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I know this is HN so I don't want to distract from the technical achievement and how genuinely useful this can be. I also don't want to tell you how to raise y

I know this is HN so I don't want to distract from the technical achievement and how genuinely useful this can be. I also don't want to tell you how to raise your kid. You do you, it's not my family. But I want to share how important it is to watch foreign spoken language movies and TV, especially as a kid, to be able to speak multiple languages later in life. You'll notice that in every country where TV and movies are regularly dubbed in the local language, the English levels go to shit. Dubbing is partially responsible for this because kids are not exposed to a different language on a regular basis. I remember wanting to watch a dubbed movie with my mom as a kid, and she told me "We will watch the original instead, dubbed movies don't have a soul". It stuck with me. She was absolutely right. Today I am working on my sixth spoken language. Causation not guaranteed, merely implied.

true_religion 3y ago
Counter point. My parents didn’t let me watch dubbed shows, and didn’t speak our native language because rhetorical wanted me to speak unaffected English. I can’t speak any languages, but in school my English was insanely good. To the point of perfect scores in the college scholastic exams, and when I was in uni for engineering, I took on an English major for fun with essentially no impact on my work load. You can generalize but you can also specialize.
Baeocystin 3y ago
I can't say I agree with dubbed movies having no soul. Greater accessibility to a wider audience is not something to deride, or hold in contempt. That being said, I do agree that listening to other languages is a great thing. My father was a linguist, and when we would watch subtitled media, we'd play a game where we'd try and hear the cognates, pick out the most common words, figure out the basics of the grammar as we went along. It was a lot of fun!
- leobg 3y ago
  One of my favorite movies was "Scent Of A Woman". But when I watched it in the German-dubbed version, I was appalled. It made the whole movie suddenly seem like a comedy. To me, the translation had killed its "soul", for lack of a better term. I still want my kids to learn English. And ideally also one or two other languages, like Chinese. As Nietzsche said: "So you have mounted on horseback? And now ride briskly up to your goal? Well, my friend - but your lame foot is also riding with you!"
jeroenhd 3y ago
>We will watch the original instead, dubbed movies don't have a soul I disagree. It's all about the quality of the voice actors and the effort put into localisation. Having grown up on Dutch dubs of many cartoons, I honestly find the Dutch voice actor of Spongebob better than the original. I'm missing the extra energy that the Dutch VA seems to have put into the voice when I hear the original, even if the original is very good. Though text on screen isn't translated, puns and references are, sometimes overhauled completely. The talent pool for Dutch voice actors isn't as big as I would've liked (you often hear the same five VAs in every show on a given channel), but some of them really put in the work. Many of them only do kids TV and commercials (really freaked me out to hear Ash Ketchum try to sell me soap one day) and not every VA is as good/paid enough/gets decent scripts, but there are some real gems to be found in dubs. Last year I found out how Ukrainian dubs work and I was astounded by how weird the experience was. I'm used to dubs having only the voice track swapped out, but the Ukrainian shows seemed to just have the acties talk over the original show, like this AI tool does, and I honestly can't imagine ever getting into a show that's dubbed like that. I assume people get used to this, but I found it rather annoying. Blanket statements like "dubs have no soul" serve nobody. There are good dubs and there are bad dubs, and the ratio will probably differ depending on the language you're talking about. Dismissing all dubs ignores the real heart and soul some dubbing teams have put into their works. That doesn't mean I disagree with the idea of exposing kids to more languages, but I wouldn't expect kids to learn much from just TV shows and movies in the first place.
- imp0cat 3y ago
  I think the main point is that small kids get the basic building blocks for learning languages from anything they hear (even if they don't understand it yet), so listening to as many languages as possible when they are young will make learning languages easier for them later in their lives.
  - jeroenhd 3y ago
    I've heard this argument before, mostly from companies trying to sell language courses for kids. As far as I know it's true that kids pick up on languages much easier when they're young, but I'm not so sure those skills will stick if all they can converse with are the TV. That's quite different from having a speaking partner such as a teacher or a bilingual parent. I suspect this is why shows like Dora the Explorer are set up like an interactive game. I myself have been exposed to subtitled English shows and movies all my life (not every show or movie was dubbed, and there were some German shows that made it through as well) but I don't think I actually started speaking any English until I needed it to interact with strangers in Runescape, while at the same time I stopped watching any dubbed shows. Almost all of the content I consumed became English language content. Almost passively learning a language by enveloping oneself in it works (though actual study will help you advance quicker), but you need more than TV. I can't find the actual paper I read on this once (thanks, SEO spam!) but as I recall, the biggest advantage kids have to is learn pronunciation without an accent; picking up vocabulary and grammar don't seem to be too affected by age from what I recall.
Freak_NL 3y ago
Mostly I agree with this, but for animated works dubs can be an integral part of the product when done right, and some are even tweaked for different languages (although I strongly reject adjusting the actual cultural content for different locales). The dubs have to be made in concert with the original though. There is also a lot of plain crap out there. But absolutely; for anything featuring live action, dubs just damage the original. I watch a German man building his massive Lego city on Youtube (narrated and recorded quite professionally) with my five year old son for a few minutes before bed. He is now at the point where he is trying to give this weird language (to him) a place in his head. Some words are familiar (being Dutch), some are foreign, and you can see the feedback loop happening when words do land; he wants to know what that man is saying. I don't except him to pick any German at this point, but the basics of immersion in another language are there.
- scrollaway 3y ago
  Yes I agree with you. Actually, good-quality dubbed animated movies (= disney) is what I often use to help learn a new language.
leobg 3y ago
FYI, I agree with you in all points. As I said in another comment, I wouldn't want to live in a world where everything was dubbed into my language. Any translation takes something away from the original. And dubbing even more so. I also believe that being exposed to a foreign language long before you ever make a concious attempt to learn it is important. I wouldn't think I'd succeed in teaching my toddler to say "Daddy" if he hadn't been listening to the rest of us speaking for many months before. I can see how this headline can make me seem like a bafoon of a dad. But I think I'm really not. :) When I watch The Anatomy Lab with my daughter, that's a time when I want our conversation to focus on how digestion works. Not on what the guy on the screen was saying just now. But of course there will also be times where I'll want our conversation to be about exactly that: What a foreign speaker just said. How those words come together. How the may have the same root as the words we use in German. Also, while AI has its place, I prefer to have these conversations with her myself.

true_religion 3y ago

Counter point. My parents didn’t let me watch dubbed shows, and didn’t speak our native language because rhetorical wanted me to speak unaffected English. I can’t speak any languages, but in school my English was insanely good. To the point of perfect scores in the college scholastic exams, and when I was in uni for engineering, I took on an English major for fun with essentially no impact on my work load. You can generalize but you can also specialize.

Baeocystin 3y ago

I can't say I agree with dubbed movies having no soul. Greater accessibility to a wider audience is not something to deride, or hold in contempt. That being said, I do agree that listening to other languages is a great thing. My father was a linguist, and when we would watch subtitled media, we'd play a game where we'd try and hear the cognates, pick out the most common words, figure out the basics of the grammar as we went along. It was a lot of fun!

leobg 3y ago
One of my favorite movies was "Scent Of A Woman". But when I watched it in the German-dubbed version, I was appalled. It made the whole movie suddenly seem like a comedy. To me, the translation had killed its "soul", for lack of a better term. I still want my kids to learn English. And ideally also one or two other languages, like Chinese. As Nietzsche said: "So you have mounted on horseback? And now ride briskly up to your goal? Well, my friend - but your lame foot is also riding with you!"

jeroenhd 3y ago

>We will watch the original instead, dubbed movies don't have a soul I disagree. It's all about the quality of the voice actors and the effort put into localisation. Having grown up on Dutch dubs of many cartoons, I honestly find the Dutch voice actor of Spongebob better than the original. I'm missing the extra energy that the Dutch VA seems to have put into the voice when I hear the original, even if the original is very good. Though text on screen isn't translated, puns and references are, sometimes overhauled completely. The talent pool for Dutch voice actors isn't as big as I would've liked (you often hear the same five VAs in every show on a given channel), but some of them really put in the work. Many of them only do kids TV and commercials (really freaked me out to hear Ash Ketchum try to sell me soap one day) and not every VA is as good/paid enough/gets decent scripts, but there are some real gems to be found in dubs. Last year I found out how Ukrainian dubs work and I was astounded by how weird the experience was. I'm used to dubs having only the voice track swapped out, but the Ukrainian shows seemed to just have the acties talk over the original show, like this AI tool does, and I honestly can't imagine ever getting into a show that's dubbed like that. I assume people get used to this, but I found it rather annoying. Blanket statements like "dubs have no soul" serve nobody. There are good dubs and there are bad dubs, and the ratio will probably differ depending on the language you're talking about. Dismissing all dubs ignores the real heart and soul some dubbing teams have put into their works. That doesn't mean I disagree with the idea of exposing kids to more languages, but I wouldn't expect kids to learn much from just TV shows and movies in the first place.

imp0cat 3y ago
I think the main point is that small kids get the basic building blocks for learning languages from anything they hear (even if they don't understand it yet), so listening to as many languages as possible when they are young will make learning languages easier for them later in their lives.
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  I've heard this argument before, mostly from companies trying to sell language courses for kids. As far as I know it's true that kids pick up on languages much easier when they're young, but I'm not so sure those skills will stick if all they can converse with are the TV. That's quite different from having a speaking partner such as a teacher or a bilingual parent. I suspect this is why shows like Dora the Explorer are set up like an interactive game. I myself have been exposed to subtitled English shows and movies all my life (not every show or movie was dubbed, and there were some German shows that made it through as well) but I don't think I actually started speaking any English until I needed it to interact with strangers in Runescape, while at the same time I stopped watching any dubbed shows. Almost all of the content I consumed became English language content. Almost passively learning a language by enveloping oneself in it works (though actual study will help you advance quicker), but you need more than TV. I can't find the actual paper I read on this once (thanks, SEO spam!) but as I recall, the biggest advantage kids have to is learn pronunciation without an accent; picking up vocabulary and grammar don't seem to be too affected by age from what I recall.

Freak_NL 3y ago

Mostly I agree with this, but for animated works dubs can be an integral part of the product when done right, and some are even tweaked for different languages (although I strongly reject adjusting the actual cultural content for different locales). The dubs have to be made in concert with the original though. There is also a lot of plain crap out there. But absolutely; for anything featuring live action, dubs just damage the original. I watch a German man building his massive Lego city on Youtube (narrated and recorded quite professionally) with my five year old son for a few minutes before bed. He is now at the point where he is trying to give this weird language (to him) a place in his head. Some words are familiar (being Dutch), some are foreign, and you can see the feedback loop happening when words do land; he wants to know what that man is saying. I don't except him to pick any German at this point, but the basics of immersion in another language are there.

scrollaway 3y ago
Yes I agree with you. Actually, good-quality dubbed animated movies (= disney) is what I often use to help learn a new language.

leobg 3y ago

FYI, I agree with you in all points. As I said in another comment, I wouldn't want to live in a world where everything was dubbed into my language. Any translation takes something away from the original. And dubbing even more so. I also believe that being exposed to a foreign language long before you ever make a concious attempt to learn it is important. I wouldn't think I'd succeed in teaching my toddler to say "Daddy" if he hadn't been listening to the rest of us speaking for many months before. I can see how this headline can make me seem like a bafoon of a dad. But I think I'm really not. :) When I watch The Anatomy Lab with my daughter, that's a time when I want our conversation to focus on how digestion works. Not on what the guy on the screen was saying just now. But of course there will also be times where I'll want our conversation to be about exactly that: What a foreign speaker just said. How those words come together. How the may have the same root as the words we use in German. Also, while AI has its place, I prefer to have these conversations with her myself.