoideas.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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