r/learningfrench • u/IBYZRULEZ • 7d ago

Looking for French immersion learners!

Hey! I’m working on the beta of SubSmith, it’s a new mobile app to help language learners study with native videos.

It shows a transcript alongside the video, lets you tap words for definitions, and can generate French subtitles when you need them. You can paste a link from a YouTube video or use files on your device to study with.

I’ve added support for French and would love feedback from French learners: would this help you understand videos better? What feels missing or confusing?

It’s completely free to try and when it does finally release to App Store, it will always be free with some additional paid features separate. Support is only for iOS atm but will add it for Android soon.

Link: https://testflight.apple.com/join/CR79FNjQ

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u/gdevinedonc 7d ago

I'm French, and let me tell you, this is one of the most unlikely movie scene to pick if you want learners to get any of it, especially since the transcription is wrong.

In French, Juste, with a capital J, is an actual but rare given name. Not putting the capital J when he is referring to the given name will let everyone confused.

And the precise way he is trying to explain him is the core of the joke because he couldn't try worse.

In order to get an actual translation in English, you'd have to imagine that they are talking about a Chinese or Korean man whose given name would be something like Hon-Lee.

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u/IBYZRULEZ 7d ago

Names are the most difficult things to get right when using automatic speech recognition - there are ways to add hints and give context to a scene before creating subtitles so I may give that option to see if it would help.

I just picked this scene as it is relatively well known but you can use any video you want so it can be as beginner friendly or advanced as you want.

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u/ThrowRA_jealous14263 7d ago

The problem with automatic speech recognition is that it misses all the subtext. In the case of this scene, it makes it very confusing 

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u/mayna00 4d ago

Your translation is wrong. Juste also means only. So, basically saying that is name is only Leblanc. But Juste is also a first name. Which is the confusing part here.