from Hacker News

Language Learning with Netflix

by impoppy on 5/6/23, 5:46 PM with 103 comments

  • by kebsup on 5/6/23, 7:21 PM

    I don't know if this extension foxes it, but I've found learning language through Netflix difficult as the subtitles and dialog don't match, neither for dubbing or original.

  • by visarga on 5/6/23, 7:42 PM

    I think language study just got an overpowered AI teacher. This works more or less for any pair of languages.

    I am using GPT4 to reformat text from English to Japanese in easy reading mode. It is very good for language study using topics of interest.

    > 私は (Watashi wa) [I am] GPT4を使って (GPT4 o tsukatte) [using GPT4] 英語から (Eigo kara) [from English] 日本語へ (Nihongo e) [to Japanese] 簡単な読み物 (Kantan na yomimono) [easy reading mode] に変換します。 (ni henkan shimasu) [to reformat] それは (Sore wa) [It is] 興味深いトピック (Kyoumi bukai topikku) [interesting topics] を使って (o tsukatte) [using] 言語学習 (Gengo gakushuu) [language study] にとても良い (ni totemo yoi) [very good] です。 (desu) [is]

    Same, but in German:

    > Ich benutze (I am using) [ikh benoot-se] GPT4 (GPT4) [ge-pe-te-fear] um Text (to reformat text) [oom tekst] aus Englisch (from English) [aus engl-ish] zu Japanisch (to Japanese) [tsoo yap-an-ish] in einfachem Lesemodus (in easy reading mode) [in ine-fakh-em leh-se-moh-dus] umzuformatieren (to reformat) [oom-tsoo-for-ma-teer-en]. Es ist sehr (It is very) [es ist zehr] gut für (good for) [goot fuhr] Sprachstudium (language study) [shprakh-shtoo-dee-oom] mit interessanten (using interesting) [mit int-er-es-sant-en] Themen (topics) [tay-men].

    The prompt I used:

    Create a Japanese easy reading mode version of the given English, breaking it into 2-4 word chunks, providing romaji and English translations in brackets for each phrase. This is intended for language study purposes.

    ~~

    Of course this is just a reader prompt, we could also have chat mode, asking clarifying questions, asking for more examples of a phrase, generate quizzes, etc.

    I am at this weird point where I know phonetically much more than I can read. This formatting helps a lot because you get to see the Kanji first, then you use romaji and English only when necessary. Being different scripts helps separate them visually so as not to read the romaji before I want to.

  • by davidzweig on 5/7/23, 10:00 AM

    Hello. Me and Ognjen made this, the main site is now: https://languagereactor.com/

    Audio and subs usually don't match for dubbed audio tracks (it's usually ok if you watch a French movie with French subs etc.). I have code that processes the Netflix audio with Whisper ASR, it works very well. Hopefully Netflix don't mind us adding this (my email is in my profile), I think we'll bring this online in a couple of weeks. If any other video provider is interested in having Language Reactor support their site, mail me.

    Also, we're rolling out a 'virtual conversation partner' starting today: https://forum.languagelearningwithnetflix.com/t/chat-feature...

  • by yarg on 5/6/23, 6:47 PM

    I'd love to see video with subtitles in both the source language and the target language, with edges between the corresponding terms.

    (Not perfect of course, translations never are, but for me (at least) it would ease understanding.)

  • by djtango on 5/7/23, 4:50 AM

    Anyone got good Mandarin content to recommend? Have a goal to be fluent by 40...

    Am watching Three Body but the dialogue is sometimes a little tricky to follow.

    When I think about how I assimilated Japanese from Anime, the reason it's so doable (IMO) is that the language used is reasonably straightforward and they actually talk quite slowly. I found this once you watch movies in Japanese and noticed it was harder to pick out what people were saying.

  • by silverpepsi on 5/7/23, 4:41 AM

    Aside from WorkAudioBook I consider this the greatest language learning tool to exist.

    I watch Breaking Bad dubbed in Spanish, subs don't match, and paused to try to guess what they were saying every sentence and did tons of look ups. This took 600 hours. Yes about ten hours per episode. By the end I was ready to find a 100% MONOLINGUAL teacher and communicate with her through the whole of every class (incredible feeling btw) to learn things formally. Learning becomes incredibly exciting and productive when you're ready to go full monolingual with it.

    ((Was I a false beginner? No. I wasn't primed in school, I had about 1 month Spanish in 9th grade before being forcibly expelled from the class with an F. I was definitely racist against the language age 13-17. I found the teacher playing and making us sing Macarena especially distasteful and that was part of what made me hateful.))

  • by throwawaymaths on 5/6/23, 6:46 PM

    All I want is star trek the next generation in LATAM spanish. Practically know that series by heart

  • by nosefrog on 5/6/23, 7:52 PM

    My friend's startup is similar but for YouTube videos: polyglatte.com

  • by soegaard on 5/6/23, 7:32 PM

    Chrome states that the new version of Language Reactor has been disabled, because the extenstion can read and change data on all amazon sites.

  • by vignesh_warar on 5/6/23, 8:44 PM

    Happy to see my favorite extension on HackerNews! I have been using this extension to learn French, and it works quite well for me.

  • by presentation on 5/7/23, 8:54 AM

    Migaku is a paid service that does this, and then lets you record individual segments into Anki flash cards, and works for a variety of video services. Awesome!

    https://www.migaku.io/

  • by dcsan on 5/7/23, 8:54 AM

    Love this on the desktop, but it's there a way to use on an ipad - where I watch most movies. Or an app that will show subtitles on an alt lang than the spoken track?

  • by pcthrowaway on 5/7/23, 1:35 AM

    Great idea, but I wish this supported Greek.

    With new LLM tools I wonder if it would be possible to export the subtitles from netflix and then translate to the target language

  • by insomagent on 5/7/23, 8:23 PM

    I tried "Language Reactor" (Chinese) and it was full of errors and only looked up words as one character, which is borderline useless.

  • by MehdiHK on 5/6/23, 9:11 PM

    I recently switched to https://www.trancy.org/

  • by 55555 on 5/7/23, 4:10 AM

    I only watch Netflix on my Apple TV. How can I use this? Will it work if I Airplay from my MacBook to my TV?

  • by habibur on 5/7/23, 1:59 AM

    Tried it. Didn't really work for me much.

    Taking a slower approach using Youtube worked better.

  • by thekogmo on 5/7/23, 12:51 PM

  • by hackernewds on 5/7/23, 1:46 PM

    But I watch my Netflix primarily on the TV :(

  • by vanjajaja1 on 5/7/23, 1:58 AM

    also worth saying that this site has a couple of other tools that are cool. my favourite was phrase pump, but I got lazy