Thesis on translation of cultural items

[poehe]

大家好！

As a student of Mandarin and English I will have to write a thesis in the next academic year to complete my course. A fellow student once wrote a thesis on the film Shrek. He analysed how Western cultural items in the movie (e.g. Pinocchio, Ogres, the Big Bad Wolf, Cinderella etc.) were translated in the in the Chinese subtitles. A film analysis like that really appeals to me, but unfortunately I cannot think of a film that resembles Shrek regarding the (omni)presence of Western cultural items. Perhaps it would be interesting to analyse the other way around, so to investigate the way Chinese cultural items are translated in English subtitles (or Dutch for that matter).

My question to you is: can you think of films with A LOT of Western or Chinese cultural items? Or perhaps a tv-series?

Thanks!

Poehe

[Daan]

How about adaptations of the Mulan story? I'm not sure whether there would be a sufficient amount of culturally specific terms, but I think it would be interesting to see what the differences between the original Mulan story and the Disney movies are, if any.

Perhaps you could also look into how shows such as The Sopranos are translated or dubbed in China: with lots of slang and pop culture references, these tend to be hard to translate. I recall reading an article on how difficult it was to render The Sopranos in German, but I cannot find it right now, sorry.

[poehe]

Yes that might be interesting! I reckon there will be obvious changes to the story, given the fact that the 1999 film was produced by Disney. However, the 1999 Mulan animated film is one of few recent adaptations of the story, prior adaptations were produced in 1962, 1939 and 1929. I am afraid it will be rather hard to get a hold of those, but I will look into it.

Indeed, I agree the Sopranos is a series with a strong cultural density. I have not seen a lot of episodes yet, but I will do so in the near future to get a good impression of its cultural references.

Thank you for your suggestions Daan!

[renzhe]

Something slightly different, but still interesting would be to compare American/European shows with the Chinese rip-offs. For example, Sex and the City or Ugly Betty.

They tell basically the same story, but it's adapted for the Chinese audience.

[Daan]

That earlier adaptations have become hard to get only means your work would be doubly interesting ;) But you're welcome, anyway!

(You wouldn't be a Leiden student as well, would you?)

[anonymoose]

Harry Potter - there's a lot of made up names and strange words in that

[poehe]

Thank you for your suggestions people!

Harry Potter would normally be a fine subject indeed. However, I think there already are theses dealing with this aspect of the book. I like the idea about comparing the Western tv-shows with their Chinese rip offs, too. I will try to make a list of relevant tv-shows.

Well I currently study languages in Antwerp. You wouldn't be one of the students in Leiden that gave us a guided tour around your faculty a while ago, would you Daan?

[renzhe]

If you like the idea of Chinese shows copying American ones, you can have a look at 好想好想谈恋爱 and 丑女无敌. There are links for online watching there.

One interesting example, I found it interesting how little sex there was in 好想好想谈恋爱, but that's a cultural note, not a language one.

[Daan]

(Entirely off-topic, but too big a coincidence to be ignored: yeah, that was me! Hi!)

[character]

Lady General Hua Mu Lan, the Shaw Brothers adaptation, isn't hard to get. But there's not a lot of cross-cultural content in the film.

Perhaps look at films which feature religious concepts and priests (generally Christian, Taoist, or Buddhist) and see how the concepts are translated.

One extremely minor cultural translation I've seen is that instead of having a sibling saying "oldest brother" the English translation will use the name of the brother.

[Lu]

Funny to run into people here you've actually seen :-)

Poehe: Or perhaps you could look into how wuxia movies were translated to English (Dutch, whatever). Same problem the other way around. Or Gongfu Hustle, that one was also filled to the brim with cultural references, most of which I probably missed, and it must have been a hell of a translation job.

[isela]

Looking into the translations of WuXia movies sounds like a good idea to me! These are FUN to work with, and supposedly not too much work involved right? (I mean, people don't seem to TALK much in such movies...)

And @ Peohe: if you want to look into some more sophisticated productions, you probably can consider the TV series or movies shot based on those classical novels, like 三国，水浒, 红楼梦 etc. I'm sure there'll be tons of things you can dig out from there. In fact, honestly, I'm not sure if these works have been most “optimally" translated even till today. It’s too hard for the majority of us moderate English speakers to do a perfect job.

Concerning translation of foreign films into Chinese, my feeling is that in different periods this was done differently. In the older time when there were very few bilingual people in this country, the translations were done by a specific professional institute (not sure of its name though). All the translations were done in almost word-by-word fashion, with the most attempt to keep the original expressions/taste. Even names, after translated into Chinese characters, were pronounced as if by foreigners (heck, yeah!). People back then liked them as there simply weren’t so many foreign movies to see, but now as we look back, the translations were just so pretentious and silly.

And now the situation has changed a lot. As more people are mastering foreign languages and as more movies are becoming available (through whatever channel) in this country, right now there are a large variety of people doing the job in many styles. The old-school translations are still found and being shown on CCTV, but in other places, like PPS, you’ll find Optimus Prime saying things like "哥们儿，你不行！". I actually find this sort of translation very amusing.

I think that in general, all movie translators will have to face a trade-off between doing the job “original” and “local”. One example: just think about translating the most common greeting: "Hello, nice to meet you." into Chinese. A translator will have enough trouble to ponder between "你好，见到你很高兴." (which actually is never said in China) and “哎呦，这儿哪!” (which is used, but sadly too casual to show up in any professional production)…

Again @ Peohe: Please let us know how you are progressing on this as it goes on! We’ll be keen to keep being involved!

Edited July 3, 2009 at 05:42 PM by isela

[Lu]

I think that in general, all movie translators will have to face a trade-off between doing the job “original” and “local”.

This is the central difficulty of all translation, IMO: domestication vs. exotification (hm, I might have gotten that last term wrong), and the reason it will still be done by people and not by computers for a very, very long time to come.

[isela]

Precisely! In fact, translation is really like the second-time Creation. Computers are programmed to follow orders, and presumably will NEVER be able to do this. Off topic now.