English studies

[Patrick & Li]

I am a member of Columbia House and they sent me a list of movies with Chinese subtitles. There arent many but there are some. Love Story is one of them. I'll see if i can find that E-mail or i will send them another to get that list again.

 

Patrick

[Mick]

PJ, I taught English in China for five years and think I can safely say that movies are not a good medium for learning the language, unless you are dealing with advanced students. Movies are full of slang, idioms, and other rhetorical devices that drive students crazy and also translators. That's why the subtitles are often off- base and translated into things that make no sense whatsoever. Just too confusing for most beginning and/or intermediate students. They are entertaining but lend little to the actual improvement of communication skills. It is hard to capture the true meaning of an idiom or slang term outside of its cultural context. I would suggest focusing more on reading and language tapes. Further, I have found that watching movies with subtitles does little to enhance a persons listening skills. Just my two jiao my friend.

[johnnybill45]

I'm assuming there are no ESL (English as Second Language) classes in your area? I would think ESL classes should supplement any other thing you might be doing.

 

Good luck.

[Guest meilun]

Hi-

 

I've been studying Mandarin for a while and I've found that one of the best ways to learn (besides just interacting with native speakers on a day-to-day basis) is to watch tv shows/movies that are in Chinese with Chinese subtitles. Then you practice both listening and reading, and if someone has an accent or talks too fast it can really help to be able to see what they said (in the language they said it) in the subtitles.

 

So, since your fiancee is learning English, it might help her to watch English movies with English subtitles. Pretty much all DVDs come with English subtitles (whether you're buying in the States or in China), so this might be helpful. I do agree with everyone else, though, that watching a movie in English with Chinese subtitles won't help much. If I watch Chinese movies with English subtitles, I definitely pay less attention to what they're saying and more attention to the English subtitles just because it takes less effort to understand them.

 

I hope this helps! Good luck.

[Guest ycJason]

I think it's a much better way to learn english by watch a movie with english subtitle, not the chinese subtitle, as many have said, it's mostly inaccurate translation anyway. But if you really want to get the movies with chinese subtitles, I suggest you try to get some older movies DVD, the new one that just came out, people who translate them probably just spend 3 hours on it and try to rush it out the door to sell, (for pirate films business, timing is everything :-). the older ones some have official chinese release, which professional translator has done the translation, should be a lot better.

 

my financee is going to be here next week, I plan to watch some TV shows (like Friends, which has a lot of conversation) with english subtitle on it, also some Discovery Channel stuff with english subtitle, I think it will be more useful.

 

by the way, if you have boardband connection, there are a lot of places where you can download tons of shows if you don't want to buy the DVDs.

 

Jason

[Bryan_Qunying]

My wife and step daughter have been watching some of the educational programing provided by CCTV9, which is an all English 24/7 station.

 

As for the movies, near my wife's house is a small VCD rental shop where I found titles such as "Star Trek Nemesis" along with several other titles.

 

I would think if you were not sure, you might be able to contact the production company (i.e. MGM, TriStar, etc.) and ask if the title you are looking for has Chinese subtitles.

 

Bryan