So I’m not really sure if this is ok to ask or not…but here goes:
Anyone know a good website where I can download Chinese subtitles for movies I’ve downloaded? The ones I get now sometimes have English, but most have nothing.
Also, if there are, can you please explain how to get the two (movie and subs) to sync together? Thanks.
It is tricky finding subtitles sometimes, and then you also have to get your media player to display them correctly. I’m not at home atm, so don’t have any saved links available, so I’ll instead recommend downloading PPS.TV: It streams movies and series. You may have to change a language disaply option in Windows. If you can’t read Chinese, just look through the lists till you find English names 
Just Google “movie name + subtitles”. There are tons of sites out there, and there are usually multiple languages. It’s hit and miss - some sites work, and others don’t.
Given how bad some of the English ones can be, I shudder at the possible quality of the Chinese ones.
You probably want .srt files, not .sub.
To play the subtitle: put the .srt file in the same directory as the .avi file, and make sure the file names are identical. Play the .avi and the subtitles should display. If the gods are with you, they’ll be synced.
If the gods aren’t with you, you’ll have to sync them. Subfix is a Macintosh application that can do this. I can’t speak to the Windows world. (I should point out that all of what I’ve heard is when using Apple computers.)
Bonus teaching tip: I sometimes use these subtitle sites to get hold of “screenplays” for movies or TV shows that I might use in class. You can convert the file to a document and edit out a lot of the code.
shooter.cn is all you need. Most of the subtitles are simplified Chinese .srt files, but those are trivial to convert to traditional Chinese. This site is especially good for TV shows. For instance, I’ve been watching Mad Men with my girlfriend and their turnaround time from when a new episode is aired to when perfectly translated subtitles (which, for Mad Men, is quite impressive) are posted is about two weeks. Of the literally several hundreds of movies on my hard drive, there are 3 movies I haven’t been able to find subtitles for.
I can also vouch for shooter.cn; I used it recently this weekend to introduce the new ABC show “Flash Forward” to my girlfriend. You just need to verify that the subtitles have been created for the specific file you downloaded. For example if you downloaded:
“FlashForward.S01E01.HDTV.XviD-2HD” - You need to get a subtitle that looks like this:
“flash.forward.s01e01.hdtv.xvid-2hd.chs.srt”
I had a huge problem displaying traditional Chinese subs on Windows 7 and XP using Windows Media Player so I am using VLC Media Player and this method to display simplified Chinese subs:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080117071317AAMx1ud
Is there a good way to convert simplified chinese subs to traditional?
I use copy-paste method to google translate. It still sometimes messes some not-one-to-one characters, but still better than most. And it doesn’t seem to mess with the meta-info.
Anyways, even that shooter.cn has got traditional subtitles for many movies, so I’d suggest looking a little bit more. You can say simplified usually that they contain “.chs.srt” (or zhs.srt) and traditional by .cht.srt/.zht.srt.
What would be peachy is if someone could figure out how to switch the traditional characters over to pinyin.
THAT would be cool.
good info in here, thanks
[quote=“bob”]What would be peachy is if someone could figure out how to switch the traditional characters over to pinyin.
THAT would be cool.[/quote]
I believe that’s my cue: Pinyin subtitles for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. (The first in a series of posts.)
[quote=“cranky laowai”][quote=“bob”]What would be peachy is if someone could figure out how to switch the traditional characters over to pinyin.
THAT would be cool.[/quote]
I believe that’s my cue: Pinyin subtitles for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. (The first in a series of posts.)[/quote]
Neat (I guess). I bumbled along and wound up here…
after my computer said it couldn’t read the file or whatever and did I want to do a search for program to read it, etc…
Does that have anything to do with anything or do I need to do something else or vut exactly?
What we need to do I reckon is get the pinyin loaded onto DVDs.
A friend of mine just turned me on to BS.Player. It’s a media player that plays all of the common video types (avi mpg etc) and then automatically goes out and finds all available subtitles for it. I think it may be like that shooter.cn thing. I’ve used it for 5 movies and TV shows so far and have had good hits on 4 of them.
Did you try to watch Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon?
What happened?
I uploaded the BS.Player but when I tried to watch the video I got a message saying that the source file might be corrupted.
No worky.
Bob, maybe you’ll have better luck with my most recent set of subtitles, in this case for The Story of Stuff, a video that is available for legitimate free download from the Web.
Links and more info here: Pinyin subtitles for ‘The Story of Stuff’.
I wound up seeing that on youtube. Awesome.
Couldn’t get any of the pinyin to work though.
My windows doesn’t recognize the file (whatever that means).
Anyway, I was looking for something in Mandarin with pinyin subtitles, something a bit easier too actually…
[quote=“cranky laowai”][quote=“bob”]What would be peachy is if someone could figure out how to switch the traditional characters over to pinyin.
THAT would be cool.[/quote]
I believe that’s my cue: Pinyin subtitles for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. (The first in a series of posts.)[/quote]
Nice! 
I haven’t tried it yet, but let you know if I can get it to work. I use vlc media player for most stuff that windows can’t open. Haven’t had a problem so far.
[quote=“cranky laowai”]Bob, maybe you’ll have better luck with my most recent set of subtitles, in this case for The Story of Stuff, a video that is available for legitimate free download from the Web.
Links and more info here: Pinyin subtitles for ‘The Story of Stuff’.[/quote]
Will definitely check this out, also. some neat stuff on that site of yours. Thanks, Cranky! 
I use copy-paste method to google translate. It still sometimes messes some not-one-to-one characters, but still better than most. And it doesn’t seem to mess with the meta-info.
[/quote]
Thanks, I can’t get this to work though. I’m using English windows. My burner recognizes the text as simplified chinese fine, but nothing else on my computer will, from Notepad to Word to browsers, they only show the coding. I have East Asian language support enabled. Using Google Translate whatever combination of encodings i tried I still came up with gibberish.
A more complete set of subtitles (with Pinyin, English, and Hanzi versions) for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is now available:
chinese-forums.com/showthrea … post227550
OK, got the movie (mp4 file), got the subtitles (srt file), got the player (VLC and BSPlayer, and some others).
Now, the movie plays fine and the players find the Chinese subtitles, but… those are all scrambled up.
I use English XP and have Office XP Tool: Global IME (Traditional Chinese) installed.
Why can’t the player display the Chinese characters correctly?
Any solution?
Has anyone noticed the huge gulf in the quality of the translation Traditional over Simplified? ML China translations suck. :aiyo: