With small children at home it is natural to listen and watch a lot of 喜羊羊与灰太狼 Xǐ Yáng Yáng yǔ Huī Tài Láng). There are a lot on the net but today I found one with both Chinese subtitles and English translation. It is more than an hour long. http://tv.sohu.com/20100226/n270447418.shtml I found it to be a fun way to both get some listening and reading done.

For some "real movie" stuff we have 卧虎藏龙 Wòhǔcánglóng Crouching tiger Hidden dragon with Chinese subtitles: http://www.qiyi.com/dianying/20100419/n4160.html (this you can find on most movie sites) If you like to study the words in any Chinese movie you can usually download the movie transcript here: http://shooter.cn/search/crouching+tiger/ . I downloaded this movies subtitles from there and parsed them in my software to get all the words and that works perfectly. There are software to rip the subtitles from any DVD as well but this usually works faster. I run the words against a frequency list and only add the words that are frequent. Those I add to my own list and study in Skritter and then watch the movie every now and then to get the context of the words. This works well for me.

I have also played with the option to do my own translations. You can add/change the subtitles your self since they are in an very easy format:

00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:06,000 == 字幕制作：波士頓 == 1
00:00:47,401 --> 00:00:50,802 你的脾氣很不好這樣就好了 2
00:00:57,277 --> 00:00:59,108 怕死就別裝漢子 3 00:01:01,982 --> 00:01:03,882 你的脾氣還是不好 4 00:01:04,318 --> 00:01:07,810 不過你說話了告訴我你的名字 5
00:01:07,921 --> 00:01:08,751 呸！ 6

Takes more time but is a way to work with translations and learn something on the way.

Thanks, this looks interesting.

How does an ignorant person tell which of those files at shooter.cn is the transcript? I csn see that the first two are smaller files than some of the later ones.
I have recently got an iPod Touch and I can see that I could use the Pleco dictionary to look up characters fast there.

Margaret

They are all transcripts. Just different people uploading and in some cases even editing them. The info on each of them are about what sort it is, origin, tool for rip etc. Some of the important ones might be those:

格式 géshì = Form, type ( What tool have been use for the rip, subrip and vobsub are good ones)

语言 yǔyán= language (usually 繁 fán For traditional and 简 jiǎn for simplified if chinese)

下载次数 xiàzǎicìshù= How many times it have been downloaded. Many downloads tends to indicate both it is still there and that the quality is good.

Once you clicked on any of the links you are brought to an site where you can download. Look for the download button where it says: 下载字幕 (xiàzǎizìmù download subtitle)

Thanks very much. I am ashamed to say I discovered I already had the transcript. Have been watching the DVD, and meanwhile I imported the transcript to the iPod Touch, and using Pleco I could click on any characters I didn't know.

Margaret