Promotional material for Weaving a Tale of Love Photo: Courtesy of Maoyan
"It is true that Chinese dramas and movies are reaching a wider audience globally and we are now witnessing a revival and even an ascendency compared with the film and television dramas that went overseas in the 1980s," Shang Huiyi, an entertainment industry insider, told the Global Times.
This popularity can be seen from recent data. The hit sci-fi movie
The Wandering Earth II has been released theatrically in at least nine overseas markets. Among these is North America, where it became one of the top 10 highest earning films of the week after its debut on January 18.
Looking back, the costume drama
The Untamed once trended at No.1 on Twitter in Thailand after its release in 2019.
"Not only are Chinese costume dramas popular among fans in Southeast Asia, nowadays genres ranging from suspense to reality shows, including stories about China's reform and opening-up and the fight against extreme poverty, are all doing well overseas and conveying Chinese values," Shang noted.
TV dramas and movies have jumped to become representatives of modern Chinese culture overseas.
This has led moviegoers and TV drama fans to wonder: Just who are the mysterious language bridge builders that create the subtitles that allow these works to be understood overseas?
Promotional material for Crazy Alien Photo: Courtesy of Maoyan
Baijiu or liquor?"Films and TV series translation has its own features that are different from normal translation work," noted Lu Xiang, an associate professor at the Communication University of China.
"If it's a book, we have more freedom in matching the translated language with the original language. But for subtitles, what we need to do is to simplify translations so audiences won't be hindered when trying to understand the story," Lu said.
However, culture connotations cannot be ignored during this simplification.
"During the translation of a movie or TV series, the most important thing is to allow overseas audiences to understand what it means the second they hear the line and read the subtitle. Therefore it is necessary to use an amplification technique, which means increasing the number of words in a translation," an experienced Beijing-based translator, who worked on the English subtitles for the hit costume drama
Weaving a Tale of Love in 2021, told the Global Times.
The drama made a name for itself after it landed on YouTube's "China Zone" channel by showing exquisite embroidered clothing and grand scenes from the Tang Dynasty (618-907).
"For example, the Chinese word longpao should have been simply translated as 'dragon robe.' Instead, we added the word 'imperial' in front of 'dragon' to indicate the robe's uniqueness inside the ancient Chinese monarchy system," the translator explained.
"In this way, the audience will quickly understand its importance as the subtitles flash in front of their eyes."
Another translator Chen Xuan said her team once fell into a dilemma while trying to choose between two English words when translating the script for the 2019 Chinese sci-fi comedy
Crazy Alien.
She noted that following the example of Chinese originated words such as toufu and kung fu, which have become part of the English lexicon, many translators tend to directly use the Chinese word baijiu instead of the English translation "liquor" in the hopes it too will become commonplace. However, her team finally decided to go with "liquor" since they felt they needed to take foreign viewers into account, most of whom have never studied Chinese pinyin.
After translating many works, including the 2019 movie Sheep without a Shepherd and animation series
Yao-Chinese Folktales, Chen has learned that bad subtitles can severely alter overseas audiences' perception of stories concerning China and negatively impact the reception of a work.
Promotional material for Sheep without a Shepherd Photo: Courtesy of Maoyan
Technological supportThe history of Chinese dramas and movies going overseas got its start in 1935, when the Chinese silent film Song of the Fishermen won a prize at the Moscow Film Festival.
However, despite the years of built up experience among translators, the work is still made difficult due to the complicated nature, long history and large volume of classical Chinese literature.
"You can't imagine the difficulty of the translation for the TV series that we handle," a spokesperson surnamed Wang from Chinese AI language service platform Trans told the Global Times.
She said that the process of translation in China hasn't changed much ever since translators first began working on translating sutras from India more than 1,400 years ago.
"The basic procedure can be summarized into seven steps, including expert assessments, translation and review," noted Wang.
Another issue the industry faces is the rise of AI, especially chatbots that have become increasingly popular.
Netizens recently used a chatbot to translate a well-known line from a poem by Tang Dynasty poet Li Bai: "The moonlight shines before my bed, it seems like frost on the ground."
The result looks more compact and sensible compared to the Google translation version: "The bright moonlight in front of the window is suspected to be frost on the ground."
Some people used the comparison to mark the startling growing power of AI, noting the challenges AI poses and the impact it may have on the translation industry.
Maybe now is also a good chance for the industry to make full use of this increasingly powerful AI technology, business insiders said.
Promotional material for The Untamed Photo: Courtesy of Maoyan
