I had a job trying to keep up with subtitles, in fact I missed some crucial dialogue. I dislike reading on screen, I have a thought in the back of my mind that I'm not going to finish reading before it changes and this thought is in itself is a distraction to keeping my mind focused. I feel rushed. Any solutions?
shareLearn French?
shareLol "Learn french"
Yes that is a point. Take no offence but the reason you're struggling with the subs is maybe your french skills aren't as developed. So either improve your french by holidaying there? Maybe? lol.
But yes people speak their mothertounge fast
It's true. The French do speak fast, on average over 200 wpm, whereas the average English speaker goes at 110-150 wpm in ordinary conversation. To give an idea, a newscaster on BBC news speaks up to 300 wpm.
English grammar is much less wordy. When French is translated into English, the text loses about 20% of its word count. Complex, wordy French grammar is one of the reasons that the French seldom close-caption their films, I believe. (This means that a deaf Francophone is almost invariably obliged to be able to read English subtitles.) The problem for them is that the French close-captioning would take up too much of the screen.
I guess the French seem to speak faster on account of so many tiny words e.g. prepositions, pronouns, articles, etc., that have been streamlined out of modern conversational English. French, if translated literally, sounds like very formal Old English. If you want to learn French, you have to develop an ear for hearing groups of 4-5 words as one. Of course native English speakers slur their words into one another, too, but French really is spoken faster - it's not your imagination.
cyennne^
Wow! Another great post! And, very informative :)
I thought it was my ignorance of the language (although I have many relatives in France) that made the language *appear* to be faster, to my naive ear.
I have a suggestion for someone who thinks the subtitles go too fast (other than trying to learn the foreign language): Hit the pause button when needed? (Of course, that is if you are watching a DVD and not at the cinema or via a TV broadcast of the movie).
I realize that this would break up the movie some, but I wouldn't want to miss a good movie just because I couldn't keep up with the subtitles :)
I, myself, prefer subtitles to dubbing in foreign flicks. Also, I did not have a problem with keeping up with the subtitles in this particular film.
What I DON'T like is when the subtitles are washed out and not easy to read -- such as white font against a white background. In those cases, I have had to hit 'pause' in order to try to make out the subtitle in the scene.
Anyway, just a thought -- denise1234 :)
"I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than..a rude remark or a vulgar action" Blanche DuBois
spot on cyenne
shareBack in the 60s and 70s in Belgium, movies were captioned in both Dutch and French in movie theaters and there always seemed to be enough room for both on the screen.
shareMy version has English dubbing. You select "setup" and then "Audio English". They did a great job dubbing this film.
shareThis is an old thread, but the topic is perennially relevant.
I've found that I have a much easier time understanding the French that is spoken in some films than in others. (Actually, I am reading the English subtitles but making out French words and phrases here and there and seeing how the French got translated into English.)
As an example, I recently watched the film "Un été brûlant" (A Burning Hot Summer). I could make out fewer than 10% of the French words I was hearing and was completely dependent on the subtitles to understand what was going on. (Horrible film, by the way. Not recommended.)
But by contrast, I was able to make out closer to 80% of the French I was hearing in "Dans la maison". (An excellent film.)
In "Ne le dis à personne" I might have understood about 25 or 30%.
I've been studying French for nearly 4 years and understood perhaps 5-10% of the dialogue. Not only do the French speak fast (at least in movies), they drop whole words "Je sais pas" instead of "Je ne sais pas", and, as mentioned, slur words together "J'crois." Now, I know that Americans can certainly butcher the English language, but it's not common for them to just drop a word or combine words in a way that would not be seen in written English.
I say this as a fan of the French language trying hard to learn it: It seems odd to me that the French in general are proud of their language but seem to have a casual approach to it when speaking.
But don't us English speakers do the same thing albeit in a different way?
Let's say for example a term like 'I do not know' which is then shortened to 'I don't know' and often shortened even further to 'I dunno', or drop the 'I' completely for just 'dunno'. That's a drop of 3 words just there.
I'm writing this signature in bold so people know it's a signature
Gotcha . It seems to me though that English speakers reserve such abbreviations for casual situations, but French speakers drop little words practically everywhere. Maybe they have to do that to get a sentence out in a reasonable amount of time, or maybe I'm just a frustrated learner of the language, lol.
shareYou can try and learn a language in school, on-line, from books or whatever, but if you don't live amongst native speakers and use the language very regularly, then it will be very difficult to get the hang of the spoken version.
French like any language, has many different accents, dialects and regional and social differences. Even if you can understand the evening news in Parisian French, that doesn't mean you'll understand a random person on the streets of the same city ... ha ha