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by pferdone 1132 days ago
Language learning via hearing comprehension of content not produced in the target language is almost impossible, because the subtitles never match.

However there‘s s difference between CC (close captions) and subtitles, with the former being the verbatim representation (including sfx, music etc.) in my experience.

I already commented [0] on this 2 years ago.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27420959#27435311

3 comments

Correct, and you can find CCs more likely on movies and shows that were shot in the respective language itself. For example, the stuff from https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/100396 is much more likely to have 100% accurate captions if your goal is to learn Spanish
I found dubbed shows significantly easier to listen then native shows. It is actually easier to learn from those then from native shows. Dubbing is almost always better pronounced and less mixed with background sounds.

Also, the claim that it is impossible to learn if you don't have perfect cc subtitle in target language is absurd. You can use subtitles in own language to get the meaning.

CC is also space constrained so won’t match word for word.

Subtitles and CC are not transcripts.