Netflix (and Youtube?) language learning extension for Chrome

[roddy]

Found via lifehacker, via the avclub. I haven't tried this, but it might be of interest. I'd add caveats such as the subtitles won't always match up and are you sure you aren't just getting really good at reading quickly while not actually listening to anything, but you all know all that anyway...

 

Language learning with Netflix

Chinese content (choose your country to take geo-restrictions into account)

 

[roddy]

On 2/13/2019 at 4:57 PM, roddy said:

I haven't tried this

I have now tried it, although only for 20 minutes or so, and am hereby recommending it. The key feature I found was this:

 

It has skip back / forward buttons using the timecodes on the subtitles. This was way more useful than I originally thought. Realise you've misunderstood something earlier in an exchange - tap back a few times and the video and audio start from the start of the sentence. Didn't quite understand that last bit - tap once and it'll repeat. 

 

Way easier than either trying to drag the... whaddya call it.. you know what I mean... to the right place, or using the never quite right back-10-seconds button. 

 

I'm not actually sure I'll use it a lot, as I do very little TV watching on my desktop. But I can see it being hugely useful, and as far as I know (?) there's no other app / extension that uses subtitle timecodes like that. 

 

Also liked the way you can have the subtitles in a list down the right hand side. Oh, and you can have multiple subtitles up at once. Paid users can save vocab and so on. Oh, and wait - that subtitles list is plain text, so you can CTRL+F for other uses of vocab items. Oh, and wait again, you can copy and paste out all the subtitles? That might not have been intended behaviour...

 

I was actually watching Spanish, but after spending quite some time scrolling down the Chinese listings for something I wouldn't feel embarassed about screenshotting and giving up, here's a shot from Singles Villa, which sounds ("In a luxurious condominium complex with draconian rules forbidding all romance, two residents fall in love and dare to start a secret relationship.") like 爱情公寓 with all the joy sucked out of it. The dual subs are optional, as is the list at the side - you could just have it fullscreen and use the arrow or a+d keys for skipping back when needed.

 

You need the Chrome extension, but no need to register an account - although obviously you need one for Netflix.

 

 

[Wurstmann]

If you want to download the subs or use them with a popup dictionary take a look at subadub.

[pon00050]

I discovered this plugin today when I was watching random videos on YouTube.

The particular video that I watched shows how to export the dual subtitles and generate bilingual texts side by side.

The presenter in the video also stated that this plugin can be applied to a lot of Chinese dramas on Netflix, resulting in many transcripts for any learner of Chinese language to go through and improve their skills.

 

This certainly looks useful and I may use it in the near future when I can afford to spend more time on language learning.

[roddy]

This is now available, in a beta, for Youtube. So bad luck if you're in China, good luck if you don't like paying for Netflix.

 

I'm not doing much foreign language TV watching at the moment - it's all books and audiobooks just now. But if I was, I'd be spending a bit of time with this to see how valuable it is. I suspect it could be really useful. I did use it with an hour of Spanish TV, where I watched it without subtitles on the lounge TV initially, then rewatched on the laptop with the LLWN extension to flick through very quickly to check my understanding and pick up new vocab. 

[mungouk]

This looks really good, especially being able to find videos with proper subtitles (not auto-generated ones). 
 

[roddy]

Another useful feature - you can have the subtitles blurred and become clear on mouseover, so you can give yourself a chance to listen, and if you need the extra help, get the subtitles. Although not tried to use it much, and not sure if it might be a bit slow in practice. 

 

Been thinking that what might be handy is an option to offset the subtitles - have them appear slightly before the utterance if you want to know what you're about to hear, or slightly after if you want to check you've understood. 

 

Anyway, if you'll excuse me, I have an episode of Gran Hotel to finish...

[somethingfunny]

I used this recently while watching the Taiwanese mini-series The Ghost Bride.  It is excellent - it does all the stuff described above, and does it all really well.  The only thing that bothered me is that it puts you into "study mode", when you might just want to relax and watch a nice bit of easy TV.  But you can't really blame my inability to decide on the nature of an activity on the quality of the software.

 

On 7/7/2020 at 3:43 PM, roddy said:

Been thinking that what might be handy is an option to offset the subtitles - have them appear slightly before the utterance if you want to know what you're about to hear, or slightly after if you want to check you've understood. 

 

This would be really good.  I found myself getting a bit stressed out by the moving timeline thing that lets you know there's some speech coming up.  I inevitably found myself trying to predict what they would be going to say, and then checking on the right, and therefore defeating the listening-practice aspect.

[BlackMamba]

Does this also exist for Amazon Prime Video?

[roddy]

No, although you could drop them a line and ask if they have any plans. 

 

Other feature I just noticed: 'pause after every subtitle'. Not sure about this one, it's easy enough to pause as it is, and the extension makes it easy to pop back a subtitle or two if you're not quick enough. 

 

9 episodes of Gran Hotel left....