Are there any good torrent sites directed to the local or mainland crowd? ie Chinese subtitles?
None that I can find. Instead of the nice clean torrent search engines we laowai’s have set up, the only sites I can find torrents on are forums (which require registration, are riddled with dead links, and there is no way to know if a torrent has any seeders) and Chinese search engines, most of which are terrible and remind me of one of those rom/warez sites that really have nothing but you don’t find that out until you’ve already clicked through 20 pages of BS.
If anyone knows any better please, let’s hear it.
It’s pretty easy to find Chinese subtitles for western movies downloaded from English-language torrents. Just Google the name of the movie and 字幕 and you’ll find dozens of mainland websites with .srt files. They’ll be in simplified Chinese, but since they’re plain text, it’s trivial to convert them to traditional Chinese. Rename the .srt file to have the same name as the movie file and most movie players (VLC, MPlayer, etc.) will automatically show the subtitles.
Great advice, but doesnt the media file have to match the subtitle file?
You mean in terms of syncing the subtitles to the audio? I’ve found that the majority of the .srt files I’ve downloaded have synced almost perfectly with the movie.
Or do you mean in terms of format? .srt files are just plain text files and if you put them in the same directory as the movie, VLC will automatically recognize them and give you the option to display them.
Yea i was mainly worried about sync-ing the audio with the subs, but I guess you answered my question. I will take a look at it.
Thanks for the advice
Yeah, some time the subtitles don’t sync properly. For that, I use a utility called Subtitle Workshop, which is great for syncing and combining two different files together.
Actually it’s easier if you just go to http://www.shooter.cn/ or http://www.subom.com/ and search the show/movie name you want (in English) and they will already be synced for that particular release like a XoR TV release or Diamond Movie release for example. Then make sure that both files are named the exact same way. Most of the rar files will have English, Traditional and simplified Chinese subtitles included no syncing is required.Also you don’t need to register it’s just a search engine and then links to the files. Hope this helps.
how would one do that? i have english windows, with east asian language support enabled, but i can’t see characters, just the coding.
figured workaround using e-mail prog but if there’s a way to do directly in word, i’d still appreciate it.
how would one do that? I have English windows, with east Asian language support enabled, but i can’t see characters, just the coding.[/quote]
Alidarbac … I’d be interested in the answer too 
Well, I’m on a Mac, and there’s a traditional <-> simplified Chinese converter embedded in OS X. I’d imagine that there’s some freeware utility to do that on Windows.
Thanks for the suggestion on the shooter.cn. That looks a bit easier than crawling through Google.
If Shooter is down you can try http://www.subom.com/ it’s also got the same style just not as good as shooter.