Live data from Hacker News

Language Learning with Netflix extension

soranews24.com

121–130 of 146 posts

Re: Language Learning with Netflix extension

#121
post #27

Watch in a foreign language with foreign audio to increase your listening comprehension in the foreign language. Only watch in your native language/subtitles if you want to comprehend the plot more. Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4927148/

I've been wanting to learn Chinese, but I'm not sure Chinese subtitles would help that much compared to if I were learning a European language. Maybe if the subtitles were in pinyin, but I don't know if that would even be an option for a lot of media.

Watching Chinese TV shows with Chinese subtitles definitely helped me a lot, not only because the subtitles gave me a second chance to get what I missed (which is the same with other languages), but also because I could learn characters for those words I could already recognise in speech.

Re: Language Learning with Netflix extension

#122
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?

For this extension, Netflix doesn't allow Chrome mobile or iOS browsers (I think) to use a browser-based player, but redirect you to their app. Netflix are probably looking at user-agent.

Re: Language Learning with Netflix extension

#123
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mpv --sid=auto --secondary-sid=auto --sub-pos=95 --slang de,en movie.mkv Same works for youtube URLs. If it doesn't work, changing "de,en" to "en,de" may help.

mpv is so great. It was an immense downgrade to start watching movies on my ps4 with media player, netflix, plex etc. They(mostly media player) have issues on the very basics like pausing and playing video, subtitles, continue watching etc. With a computer running mpv and plugged into the TV everything just works and I can trivially fix common issues like subtitle/audio sync with my phone as the remote. On-topic: mpv…

I've made my own mpv extension for Japanese subtitle analysis too. It can also create Anki cards automatically (with screenshot and audio).

Having a scriptable media player is really something else.

Re: Language Learning with Netflix extension

#124
post #77
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…

If they're having troubles with correct romaji transliteration (and even if not, to be honest), I don't see why they don't just transliterate it in furigana then. The source data of Tokeniser dictionaries such as NAIST JDIC isn't even in romaji, so if they are using a proper tokeniser, then they're actually doing an extra step and throwing away data to transform it into romaji form.

Re: Language Learning with Netflix extension

#125

Hi. Creator here. If someone from Netflix is reading this, we'd like to be in contact (email in profile). Hell, here's my 15 minutes. I'd be interested in a job with electronics/software/mech engineering (ideally all three) in the US/EU/Australia (I can work in these countries). Some info about me on this post from earlier in the year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18809704

Great work on this extension. Thank you both!

Re: Language Learning with Netflix extension

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second the mpv-based solution, as suggested by st1ck. If you prefer vlc, it now (as of the beta 4.0.0)[0] also supports dual/secondary subtitles. Making it work seems a bit fiddly: first you need to turn them on (under Tools > Preferences > Subtitles/OSD > Dual Subtitles (at the very bottom) > Align — change to anything but unset, and possibly also adjust offset). Then, when playing a video, to select them for that…

NflxMultiSubs is still working. I wrote a patch to fix it, and took over maintence on Chrome. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nflxmultisubs-netf...

> NflxMultiSubs is still working. I wrote a patch to fix it, and took over maintence on Chrome.

That's great! It's a shame that it's (apparently) no longer open source, though obviously given the MIT license you're allowed to stop disclosing the source.

Re: Language Learning with Netflix extension

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I swear there's a subset of designers who are just blindly wrecking tons of what we collectively as an industry know about UX. "Overwhelming the user with too many options," or "Can't find the option I want" are both discoverability issues that design needs to take accountability for. Hamstringing your product by removing options because you don't know how to properly set up your discoverability is just insane to me.

Re: Language Learning with Netflix extension

#128
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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’ve traveled around the world and have seen how insane the differences are with Netflix experiences. It’s interesting though, you can almost see how they struggle with licensing issues mainly, while from a consumer’s perspective it seems like issues with their competency or offering. You get lucky sometimes, like catching Better Call Saul 2 weeks earlier in Malaysia randomly, than the US release.

Yeah but it's Netflix, the company that plays audio previews at you with no way to disable the misfeature, so they could just be fuckups

Re: Language Learning with Netflix extension

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's practical reason too. Translations made for overdubbing are designed to roughly take the same amount of time to say, and ideally to carry the punch in the same part of the sentence (so it fits with when the actor makes the corresponding funny face). This is not always trivial, to the point that sometimes translators change the meaning entirely (especially with eg comedy - entire jokes are reinvented because t…

I know this too well as I tried learning French by watching FR dubbing with FR subtitles on Netflix. There's absolutely zero resemblance between the two. Different words used, different order within the sentence (dubbing says "A B C" while subtitles say "C B A" half of the time). Pure madness. I immediately had to stop because it's been impossible to follow the two :( Practically, not many people want dubbing and sub…

I also ran into this issue with French specifically, and got frustrated and gave up. Even original language French films/shows seem to have spotty subs (or none at all!) Most of them have English subs, but that's not as helpful for learning. Did you ever find alternatives?

Re: Language Learning with Netflix extension

#130
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If they're having troubles with correct romaji transliteration (and even if not, to be honest), I don't see why they don't just transliterate it in furigana then. The source data of Tokeniser dictionaries such as NAIST JDIC isn't even in romaji, so if they are using a proper tokeniser, then they're actually doing an extra step and throwing away data to transform it into romaji form.

The feature is probably targeted at absolute beginners who don't even know kana yet. The screenshot of the settings does show the option to select a different transliteration, but romaji seem to be the default.
Post reply on HN