Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Language Learning with Netflix extension

soranews24.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 146 posts

Re: Language Learning with Netflix extension

#71

Post by Grue3 »

I can see several problems with this.

1. Japanese subtitles are completely different from what is said in Japanese dub. Subtitles are optimized for readability and use completely different phrasing, or even terms (for example dub says クイーン ("queen"), sub says 女王 ("jo-oh")).

2. Japanese subtitles and English subtitles are also different, because many lines have to be completely rephrased in order to express them in a (very linguistically distant) language.

3. The furigana (pronounciation hints) in these screenshots is not correct. "困った" is "komatta" not "koma ta". "妻は" is "tsuma wa" not "tsuma ha". If only they used ichi.moe's engine... (disclosure: I'm the author of ichi.moe).

Re: Language Learning with Netflix extension

#72

Post by [deleted] »

toastal wrote: post #61
thecatspaw wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldnt they need to check this based on location, and not on user interface language though?

Please don't do this. I can manage to read enough to do certain workflows, but I get so frustrated when Google presumptuously shows me dates according to the Buddhist calendar just because my IP is in Thailand. If my browser is reporting 'en-US' as the locale, the when available I expect to get that.

[deleted]

Re: Language Learning with Netflix extension

#73

Post by foxX »

skrebbel wrote: post #25
ouchjars wrote: post #18

Related tip if you won't/can't use this extension: Netflix shows normally have many more subtitles available than you get shown (and sometimes audio tracks). The selection you see depends on your interface language and locale. For example, I can't use Spanish subtitles for one show ( https://i.imgur.com/BBWuuPs.png ) until I change my interface language to Spanish ( https://i.imgur.com/bsyYJGR.png ).

I still can't get my head around how user hostile they made this. I mean, why? I understand showing the most likely languages on top, but why hide content that's available? I have bilingual kids (Dutch and Danish, living in NL) and the amount of setup we have to do each week to get and keep Danish audio for cartoons on Netflix is pretty nuts.

Because things such as Netflix are "boxed goods". You only get what's written on the box, and not a gram of extra value than that.

To better explain, with Netflix (any modern offering in fact) mentality one can't invent and market LEGO or even the PC or other general purpose toys. They want to capitalize on every bit of value from the product, and as a result, they can only give away "experiences" and not "platforms".

With a platform users generate extra value from which they can draw, with an experience it's just boxed, single-purpose consumer products.

Re: Language Learning with Netflix extension

#74

Post by Arwill »

grizzles wrote: post #8

I asked for this on HN a few weeks back. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21853163 I really hope it supports Hanyu Pinyin. So excited.

Just tried the extension, and it seems Pinyin is not supported. There is no "Transliteration" option, like there is for Japanese.

Re: Language Learning with Netflix extension

#75

Post by Mindwipe »

tluyben2 wrote: post #9

Somewhat offtopic; I wish extensions would work on mobile browsers... I watch Netflix on iOS or streaming from iOS to chromecast. I see it is recently somewhat possible to run extensions on Android via a custom Chrome install. Does that work well?

> I watch Netflix on iOS or streaming from iOS to chromecast.

If you streamed to a Chromecast it wouldn't work, as all the cast protocol sends from the iOS device is the URL of the stream and the authentication key. The Chromecast fetches any subs etc itself.

Re: Language Learning with Netflix extension

#76

Post by lordfrikk »

grizzles wrote: post #8

I asked for this on HN a few weeks back. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21853163 I really hope it supports Hanyu Pinyin. So excited.

It's not really what you asked for, but subtitles that you download from websites like zimuku.com or zimuku.cn have dual language versions: separate English and Chinese flag means the ZIP file contains separate language subs, pirate flag means it has one set of subtitles containing both languages - super useful if your video player doesn't support displaying more than one set or you don't want subs at the top of the screen).

Re: Language Learning with Netflix extension

#77

Post by yorwba »

Grue3 wrote: post #71

I can see several problems with this. 1. Japanese subtitles are completely different from what is said in Japanese dub. Subtitles are optimized for readability and use completely different phrasing, or even terms (for example dub says クイーン ("queen"), sub says 女王 ("jo-oh")). 2. Japanese subtitles and English subtitles are also different, because many lines have to be completely rephrased in order to express them in a…

The way the "koma" is placed above 困っ makes me suspect they first tokenize the text, get furigana for each segment (most tokenizers have this built-in) and then derive the romaji without correctly handling the sokuon っ when it appears just before a segmentation boundary. Usually it's represented in the romanization by doubling the following consonant, but of course that doesn't work if there's no following consonant because each token is treated as a separate string. They do get it right for "erikku" where there's no segmentation boundary.

Re: Language Learning with Netflix extension

#78

Post by gield »

hrasyid wrote: post #10

I think having subtitles in your native language can hurt learning because it tends to be easier to just follow the subtitle than actually trying to understand the target language. You can't read both at the same time. But I agree that Netflix is a great resource for learning a foreign language. I went from zero to being able to understand a normal TV show in the target language in one year, mostly by watching childr…

I respectfully disagree, based on anecdotes. The Dutch-speaking part of Belgium subtitles everything, except for shows meant for kids <8 years old. The French-speaking part on the other hand dubs everything, even interviews in the news. Guess which part of country sucks at speaking English.

Re: Language Learning with Netflix extension

#79

Post by personlurking »

vaskebjorn wrote: post #21

Also check out the lingq exporter [1] which works with Youtube as well. Does something similar but also allows you to keep an inventory of your current vocabulary on the lingq platform. I'm a huge fan. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/lingq-importer/eaa...

I looked into Lingq, watched a few short videos on it, and saw an interview with the founder, but I'm still not sure I get it. The site is mainly a text-based vocabulary acquisition tool, right?

Re: Language Learning with Netflix extension

#80

Post by zxcvbn4038 »

skrebbel wrote: post #25
ouchjars wrote: post #18

Related tip if you won't/can't use this extension: Netflix shows normally have many more subtitles available than you get shown (and sometimes audio tracks). The selection you see depends on your interface language and locale. For example, I can't use Spanish subtitles for one show ( https://i.imgur.com/BBWuuPs.png ) until I change my interface language to Spanish ( https://i.imgur.com/bsyYJGR.png ).

I still can't get my head around how user hostile they made this. I mean, why? I understand showing the most likely languages on top, but why hide content that's available? I have bilingual kids (Dutch and Danish, living in NL) and the amount of setup we have to do each week to get and keep Danish audio for cartoons on Netflix is pretty nuts.

I don’t think it is malicious - many people are overwhelmed when presented with more then a few choices, they are catering to that crowd.
Post reply on HN