Hi,
I've just started using Skritter to revise my Chinese. I actually did A-Level Chinese over 35 years ago, so I have more or less forgotten everything but ordinary courses are too slow. Skritter is great - I'm using the earlier version of Colloquial Chinese for a list.

Before this, I was trying out http://www.learn-chinese-from-movies.com . My main interest is the transcripts in characters, pinyin, word-for-word English and normal English. I don't really need all four superimposed on the screen, as long as I have them in print.

I suppose a list is not possible, since this is a paid-for service? The only film you can download in full is Springtime in a Small Town, but I've also got Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Empire of Silver, both in Mandarin. The word lists are in PDF files. I suppose I can import into Skritter somehow via Numbers (seems to work for Anki) but how do I get tones on pinyin - if I write numbers, will it be imported?

MTIA
Margaret

I'm a little confused by what you're asking, but creating a word list on Skritter is quite simple. It's in vocab lists -> made by me -> new list.

You should be able to copy and paste all the words you want into it (copy and paste the characters from the PDF). If Skritter already knows the words, it'll come up with the pinyin for you.

PS. That's site looks dreadful. What is it with hard sells?

Thanks, that should do it. Sorry for being confusing. I want to learn most of the characters in those films and a Skritter list of my own would be good. I should add that I don't think I should learn 100% of them, as some are more obscure than others.

The site is a bit chaotic, but I like the idea of following films in Mandarin. What I wondered is whether I can get the transcripts of films in Mandarin anywhere for myself. I am very ignorant about the possibilities of learning/reading Chinese on the internet. Perhaps if I can get hold of scripts in simplified characters there is some software that will show me the pinyin and maybe even the English.

Of course, it would take me months to do just one film, so I don't want to collect many.

The lcfm transcripts are very good for me because I recognize the sentence patterns. But I can't imagine learning Chinese from scratch in that way.

Margaret

There are definitely websites with subtitles of Chinese movies (although my quick google search didn't show up anything useful - someone else should know).

As for other learning possibilities on the internet, Chinesepod is pretty good. And unlike film subtitles, the lessons are split into different difficulties.

Hi Margaret - I too have just returned to Chinese study after a break of nearly 30 years. The scene has certainly changed a lot. Perhaps it would be nice to correspond. Email me if you're interested
Alison in Canberra - lattimore at homemail dot com dot au

Searching for something like "film name 字幕下载" will probably find you subtitles for most films, though in my experience these don't necessarily match 100% with the dialogue, especially if there's some dialect.

E.g. searching for

饮食男女 字幕下载

Gets you a link to here:

http://www.9sub.com/sub/58719/1

Downloading and unzipping you'll get separate subtitle files for English, simplified and traditional. When I started watching films my pinyin was good enough that I didn't use pinyin subtitles, but a quick search showed up

http://www.chinese-tools.com/tools/pinyin.html

which could be used to convert manually. A quick test shows it's not perfect, but maybe good enough.

Thanks very much, Ximeng.
I did have a look at Chinesepod, but the test audio file was very longwinded and the topics look like ones intended for people living in China - e.g. dialogue at an airport, which I'm not interested in. Maybe my impression is superficial, but I think Skritter and one film or another will suit me for the time being.
Alison, I will note your email address and contact you if I have anything intelligent to report. When I learnt Chinese we had to do completely different character sets for literature, Chairman Mao (imperialists and their running dogs) and classical. It has changed now! But you're nearer the source in Australia, of course.

Margaret (margaret dot marks on gmail)

Google also has pinyin, click "read phonetically":

http://translate.google.com/translate_t?hl=&ie=UTF-8&text=%E7%89%B9%E5%88%AB%E5%96%9C%E6%AC%A2%E8%BF%99%E4%B8%AA%E4%BD%9C%E8%80%85&sl=zh-CN&tl=en#

Translation isn't great though, should be something like "Braising that fish would be a waste, better to steam it".

Hmm seems that link didn't work too well, text for translation was:

那鱼拿来红烧可惜了，最好清蒸

Ximeng, the www.9sub.com link doesn't work for me. But I tried a search on (don't really know what I'm doing) and chose the 9sub ghit:

活着 字幕下载

and got
http://www.9sub.com/sub/1579/1

I got a link to the zip file via the cache but the download timed out. I will just have to try later, I suppose.

Margaret

Yes, if Google just converted it would be OK, but I doubt that their 'translation' will quite serve my purpose. Mind you, since I started revising Chinese I discovered that my Mandarin copy of Red Sorghum, which I bought from yesasia because the DVD was not available in other versions, actually has English subtitles. But then I found out I couldn't understand them... (But it seems the film is now available again as they just showed it on German TV).
Margaret

My earlier link and the download link at the top of the page you found (http://www.9sub.com/subdownload/1747/1301845171) both work fine for me.

Well, I had tried it on Opera and Safari on Mac and got nowhere. I have now tried Firefox and got timed out and can't display website. Even Internet Explorer on the virtual machine can't show it. I think the site is too slow for what my browsers expect? Could it be because I'm in Germany? I have some cookie settings on Firefox but not on the other browsers.
Maybe they're braising the fish?

I managed to download these two zip files eventually, but they wouldn't unzip on the Mac ('unable to unarchive xxx into yyy'). On Windows, one unzipped to show it contained a .rar file. Haven't succeeded in unpacking that yet either.

Hulu.com works in North America, and is legal. The search function points to crunchyroll.com for a lot of content if you type "Mandarin" in the search box.

podster, I'm not sure what you mean. Has crunchyroll.com got transcripts? I've heard of hulu.com but it is for watching US TV, isn't it? I don't want to watch films online but to have transcripts to use with DVDs. But maybe I just don't understand what to do.

Thanks to Ximeng for sending me the transcript of Eat Drink Man Woman. I also succeeded in accessing the website, after trying many times, and unpacking files as srt, and eventually opening them.

I thought it would be fun to use this film to learn from, but I get the impression that Taiwan Mandarin is a bit different from mainland Mandarin. It might be better when I've got further with my revision.

Has anyone got a suggestion for the Mandarin film with the most natural current mainland language? I mean, does Zhang Yimou have a lot of dialect? and if so, where would I find less dialect?

Margaret

For films with easily understandable Mandarin take a look at some of the "metropolis movies", situated in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen etc. Movies with "republic setting" usually also have less dialect but can contain more difficult wording.

As for Zhang Yimou - I only know some of his movies, but apparently he's fond of countryside settings, which is of course highly correlated with more dialect.

Generally said, there's often a trade-off between "authentic Chinese culture" and clear Mandarin. Some types of comedy tend to have more dialect as well.

Thanks, K shu something - I think I will stick with Eat Drink Man Woman for the time being and look at another later if I get the feeling I'm drifting away from Beijing too much. I take your point about Zhang Yimou - it was the rural settings that made me think it might be dialect.

Margaret

Sorry, I did not understand what you were seeking. No, I don't think Crunchyroll has transcripts, and I don't know of other sources for transcripts. I am in a study group that is now considering using film to study Chinese, so I have the same question.

I am using Chinese Pod. I agree that a lot of the content is aimed at expats in China, but I think you would find a lot of cultural and current affairs content to suit your interest. I'd suggest trying a premium subscription for a at least a month, and see what is available in the pdf transcripts for their lessons.

Zeppa, there is an idea for you: Download "srt"-files for any movies. This is a format for subtitles. But if you open this file with a text reader it is like a transcript. You can download the files from this site: http://www.shooter.cn.
I just tried it out. works great. Downloaded the subtitles for the movie "Ghost" and could chooses between Mandarin and Cantonese. The only problem is, that they have mostly foreign movies.

If you have a movie as mp4 File and open it in the splayer (http://www.splayer.org/index.en.html), the player will look for available subtitles and automatically download them.