Any friend of mine who’s known me at least a month or so can attest I complain a lot about American movies and TV. I love the old Hollywood, from Griffith up to 90’s-era Spielberg, but today our box office traffics unoriginal garbage rehashing the same old nihilistic comic book formulas (for the “masters degree” version of this nihilism see the HBO, Mad Men, Breaking Bad trifecta). It gets tiring.
But what does any of this have to do with today’s China? Well, the PRC happens to be on quite a different course regarding entertainment. Their filmmakers studied Spielberg et al intensively in the early days of the country’s reform and opening up and emerged from the process fortified in the belief that cinema and TV drama must encourage and unite audiences around common, humanistic endeavors, without sacrificing artistic integrity. I could spend pages and pages elaborating on the films and TV series these artists have produced, but I’ll probably save that rambling for another post. In its stead I’ll leave hyperlinks to several of these shows and movies you can watch free and legally to judge for yourself.
If you bother to follow the URL trails I left above, you’ll find that while most of these films and shows provide English subtitles, they are awkwardly written and translated, usually by people who don’t speak English as their native language. In one example I left out above, the English subtitles were actually written by machine translation! This, unfortunately, makes these shows more difficult to connect with for American audiences.
I can’t complain too much; I’m glad someone made the effort to translate these shows and expand the potential audience. When I first began learning Chinese several years ago, these shows (some of the most popular and trendy programs in China itself) were a helpful window into contemporary Chinese issues and culture, and having the English subtitles as a crutch was indispensable.
But now I want a larger audience to appreciate this experience as well. However, since most Americans aren’t locked into the goal of learning Chinese, and therefore don’t need the cultural learning experience these shows and movies provide, what’s to keep them glued to the screen, especially if the subtitles are subpar? Therefore one of my next projects will be writing English subtitles for Chinese shows and movies, subtitles written by a native English speaker and that ideally won’t appear strange to American audiences.
In preparation for this project I watched an excellent documentary by Bruce Goldstein called The Art of Subtitling. It’s streaming at the Criterion Channel, but in case you don’t have an account, I’ll share all of Goldstein’s rules for aspiring subtitle writers outlined in the doc. Maybe you can start writing subtitles yourself!
Bruce Goldstein’s Rules for Subtitle Writers:
1. Never carry subtitles across a cut.
2. Only transcribe dialogue, excepting the occasional sign, newspaper headline, letter, or other text that must be understood by the audience.
3. No more than two lines per subtitle.
4. No more than 40 characters per line (spaces included? Goldstein doesn’t say.)
5. Don't translate all dialogue; this is impossible. If you did it would look bad and cluttered, defeating the purpose of audience comprehension.
6. Avoid white subtitles on white background.
7. Limit exclamation points.
8. Never double up punctuation or use an interrobang.
9. Don't use words most people have to look up, unless they're not intended to be understood.
10. Don't use anachronisms.
11. Don't censor the subtitles.
12. Don't dodge puns.
13. Don't subtitle dialogue that's not intended to be understood within the story itself.
14. If dialogue is repeated in succession, subtitling is probably unnecessary (use discretion).
And there you have it! In the coming weeks and months I’ll be posting the fruits of my labor. Videos will probably go up first at my Patreon so paid subscribers can have first access. Then later I will share to Youtube. In the meantime, please let me know in the comments below which Chinese movies and shows you’d like to see subtitled in English (or which ones desperately need their subtitles improved).
Go Chet GO!
Man what a legacy. Goldstein's entire life was devoted to subtitles. I'll try to carry on his work in my own way (subtitling chinese movies with korean subtitles)