CaptionPop is a site you can use to search YouTube specifically to improve your language knowledge of choice. Enter your native language, the language you want to learn (Japanese, I’m guessing, since you’re here), and then enter any ol' search term.
The results can be pretty mixed, but you should see results grouped by whether they have English + Japanese subtitles, just English, or just Japanese. For the example above, I searched for the Japanese musician YUI and found this old, live recording that had both Japanese and English subtitles.
Once you find the video you want to study from, you’ll see timestamped subtitles both in your native language and the one you are learning. As the video plays, the subtitles will move up, behind the video so you can continue to follow along. There are tons of handy shortcuts to help you get the most out of the site too:
- Space: for easy stopping and starting
- T: Show Translation, to check if you’re right
- R: Repeat, which repeats the line you’re currently one
- ↑↓: Up and Down, to hop around wherever you want without needing a mouse
- Starring: to save captions to your account
Because you need to enter a search term to get results it can be a bit tricky at first to find something you want to actually use. Though if you’re the type of person who wants to watch an English language video with Japanese subtitles, there are certainly a lot of those. You may need to try searching many different things before you find something worthwhile. And keep in mind, anyone can add something to YouTube, so be critical of the videos and the subtitles you find.
Once you do find some nice videos, this site is easy to get the hang of and has a lot of potential.