The modern employee must be versatile. By definition, the most attractive and highest paying jobs come with the highest competition from other candidates.

As more and more companies realize the viability of remote work, the competition for jobs will likely increase further. So you need to constantly upgrade yourself to keep up with the changing job market.

One sought after skill is speaking multiple languages. When I lived in another country, one of the ways I learned the language was watching TV programs in English with subtitles in Spanish. I know of many others who learned English this way too.

But some phrases and words cannot be translated one-for-one, grammar also is not the same in all languages. So the subtitles were not always easily matchable with audio of the TV series.

It turns out, there is an amazing company that is solving that exact problem.

It’s a Chrome Extension called Language Learning with Netflix (Note: this Link is NOT an affiliate link. I genuinely love this program, I am not sponsored by them)

Granted, for now it only works with the streaming service Netflix. But the way it works is great.

 

You do not only watch the movie/TV episode with subtitles from the language you want to learn. You also watch it with subtitles in the language you already speak. So you can compare the languages in realtime.

Other features:

• You can hover over a single word and get its definition & translation. So if you are unsure which learning word corresponds to which “known” language word, you can doublecheck.
• You can toggle on the “Automatic Pause” function, which pauses the video as soon as a sentence/set of dialogue is spoken. That allows you to compare and learn in your own time. Especially for beginner learners (like me), this feature is quite helpful!
• You can save the word for later.

I love the tool. Super useful, and it’s free (with additional paid features). Highly recommended.

The only thing I have not yet figured out yet is how to integrate it into my normal learning. Because normally when I want to watch Netflix, I want to relax. Learning a language requires a lot of brainpower. I haven’t found a good balance yet. If you have any ideas, let me know!