Netflix Spanish Audio/Subtitles

[czarina84]

I wanted to use Netflix to learn Spanish.  I figured seeing the words on the screen and hearing them in Spanish would help me get a better grasp on them.  I chose a movie that I know by heart in English: The Nightmare Before Christmas.  However, the audio and subtitles are saying two different things!  There are words in the audio that aren't in the subtitles.  For example, the audio says, "Esta Halloween" and the subtitles say "Es Halloween."  The audio is correct, right?  The English translation is "This is Halloween".

[Elimination]

Unfortunately this is very common. I briefly worked online with a transcription service and by default (that is, unless the client ordered otherwise) they would do a "clean read transcription," which, as opposed to a true verbatim transcription, often omits certain words, like false starts, stutters, filler words, redundancy, etc...
I suppose subtitle companies do the same. I'm a native Spanish speaker but I always prefer the original language and if it's not Spanish, I'll pick English subtitles. So it's clear to me then that what I'm reading and hearing doesn't match perfectly in almost all cases.

I would suggest, if you already feel somewhat comfortable with the language, to continue doing as you were and notice the different expressions of the same sentence, or to learn synonyms, it could be useful. But if you're still somewhat new, it might be more confusing than beneficial. I still think being around a language through entertainment is a good idea!

[Miya]

The same thing happened to me with Japanese. I tried to use Japanese audio and Japanese subtitles to watch something on Netflix and the two were completely different. The meaning was basically the same, but the two didn't match. It confused me for a while so I stopped using Netflix as a way to learn. 

[Chris_A]

I didn`t know that Netflix had such bad translations to its foreign language movies and series. Watching a movie or a show in a language that you are trying to learn, is a great idea, but it requires perfect subtitles for this method to work. Weird that Netflix does not provide those.

[Oricat]

Well the right translation is "Esto es Halloween", the subtitle says "It's Halloween" of course that changes even the letter of the song but not quite the "essence". I think that you should not trust the subtitles of Netflix, it has showed me that it is not so accurate so it is better not using it as a learning tool, maybe just for practice hearing like  just seeing the movie in Spanish with English subtitles.

 

[czarina84]

Unfortunately this is very common. I briefly worked online with a transcription service and by default (that is, unless the client ordered otherwise) they would do a "clean read transcription," which, as opposed to a true verbatim transcription, often omits certain words, like false starts, stutters, filler words, redundancy, etc...
I suppose subtitle companies do the same. I'm a native Spanish speaker but I always prefer the original language and if it's not Spanish, I'll pick English subtitles. So it's clear to me then that what I'm reading and hearing doesn't match perfectly in almost all cases.

I would suggest, if you already feel somewhat comfortable with the language, to continue doing as you were and notice the different expressions of the same sentence, or to learn synonyms, it could be useful. But if you're still somewhat new, it might be more confusing than beneficial. I still think being around a language through entertainment is a good idea!

I have stopped using it as a way to learn the language.  I was just unsure which was correct: the audio or the subtitles since they were saying the different things. I also started to work for a transcription service.  Clean read for us was to fix grammar problems and slang.  I don't understand how that would affect this song.  The English translation is "This is Halloween."  The audio says, "Esta Halloween".  The subtitles say, "Es Halloween."