Subtitled TED talks for my language students

July 20, 2012 12:33 PM

I'm trying to find standalone copies of TED talks with English subtitles. I will be teaching in a room without an internet connection to Chinese faculty who have good vocabularies but are working on their delivery.

I've tried the metalinks at http://metated.petarmaric.com/ and the downloaded videos don't show subtitles in either Quicktime player and VNC. I'm using an older Macbook with 10.6.8.

I can't access youtube or the internet in the classrooms. Oh, and if anyone knows of a good working VPN that would be helpful too.

Thanks Metafilterians. I have other content to use but the videos would be nice. Oh, and if my responses are sporadic it is because I am on Beijing time.

posted by mecran01 to education (5 answers total)

Which ones?
posted by Brent Parker at 12:40 PM on July 20, 2012

Most of the talks I'm interested in have to do with scientific breakthroughs or human behavior, and usually are mildly controversial so they'll hopefully spur discussion. I can put up a list if that helps. I also have a remote server where stuff can be uploaded.
posted by mecran01 at 12:42 PM on July 20, 2012

It looks like you have to be a licensee to download the .srt files.
posted by mecran01 at 1:03 PM on July 20, 2012

Ok, I've been trying to do everything the hard way, and en masse. Videos can be downloaded individually using the instructions here:

http://translations.ted.org/wiki/Playing_TEDTalks_with_subtitles_offline

But hey, asking the question helped me find the answer and maybe somebody else will come across this in the future.
posted by mecran01 at 1:07 PM on July 20, 2012

Playing TEDTalks with subtitles offline.
posted by mecran01 at 3:12 PM on July 20, 2012 [1 favorite]