French videos with subtitles?

November 16, 2016 1:14 PM

Where can I find videos of French people speaking French with English subtitles?

I'm refreshing my French (took about four years in college, a while ago), and I'm looking for regular news videos, other kinds of videos, with people speaking quick-paced French but with English subtitles.

I'm open to content -- it's the subtitles and the everyday-use French that are important. I'm able to read news articles quickly but am having difficulties picking up these words when spoken.

Thanks!

posted by Cwell to Education (10 answers total)

Best answer: Québecois/Canadian, African or European productions available on your local version of Netflix? Dubbed Star Wars, Inside Out and a bunch of other American films are on Canadian Netflix with English subtitles right now.

If you can read French fairly well, but have problems catching fast-spoken French, you might also try French broadcasts with French subtitles, such as various episodes of Tout le monde en parle, which sometimes operates en franglais with anglophone guests. (The opening ads don't have subtitles.)
posted by maudlin at 1:45 PM on November 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: My first suggestion was Netflix as well. Pretty much everything on Canadian Netflix is available in French with English subtitles.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:01 PM on November 16, 2016

Best answer: You might consider watching films in French but with French subtitles. That's probably what's helped me the most while I was learning English.

A quick search gave me this, which links to YouTube or Dailymotion videos of French films and documentaries with French subtitles.

You can also podcast the daily news bulletin, Le Journal en Français Facile, which is basically a beginner's French newscast. You can find it easily.
posted by Kwadeng at 3:04 PM on November 16, 2016

The movie Blind Date on Netflix
posted by Sassyfras at 3:04 PM on November 16, 2016

Best answer: The show Spiral on Netflix is an intense crime drama set in Paris. There are four seasons. Warning: it is really good and you will binge it.
posted by AFABulous at 3:38 PM on November 16, 2016

Best answer: Not a direct answer to your question, but:

I've been actively reviving my college French, too. I've spent an hour or an hour and a half every day for the last several months watching normal news from France and Belgium. At first it was pretty incomprehensible, but after a while I started to understand more and more. Now I can more or less tell what each word is that's being said.

The French sound system is just really different from English -- while grammar and vocabulary are relatively similar. I think the mind simply needs to adapt to it, and can do so in response to prolonged and repeated exposure.
posted by bertran at 7:33 PM on November 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

Best answer: This looks useful: French flicks on Netflix. All that website might be useful for you.
posted by TheGoodBlood at 7:35 PM on November 16, 2016

Best answer: If you have existing French movies without subtitles, you could search for the relevant .srt (subtitle) text files.
posted by quinndexter at 1:43 AM on November 17, 2016

Best answer: Some French TV channels have "replay" options with subtitles (closed captioning) in French. See for instance France 2 here. I agree with other posters that watching videos with French subtitles rather than English ones will be much more efficient for learning the language.
posted by elgilito at 2:56 AM on November 17, 2016

I just finished watching A Very Secret Service (Au Service de la France) which I found a lot easier than Spiral to understand. It's lampooning hideous attitudes in 1960s France (and lampooning Mad Men's glamour), so you'll need to put up with causally horrendous buffoons, but the protagonist is decent. So, potentially problematic, but I think it explores a different set of French attitudes than Spiral does.
posted by ambrosen at 3:24 AM on November 18, 2016