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I have gotten two videos of Chinese movies at Amazon and in fact both had Mandarin soundtracks with a choice of Chinese (simplified or traditional) or English subtitles. That is what I wanted. But in both cases I was buying blind. It seems impossible to get reliable information on the languages of a video either at Amazon or on IMDB (internet movie data base).

Can anyone recommend a source that does provide such information?

Colin McLarty
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    http://movie.douban.com/, if you mean general info. Is this what you want? Do you just soundtracks info? – George Aug 19 '13 at 18:06
  • I would like to know what languages the disk has for both soundtrack and subtitles, before I buy. Thanks for the douban site but for now I want English subtitles to be available. They probably have some but the ones I checked did not have that, or at least they do not say if they do. Their version of Red Sorghum lists only Mandarin as language. – Colin McLarty Aug 19 '13 at 19:26
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    Typically this information is given on the movie case and not really anywhere else, so when buying movies online, I'd recommend just contacting the seller directly with the question. If answering your question may lead to you buying their product, they should be more than happy to help – Question Marks Aug 19 '13 at 20:22
  • I've got the same struggle but with U.S. movies (for English subtitle). None of the seller/provider catalogs contain this information. It seems the only reliable source is the physical disc case. – NS.X. Aug 19 '13 at 20:26
  • I don't think asking Amazon would work. They will just repeat what is on their product page already. I was hoping someone here would know some web supplier that would answer such questions. There are many good Chinese bookstores online, but so far as I know none carries videos. Well we have several good Chinese groceries in Cleveland, I can look to see if we have someone good for videos. – Colin McLarty Aug 20 '13 at 00:26
  • This question appears to be off-topic because searching for the correct movie subtitles it is not really about the Chinese language. Try asking such questions on chat.stackexchange.com instead. – 杨以轩 Aug 20 '13 at 04:51
  • I'm sorry, did you think I just want to watch movies? No, a lot of people listen repeatedly to a Mandarin (or English) soundtrack subtitled in English (or Mandarin) until they can switch the subtitles also to Chinese (or English). Chinese language movies are as much about the Chinese language(s) as Chinese language newspapers are, and those are specifically listed as a topic under resources. I checked before posting. – Colin McLarty Aug 20 '13 at 09:33
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    You can try using a tablet and a subtitle app. Or a laptop. Take a look at http://shooter.cn/ – Steve Sep 17 '13 at 00:21

5 Answers5

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You see, I want to hear actual Chinese spoken at normal speed for the length of a movie or tv show. So 学说中国话 is run to hear but not really what I want.

Oh, it seems that you can find more and more Chinese news played in CCTV4 (Chinese International Channel), this is now standard Chinese news for you to listen to: http://cctv4asia.cntv.cn/

And what's more, you can watch FREE Chinese movie here：http://list.iqiyi.com/www/2/15------------5-1-1----.html

xqMogvKW
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Maybe you can find something useful at www.shooter.cn. Good luck!

ChangeMyName
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    Yes, I recommend this site as well, you can find Chinese subtitles for many movies here. You need a player that can load external subtitles too, for example: Media Player Classic (http://mpc-hc.org/). Play the movie with it and load the downloaded subtitle. – fxam Oct 01 '13 at 12:41
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You can use some video software or website.

Like PPS, PPTV, CNTVBOX, Youku, TuDou, Xunlei Kankan, Xunbo, etc etc, but you won't get English subtitle in most of them, although you can find lots of videos with English voiceover. It maybe troublesome if you want to watch movies since they ban IP address outside China accessing movies, but they don't do this on TV shows, so you can watch many of the good China's current TV Shows like 非诚勿扰，非你莫属，康熙来了，快乐大本营， etc etc.

Douban (豆瓣), Mtime(时光网）or VeryCD is equivalent to IMDB in China， IMDB sucks at Asian movies database, so you can search the movie you wanted in these sites, then looking for the specific video/movies on the resource website above.

tomriddle_1234
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If you are / were a player of World of Warcraft, you may wanna check a Chinese cartoon name I'm MT 我叫MT. This cartoon series are recorded in Chinese but have English subtitles. As a cartoon, the charters are talking mostly in oral Chinese, without so many attention about grammar, but very closed to real Chinese conversations. The subject of this cartoon is based on that online game. If you are not familiar with that, this is not a good choice.

Allen St.Clair
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For a beginner of Chinese-learning, you can watch CCTV:

学说中国话，朋友遍天下 (Learning Chinese, full with friends)：http://english.cntv.cn/learnchinese/

Besides this, you can also see this Thread.

Community
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xqMogvKW
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  • You see, I want to hear actual Chinese spoken at normal speed for the length of a movie or tv show. So 学说中国话 is run to hear but not really what I want. – Colin McLarty Sep 29 '13 at 03:01