My Chinese skills are a bit lacking when it comes to googling. Can any kind person tell me whether a subtitle file exists online for the 1987 TV series Dream of the Red Chamber? I have the DVDs. The English subtitles are wonderfully incomprehensible. I think it does offer the characters, but the speed at which subtitles appear varies wildly.

TIA

I don't know about the subtitle files, but those DVD's sound awesome. One of my goals is to watch TV versions of all four of the classic Chinese novels.

Usually when I watch DVD's with subtitles, I make use of the pause button. I'll usually pause to read the subtitles as soon as they come on screen, then listen to the dialogue. It may triple my watching time, but the reading practice is invaluable.

Quite interested with these DVD. Going to check if I can find them in Taipei!

All episodes available legally here http://dianshiju.cntv.cn/costume/hongloumeng/videopage/index.shtml

or on youtube with eng subtitles!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugilbZMF4Bo

Thanks for the responses. I am sure you will have no difficulty finding them online. I ordered this set of 12 DVDs from yesasia.com a couple of years ago when I didn't find them any other way.

The Youtube version is exactly what I have. If you understand the English subtitles, you are cleverer than I am.

Am really interested in having the subtitles as a text file so I can put them on my iPod.

Btw there was a new TV version (2010?) which I gather is not so very wonderful as they hoped. The 1987 version is well cast but obviously a bit outdated.

I mean I am looking for the subtitles in Mandarin. I know I could show them on my DVDs and use the pause button, but if I had them as a text file I could use my Pleco dictionary to look up characters fast.

I've read the novel in translation twice, so I can follow the films. But if I had the text file it might help with Chinese practice.

You can find all subtitles for the 1987 tv series from many sites in China but my favorite is this:

http://shooter.cn/xml/sub/155/155303.xml

This package will give all episodes as a one file per episode. The format is like this) from episode 1:

1 00:03:09,600 --> 00:03:16,370 据说 这是一个刻在石头上的故事
2 00:03:17,150 --> 00:03:20,200 由于岁月的剥蚀
3 00:03:20,900 --> 00:03:26,308 朝代 纪年 地舆 邦国
4 00:03:26,439 --> 00:03:30,600 都已经失落无考了
5 00:03:31,960 --> 00:03:36,930 石上记云：当日有两位神仙

Very convenient and I love this way of studying.

Thanks very much, Mandarinboy - I thought no-one understood, so I went to shooter.cn myself this morning and I downloaded that very file - it took me ages to work out how to unpack it and it comes up with garbage in TextEdit (Mac) - I don't know what to do next. Maybe if I go into pleco on the ipod and import it from there, it will be OK. Anyway, you have confirmed that I had chosen the right file, which was my problem (I learnt about shooter.cn in an earlier thread).

Those file are rar packed so you can use any rar uncompressor. In windows i think that winrar is best. Don't really know about mac. Most of the files are coded in Big5 or GB and if you can't view them with that coding you can just rename them to and HTML ending and open them in an webbrowser that converts to Unicode such as IE. Then you can save it as text or what every you like. Or use any software to convert. You find some Java based ones at http://mandarintools.com/. You can also install software to handle that such as Chinastar, NJstar or similar. Sorry, I don't use Mac so can't help out with that I am afraid.

OK. I do have Windows too - use it for work. I uncompressed them OK. But the last time I did this I think the file was UTF-8, and I suppose this time it wasn't. TextEdit is like Notepad and last time it was OK. I will see how I get on with the extra information. Thanks very much.

I've started watching Dream of the Red Chamber while reading the subtitles with Pleco, and it is phenomenal! I'm reading along with the Gladys Yang translation English translation (Amazon Kindle) - I'm sure some of the older translations are good as well, but the use of pinyin is very helpful. Also, the English and Chinese wikipedia pages, along with the Cliff Notes, help me make sense of what's going on - if anyone has better resources, those would be great to hear about as well.

To read the SRT files in Pleco:
1) Decompress the RAR with WinRar.
For each .srt file:
2) Change the file name to .txt
3) Open the file with Word 2003, which correctly identified the encoding as GB2312.
4) Copy and paste the text into Notepad.
5) Save the new file, manually selecting the encoding as "Unicode."

I tried using Word to save a Unicode text file, but the beta Android version of Pleco displayed that as garbage.

Has anyone successfully located the SRT files for the classic CCTV version of Journey to the West (2 seasons running in 1986 and 1999)? I've found SRT files for some newer TV and movie versions, but I'd much rather go with the classic.

@Mandarinboy and @tortue:

Thanks for the great resources!

Thanks, Chris. I hadn't got round to trying Word for Windows yet - the last script I did this with was OK on Mac. Have done some of this with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but then I thought I might be able to follow the Red Chamber DVDs.

Btw I don't know the Gladys Yang. I read The Story of the Stone in the David Hawkes version.