Transcription Project

[BaneGlory]

Any possibility of getting our hands on the Transcript for "Bad Kids" the Reddit forum seems effusive over how great it is (although I guess there are a few versions now) but here's the thread with a link to free 720p viewing of the show here on IQIYI.

[markhavemann]

8 hours ago, BaneGlory said:

Any possibility of getting our hands on the Transcript for "Bad Kids" the Reddit forum seems effusive over how great it is (although I guess there are a few versions now) but here's the thread with a link to free 720p viewing of the show here on IQIYI.

 

Is that a real iQiyi site? It's the first time I've seen an English version. Looks like the whole series is up there (I just clicked a random episode). Amazingly there are soft subs, I'll have a look if I can grab them. 

 

For anyone who doesn't want to go to reddit first, here is a link to 隐秘的角落 (The Bad Kids) on what seems to be an English iQiyi site: 

https://www.iq.com/play/19rxta2pno

[markhavemann]

隐秘的角落 The Bad Kids (2020) - Full Series (12 Episodes)

 

I've added subs for this show. I really enjoyed watching it so I'm glad there are subs available. I've uploaded them to the drive and will update the main page of the project shortly. @BaneGlory

 

This time I've uploaded as an Excel spreadsheet (a new sheet for each episode), including timestamps for each line so they are easy to find. I thought about getting the English subs and putting them alongside but it's a a little labour intensive. If anybody wants this and is willing to help with a bit of the grunt work (probably no more than 20-30 minutes work) just let me know. 

[markhavemann]

As a side note, I guess iQiyi might be trying to target a wider audience with what looks like an English version of the website: 

 

https://www.iq.com/

 

Luckily this seems to break away from the annoying embedded/hard subtitles normally found in all Chinese shows. This means it's possible to extract them as text. If anybody is interested in other shows found on this site please let me know and I'll see what I can do. 

 

 

[BaneGlory]

Wow, amazing. Is it easy enough to throw up the Traditional subs too? (I have the New Tong Wen Tang extension and can convert them in browser, so I can get by without, but I'm afraid it breaks some of them).

 

Also, if anybody knows how to add these kinds of subs into LingQ.com let me know, my plan is just to copy column A and put it into the import lesson text box.

[markhavemann]

17 hours ago, BaneGlory said:

Wow, amazing. Is it easy enough to throw up the Traditional subs too? (I have the New Tong Wen Tang extension and can convert them in browser, so I can get by without, but I'm afraid it breaks some of them).

Added to the main Excel file (which I've moved into a folder of its own)

 

English can be found in separate text files too (but hasn't been added to the main excel file because they times don't seem to match with the Chinese)

 

[BaneGlory]

Thanks!

Quote

 

What to do with transcripts

See this discussion on how to use transcripts to study.

 

 

Also, I just realized the discussion on how to study is one of my threads, feels good to be mildly useful on this forum   I've gotten some ideas from MattvsJapan and LingoSteve lately, I'll consider updating it or adding a comment. I haven't gotten into use Pleco Fcards or CTA, although I do think the CTA is a good tool. I think LingQ.com is a pretty useful tool for reading the transcripts in context, this I do, it's pretty brainless. And it seems like there are poweruser ways to make whole sentence flashcards with his his 'MIA addons' and review them , and you can also make mp3 files to practice listening to condensed(less than half the length of the show) audio only versions of your shows and movies. 

 

[markhavemann]

6 hours ago, BaneGlory said:

And it seems like there are poweruser ways to make whole sentence flashcards with his his 'MIA addons' and review them

This looks pretty cool, pity that Netflix is kind of a nightmare to get working in China with a VPN (lots of stuff has Chinese dubs too) 

 

You can get selectable subtitles like this on the iQiyi (international) site too:

 

1. Pause the video when some subtitles are visible. 

2. Press Ctrl+Shift+C to get the site inspector tool (Chrome). 

3. Hover over the subtitles (you will see them highlighted in blue).

4. Click on them. They will now be selected in the developer tools below. 

5. On the right hand side you will see
iqp, iqpdiv {

display: block;

} 

6. Copy this line to the clipboard:

user-select: text;

7. Click to the right of "block;" to add a new line.

8. Paste.

9. You can now select the subtitles as they play. 

 

If reloading the page stops the media player controls from showing up, press Ctrl+F5. You will need to repeat the steps to get selectable subtitles again. 

 

This is for Chrome but it would be similar in other browsers. 

 

Edit: Here is a Chrome extension to capture audio playing in the current tab. Not the most convenient but it works: 

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chrome-audio-capture/kfokdmfpdnokpmpbjhjbcabgligoelgp

[BaneGlory]

For those interested in upping their Beijing/Dongbei/erhua listening/culture skills, Siyi's Playlist:

The Beijing-born-woman who finally got me into really plowing ahead and learning Chinese, recommends a playlist of older shows and youtube channels for learning, or at least getting used to the dialect:

 

•  Siyi 思伊's  Beijing dialect playlist (1/58)  -   
  • The old shows have only 'hard-coded' subs unfortunately.
  • The Youtubers e.g. 袁腾飞官方频道 Tengfei Official seem to have 'soft-coded' subs. 

 

Anyone have any experience with any of these shows?  List in a Gsheet if that's easier for you to look at.

• Any good?
  • Haven't had a chance to search douban.com yet.
• Transcripts out there?
  • I haven't had a chance yet to cross reference this project yet I admit. 
  • The Great http://jiong3.com/ website/resource might also have an exportable vocab list but again I haven't checked.

 

 

 

 

[Dr Mack Rettosy]

Thanks @markhavemann for initiating this project, and thanks everyone forn adding resources. Hope to be able to contribute some day.

 

I have a request to add to the "wish list". Is anyone else familiar with the work of 许知远 (Xu Zhiyuan)? He is a Peking educated journalist who hosts an interview series called 十三邀 where he has long form conversations with a lot of leading Chinese scholars and socialites. 十三邀 can be found in completion on tencent video and there are many interviews on youtube too. I believe there are three seasons with 13 episodes each. The youtube videos have hard-coded simple character subtitles, I'm not sure if tencent display is hard or soft.

 

Here is an example video where Xu Zhiyuan interviews philosopher Chen Jiayang

 

 

https://youtu.be/FMHJAYk_oRA

[markhavemann]

沉默的真相 (2020)

E01-E12 (full series)

.srt files in simplified and traditional characters, English subs, as well as plain text versions.

 

I'm on episode 8 and really enjoying it, would definitely recommend.

 

Until now I honestly haven't found anything massively useful to do with all these transcipts and subtitles. @Flickserve's recent post about ShareEx sent me down the rabbit hole and I found this video about mpv video player and a plugin for it called mpVacious. I'm sure it's probably been mentioned on the forums but I haven't checked. I'll add some info about it to the main post of this thread once I've had more time to experiment, but it's definitely worth checking out.

[brownnoser]

There’s anki, subs2srs, morphman, anki addon pinyin helper

[markhavemann]

8 hours ago, brownnoser said:

There’s anki, subs2srs, morphman, anki addon pinyin helper

 

Interesting. Looks like there is a post on Morphman for Chinese here: https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/53766-morphman-now-has-branch-supporting-chinese/?tab=comments#comment-412315

 

I would like to see someone posting some instructions for the workflow/process of exporting a whole show/movie with subs2srs (seems like that's what it's for?), processing the cards to add whatever else they need with the tools you mentioned, etc. It would be worth linking to in this thread.

 

I'd also be curious to hear about anyone's experience of having cards for a whole movie or show like this, arranged in "optimal" order. Was it useful/fun? did you find that a lot of the material was above/below you and really it would be better to focus on just the i+1 stuff? (forgive me if there are already posts like this)

[Flickserve]

10 hours ago, markhavemann said:

I would like to see someone posting some instructions for the workflow/process of exporting a whole show/movie with subs2srs (seems like that's what it's for?), processing the cards to add whatever else they need with the tools you mentioned, etc. It would be worth linking to in this thread.

 

It's here.

 

https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/42254-ideas-wanted-how-would-you-improve-this-study-process-for-new-vocabsyntax-acquisition/?do=findComment&comment=318501

 

 

 

I think the value is in sentence mining.

 

You have a certain vocabulary that you can read in example sentences. That's not a problem. The difficulty is hearing it in spoken naturally. 

 

If you had multiple spoken sentences with the written equivalent, you can first search for them in anki, then also drill the listening component of the vocabulary or phrase that you are interested in. Then hopefully you would pick up the listening better. Then you might also want to shadow at native speed using your preferred sentence(s).

Edited February 8, 2021 at 11:39 AM by Flickserve
Iink added

[艾墨本]

On 12/26/2018 at 12:57 PM, markhavemann said:

 

EDIT: iq.com seems to be iQiyi's international version. Shows here have soft subs. If you find a show that you want subs downloaded for, let me know and I will see what I can do. This goes for shows in NETFLIX too. 

Any chance of getting subs for 奇葩说? Preferably season four and later.

[markhavemann]

13 minutes ago, 艾墨本 said:

Any chance of getting subs for 奇葩说? Preferably season four and later.

Annoyingly the Chinese is all hard subs so they haven't made them available as text, despite all other languages being available that way. Same with the version on YouTube, soft English subs with Chinese hardsubs.

[markhavemann]

Added three new series with full subs. Since discovering the magic of MPV video player, the MPVacious plugin and subs2srs, I'm focusing on srt files rather than plain transcripts. 

 

Would love to include videos files to match the subs but I suspect that would get me into trouble. 

 

独家记忆 - Full Series (24 Episodes - Subs)

iq.com 

 

赘婿 (30 Episodes - Subs)

iq.com 

 

鬓边不是海棠红 Full Series - (Subs)

iq.com 

[Flickserve]

9 minutes ago, markhavemann said:

Added three new series with full subs. Since discovering the magic of MPV video player, the MPVacious plugin and subs2srs

 

Time for some research!

[Bernd]

Dear Mark,

 

Can I still reach you over this page? I am interested to produce transcripts of the Chinese series 小别离 (A Love for Separation, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPeYxzXtZRg&t=350s).

 

Please let me know if I can contact you via email.

Best regards,

Bernd

(Bernd Sebastian Kamps)

 

[MTH123]

Hello – I love the concept of learning Chinese this way. And, there are especially great ideas and information in this thread! Over a year ago, I started a very long-term, on-and-off hobby along these lines. I want to learn what people are actually saying in Chinese dramas, rather than a concise, loosely translated or even “creatively” translated version.

 

I’m still mostly in the set-up stage of the project. I’ve only dabbled with translating a couple of episodes so far, so I know where I’m headed. I used a combination of Google Translate and MDGB Chinese Dictionary. It actually worked better than all of the translations I’ve seen on Viki (the best), Netflix (the second best), and the rest (distant thirds). It isn’t perfect either, but it’s actually noticeably better. That says more about the nature of English subtitling of Chinese dramas than my ability to translate. Anyway, I may have stumbled across some set-up-type stuff that others in this forum may find helpful.

 

SUBTITLE FILES

 

The first four websites listed below have countless free Chinese dramas to choose from. Netflix requires a paid subscription and has a fraction of the number of Chinese dramas of the first four. But, it’s still a decent amount. Four of the websites below almost always have a complete set of Chinese subtitle files, as well as English subtitle files. Viki rarely has a complete set of Chinese subtitles, but it has the best English subtitles. Chinese and English subtitle files from the websites below can be downloaded for free.

 

https://www.iq.com

https://wetv.vip/en/

https://w.mgtv.com

https://www.viki.com/ (English subtitles only)

https://www.netflix.com

 

For the first four websites listed above, I use https://downsub.com/ to download subtitle files for free. DownSub only recently added MGTV, so it’s a little flaky. But, it can still be made to work every time. I hit the download button twice in rapid succession. Sometimes, I have to do this more than once or twice.

 

The method for downloading subtitles from Netflix is completely different. It’s described below. The terminology may not be very familiar to many, but it’s easy.

 

1. I use the web browser Firefox. In the Tools menu, select Add-ons and Themes. Search for Greasemonkey and install it. It’s free. Alternatively, if you use the web browser Google Chrome, then in the Window menu, select Extensions. Search for Violentmonkey and install it. It’s free too. Other web browsers probably have a similar process.

 

2. Install the free script at https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/26654-netflix-subtitle-downloader. Greasemonkey or Violentmonkey takes care of the rest. That’s it for installation.

 

3. In Netflix, start an episode of a drama. There will be a drop-down menu of options to download subtitles, like “Download subs for this episode” and “Download subs from this ep till last available.” But, before you pick an option, see the hint below.

 

4. Hint: For “Languages to download:”, type “zh-Hans, zh-Hant, en” without the quotes, so you only download Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and English subtitles. Otherwise, you may get a ton of languages.

 

5. The downloaded subtitle files are in the WebVTT format, not the SRT format. So, I use the website https://subtitletools.com/convert-to-srt-online to convert them to the SRT format for free.

 

As for what I do, whenever English subtitles are available on Viki, I mix-and-match them with Chinese subtitles from elsewhere. Otherwise, I prefer Chinese and English subtitles from Netflix, iQiyi, WeTV/Tencent and MGTV (MangoTV), probably in that order. (Eventually, I’ll create my own English subtitles.)

 

VIDEO FILES

 

Each of the websites listed below has hundreds of Chinese dramas that can be downloaded for free. Each of them has most of the most popular Chinese dramas.

 

https://chauthanh.info/

https://minidrama.net/

https://mkvdrama.com/

 

The videos never have hard-embedded English subtitles. Most of the time, they don’t have hard-embedded Chinese subtitles either. Most of the time, video files from these websites exactly match the subtitle files from the other websites. But, sometimes they don’t.

 

Tip: For MkvDrama, it’s best to check the comments section first to see if there are missing episodes, because there are frequently missing episodes. This is unlike ChauThanh.Info and MiniDrama, in which there are never missing episodes. If an entire drama is no longer downloadable, then it’s stated up front.

 

Tip: The download speed for ChauThanh.Info is very slow. In Firefox, I use the free add-on Free Download Manager to get up to 4 times the speed. An alternative is to pay to get very fast download speeds that are similar to MiniDrama and MkvDrama. It also makes more dramas downloadable. It doesn’t cost much.

 

I should mention that the video files sometimes already include soft-embedded Chinese subtitles, as well as soft-embedded English subtitles. But, this is hit or miss. There’s a way to extract the subtitle files, so you can work with them. But, that’s a separate topic. For the intrepid, do an internet search on “extract subtitles MKVToolNix.”

 

When subtitles and videos don’t exactly match, I use the free open-source software Aegisub to manually edit the subtitles. Subtitles can be cut or inserted. All or selected rows of subtitles can be time shifted.

 

I use the free open-source software VLC Media Player to watch dramas. Open a video file and add the subtitle files. Then, select one or none of the subtitles to be played at a time.

 

Tip: In both Aegisub and VLC Media Player, a black background can be added behind the white subtitles, similar to the Viki and Netflix approaches. On all the other major platforms, a dark background isn’t used. Then, subtitles can sometimes be hard to separate out from a light-colored picture. So, I prefer the Viki and Neflix approaches.

 

WHAT TO WATCH

 

I use https://mydramalist.com/ to identify dramas to watch. MyDramaList is for English speaking people. It’s naturally skewed towards what’s available with English subtitles. In particular, I search for the most popular Chinese dramas according to users of MyDramaList: https://mydramalist.com/search?adv=titles&ty=68&co=2&so=popular. It has many other search criteria that you can use too.

 

Just as points of reference, an average number of ratings (aka popularity) is 1500, and an average rating is 7.8. For me, as a generality, the higher the number of ratings, the more likely I’ll like the drama. The rating usually doesn’t matter much to me. Stated differently, a popular drama usually doesn’t have a poor rating.

 

I hope this helps a little. Happy Chinese learning!