Any series in Chinese available outside China?

[deremifri]

Hello,

 

my Chinese is still in the early stages, which is why I would like to improve by watching a TV series. Now, I have seen the Grand First Episode Project, but unfortunately not one of the shows I tried there worked for me.

What I am looking for:

A series in Chinese (not necessarily made in China) where matching Chinese subtitles are available in as a seperate, downloadable file. Also, this series should be watchable outside of China.

Although I have been looking for a long time, I was surprisingly unable to find anything which matches these criteria. The only place I know which provides Chinese subtitles is shooter.cn, but they do so only for foreign movies/series. If there was a Chinese dub, it was not available for streaming, and if it was (the only thing I found was Ranma 1/2 sigh) the subtites did not match.

I need the separate file so I can work with a pop up dictionary while watching.

 

Does anybody know of a show? Thanks a lot

[icebear]

Streaming is much more common these days. Take a look around YouTube with some of those titles, plenty of content is up there.

[tysond]

There are generally almost no downloadable subtitles for Chinese TV shows.  I found them for A Bite of China, that's all.

It is a bit annoying because the TV stations definitely have the transcription of each TV show... you just can't get at it in a machine readable format.

Even if you buy DVD box sets, it's not in subrip format, you'd have to OCR them, and there's no pre-trained OCR that I could find.

 

I used Pleco's character recognition and pointed it at the screen (only works if the characters are in the black bar at the bottom of the screen).

But my arm gets tired from holding up the device to point at the screen!

 

So, what I did was get my reading skills up to the point where it's only one or two words per line that I have to look up.  

I just pause and use Pleco's writing recognition (in my opinion far superior to the input methods that come with most devices) and just write the characters that I don't know.  This is very fast when you have decent writing skills, and is fun and good practice too.  Plus I can just save all the interesting vocab into a list in order to turn it into flashcards or whatever later.

[roddy]

We should have partial transcripts (not necessarily subtitle files) for 奋斗 (6 eps) and 家有儿女 (10 eps), and at least the first episode of each is available on youtube (former, latter). The latter is more appropriate for beginners, but we have some excellent vocab lists available for 奋斗. There are also complete transcripts for 武林外传 (beginner unfriendly) and I think 士兵突击?

 

If you're going to insist on timed subtitle files, you might be onto a bit of a loser, I think - that, plus something suitable for your level, is a bit of an ask. I think the 士兵突击 ones came from shooter.cn, so they might be what you want. Not sure if we ever saved them to this site or if you'll have to find them there.

 

Apologies if you've already seen those, but figured I might as well detail them for anyone else interested. 

[deremifri]

Thank you a lot Roddy, this is quite good. I do not necessarily need an actual subtitle file, I just want to be able to look up words as I watch. Your work is much appreciated.

[roddy]

Reward me by posting in those topics as you watch - comments on plots, vocab questions, absolutely anything. The more active they are the more people use them, and the prouder the folk that posted them all those years ago feel. 

[Ruben von Zwack]

My advice would be that, if you can't find exactly what you are looking for, then just watch any series that you find genuinely interesting with English subtitles (or none).

It is possible to listen to the Chinese audio, and only look at the English subtitle for confirmation, and realise "so that's how you say it in Chinese".
 

You don't neccessarily need to see the character to look up a word. Just type the pinyin as you hear it into Pleco or whatever you are using. You will get maybe 3 different suggestions and with a bit practice, you can tell which one must be the one you want, even before you read the definition, just by the tones alone. It is good 听力 tīnglì  practice!

 

When I do this, I do quantity over quality. I am happy as long as I can follow, and only make sure I 100% understood a scene that I particularly liked (by pausing, rewinding, looking up words). I am impatient so it would drive me crazy if I couldn't properly watch a series that I like. And I trust that important vocabulary and phrases will pop up over and over again anyway.

[deremifri]

@Ruben:

That is also a good suggestion, however I am far from being able to hear the tones when something is delivered in native speed.Still, with English subtitles this is probably doable.

 

If anybody is interested, I actually found exactly one show (an anime to be precise) on youtube, Inuyasha with approximately 100 Mandarin dubbed episodes, and matching subtitles available on shooter.cn

[Ruben von Zwack]

Yeah, you are right. I got to admit, I am a Wuxia fan, and for whatever reason, on those series they speak slower and more clearly than natural speed or (I think) other TV shows. Maybe because when you're noble, proud and heroic, you can't slur and mumble?

 

Speaking of anime, I watch the manhua 星游记 Xīng Yóujì aka Rainbow Sea. One Youtuber was so kind to upload the complete series with Chinese subtitles in a convenient playlist:

Playlist on Youtube.

 

I found that manhua via this recent topic http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/42374-cartoon-series-on-youkuor-similar. Maybe you can go there and add your source for Inuyasha?

[abhoriel]

I'm not sure about chinese-forums policy on stuff like this but, but emule websites have been linked in the past.

Quite a good place to download Chinese TV series is http://www.asiatorrents.me/

This is a torrent website by the way, so it might be best if you are already familiar with how torrents work!

You can download them in HD if you want, and most of them have Chinese subtitles (some have English subs too). It should say on the description anyway..

[Silent]

For movies also http://www.opensubtitles.org and http://www.subtitleseeker.com/ can be very useful, not sure about series.

 

If you have embedded subtitles you could create a transcript yourself by listening and typing it. The embedded subtitles help you distinguish between the homophones. Sure, hell of a job, but also a very good listening exercise.

 

I agree with Roddy on  奋斗 and 家有儿女 being good for beginners. I'm not sure about recommending 家有儿女 over 奋斗. 家有儿女 has simpler vocabulary but in 奋斗 they on average speak a bit slower allowing you more time to process it.

[roddy]

Deremifri, how has your TV watching been going? 

[victorhart]

I don't know whether it meets your needs as far subtitles go, but I love and recommend the Boonie Bears. It's a kids' cartoon, but well done and easily available on YouTube.

[deremifri]

Thanks for the input so far, Boonie Bears is unfortunately not available with subtitles.

 

However, I finally found this (don't know if it was already discussed in the endless depths of this forum):

 

The Dream of the Red Chambed, CCTV's version from 1987, which is supposed to be the best. With seperately downloadable chinese subtitles

 

Here the video with english subtitles:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugilbZMF4Bo

with chinese subtitles:

http://www.iqiyi.com/dianshiju/20110608/39a22ae1d2a90a76.html?src=frbdaldjunest

 

and MATCHING (at least for the first few minutes, did not check any further) downloadable mandarin subtitles here:

http://www.shooter.cn/xml/sub/134/134254.xml

[hedwards]

It's also worth considering just doing your own subtitles for movies and TV shows you find. Granted, it does presuppose a certain level, but if you're having a hard time hearing what they're saying, then you can bust out praat and set it loose on the section and it'll show you what's being said. With a bit of practice, determining the tone and the actual sound shouldn't be too hard. Unlike English, Chinese languages have a much smaller number of syllables, so it should be doable before too long.

 

Now that I think of it, I should give this a try, I know that praat is already helping with my tones, but I wonder how much I could learn like this.

[Nathan Mao]

爱奇异 is a great resource for watching movies and television serials from mainland China.

Easier to use as a smartphone/tablet app than on a regular computer, tho.

[Vivi MENG]

 

 

爱奇异 is a great resource for watching movies and television serials from mainland China.

Mao, you mean 爱奇艺 right? I can't open it in the UK, anyone knows the solution of that?

[Nathan Mao]

Oops，yes, 爱奇艺.  I really need to stop hitting the space bar so quick when typing Chinese.

I have a cousin-in-law in the UK, I'll see if I can find that out for you.

 

But here's what I do know:

It is, I think, region-specific for China. My wife has QQ and WeChat (weixin, can't remember the characters) that she registered in China. Her xiaomi smartphone was also purchased and activated in China.  So when she signed up for 爱奇艺, she used her QQ ID# and now accesses 爱奇艺 freely in the US.

I have an iPad, purchased and registered in the US. I signed up for WeChat using my US-registered email address, and then used my WeChat log-in to validate my 爱奇艺 log-in, and can also access 爱奇艺 freely in the US.

 

However, having an 爱奇艺 log-in seems to only matter for limiting your downloads.  Before getting my 爱奇艺 log-in, I could only download 5 episodes per 24-hour period.

 

I downloaded 爱奇艺 for my desktop computer, and it was much harder to download...you could only download one episode at a time, regardless of being logged in or not.  Then when I tried to use it last week, it wouldn't allow me to even stream anymore on my desktop computer.  I think they have finally started enforcing region restrictions...but only for desktop computers, because I can still watch streaming and download on my iPad.