In English language media, you can often turn on closed captions or subtitles that are an exact, or almost exact transcription of what is being said. These are created for the deaf, but they're also fantastic for language learners!
In Chinese, they often include hard-coded subtitles with TV shows and movies. These are created, not for the deaf, but because there are many mutually unintelligible topolects that share a common written language. And yes, these are also fantastic for language learners... Once you've learned to read a few thousand characters and a few thousand words.
What about other languages?
Most of the Spanish telenovelas in Hulu.com have subtitles that are exact.
Often TEDtalks videos have closed captioning or exact subtitles in Spanish also.
Thanks, Susan. I didn't know that about Hulu.
The Spanish-speaking world really has had no long standing tradition of providing closed captions/exact subtitles with TV shows and movies, as is the case in English. It's great that Hulu is doing it. Netflix is also doing it with newer shows produced in Spain and Latin America.
I have a number of Japanese anime that have subtitles in English. The one Korean movie I have also has subtitles, as well. They're often dubbed as well I always enjoy them more when listening to the actual dialog and not the dubbed one.
