Subtitling Chinese Cinema: A Case Study of Zhang Yimou's Films

Subtitling Chinese Cinema: A Case Study of Zhang Yimou's Films
Author: Yilei Yuan
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2021-01-12
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 334632608X

Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 2016 in the subject Film Science, University of Glasgow, language: English, abstract: In recent years, more and more Chinese films have been exported abroad. This thesis intends to explore the subtitling of Chinese cinema into English, with Zhang Yimou’s films as a case study. Zhang Yimou is arguably the most critically and internationally acclaimed Chinese filmmaker, who has experimented with a variety of genres of films. I argue that in the subtitling of his films, there is an obvious adoption of the domestication translation strategy that reduces or even omits Chinese cultural references. I try to discover what cultural categories or perspectives of China are prone to the domestication of translation and have formulated five categories: humour, politeness, dialect, history and songs and the Peking Opera. My methodology is that I compare the source Chinese dialogue lines with the existing English subtitles by providing literal translations of the source lines, and I will also give my alternative translations that tend to retain the source cultural references better. I also speculate that the domestication strategy is frequently employed by subtitlers possibly because the subtitlers assume the source cultural references are difficult for target language subtitle readers to comprehend, even if they are translated into a target language. However, subtitle readers are very likely to understand more than what the dialogue lines and the target language subtitles express, because films are multimodal entities and verbal information is not the only source of information for subtitle readers. The image and the sound are also significant sources of information for subtitle readers who are constantly involved in a dynamic film-watching experience. They are also expected to grasp visual and acoustic information. The complete omission or domestication of source cultural references might also affect their interpretation of the non-verbal cues. I also contemplate that the translation, which frequently domesticates the source culture carried out by a translator who is also a native speaker of the source language, is ‘submissive translation’.

Zhang Yimou

Zhang Yimou
Author: Wendy Larson
Publisher: Cambria Sinophone World
Total Pages: 440
Release: 2017
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781604979756

In this first critical study of films by Zhang Yimou in English, Wendy Larson plumbs the larger field of debate to suggest thought-provoking ways of thinking about the films and their relationship to Chinese culture.

Subtitles

Subtitles
Author: Atom Egoyan
Publisher: Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press
Total Pages: 532
Release: 2004
Genre: Foreign films
ISBN: 9780262550574

Translating the experience of film: filmmakers, writers, and artists explore the elements of film that make us feel "outside and inside at the same time."

Art, Politics, and Commerce in Chinese Cinema

Art, Politics, and Commerce in Chinese Cinema
Author: Ying Zhu
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2010-06-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9622091768

"Ying Zhu and Stanley Rosen have brought together some of the leading scholars and critics of Chinese cinema to rethink the political mutations, market manifestations, and artistic innovations that have punctuated a century of Chinese screen memories. From animation to documentary, history of the industry to cinematic attempts to recreate history, propaganda to piracy, the influx of Hollywood imports to Chinese-style blockbusters, Art, Politics, and Commerce in Chinese Cinema presents a fresh set of critical approaches to the field that should be required reading for scholars, students, and anyone interested in the past, present, and future of one of the most vibrant and dynamic film industries in the world."-Michael Berry, author, Jia Zhangke's "Hometown Trilogy" and A History of Pain "An excellent collection of articles that together offer a superb introduction to contemporary Chinese film studies."-Richard Pena, Program Director, Film Society of Lincoln Center "This is one of the most important, comprehensive, and profoundly important books about Chinese cinema. As correctly pointed out by the editors of the volume, understanding of the emerging film industry in China requires a systematic examination of arts, politics, and commerce of Chinese cinema. By organizing the inquiry of the Chinese film industry around its local and global market, politics, and film art, the authors place the current transformation of Chinese cinema within a large framework. The book has set a new standard for research on Chinese cinema. It is a must-read for students of arts, culture, and politics in China."-Tianjian Shi, Duke University Art politics, and commerce are intertwined everywhere, but in China the interplay is explicit, intimate, and elemental, and nowhere more so than in the film industry. Understanding this interplay in the era of market reform and globalization is essential to understanding mainland Chinese cinema. This interdisciplinary book provides a comprehensive reappraisal of Chinese cinema, surveying the evolution of film production and consumption in mainland China as a product of shifting relations between art, politics, and commerce. Within these arenas, each of the twelve chapters treats a particular history, development, genre, filmmaker or generation of filmmakers, adding up to a distinctively comprehensive rendering of Chinese cinema. The book illuminates China's changing stat-society relations, the trajectory of marketization and globalization, the effects of China's start historical shifts, Hollywood's role, the role of nationalism, and related themes of interest to scholars of Asian studies, cinema and media studies, political science, sociology comparative literature and Chinese language. Ying Zhu is professor of cinema studies in the Department of Media Culture and co-coordinator of the Modern China Studies Program at the City University of New York, College of Staten Island. Stanley Rosen is director of the East Asian Studies Center and a professor of political science at the University of Southern California.

Producing Guanxi

Producing Guanxi
Author: Andrew B. Kipnis
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 246
Release: 1997
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780822318736

Throughout China the formation of guanxi, or social connections, involves friends, families, colleagues, and acquaintances in complex networks of social support and sentimental attachment. Focusing on this process in one rural north China village, Fengjia, Andrew Kipnis shows what guanxi production reveals about the evolution of village political economy, kinship and gender, and local patterns of subjectivity in Dengist China. His work offers a detailed description of the communicative actions--such as gift giving, being a host or guest, participating in weddings or funerals--that produce, manage, and deny guanxi in a specific time and place. Kipnis also offers a rare comparative analysis of how these practices relate to the varied and variable phenomenon of guanxi throughout China and as it has changed over time. Producing Guanxi combines the theory of Pierre Bourdieu and the insights of symbolic anthropology to contest past portrayals of guanxi as either a function of Chinese political economics or an unchanging Confucian social structure. In this analysis guanxi emerges as a purposeful human effort that makes use of past cultural logics while generating new ones. By exploring the role of sentiment in the creation of self, Kipnis critiques recent theories of subjectivity for their narrow focus on language and discourse, and contributes to the anthropological discussion of comparative selfhood. Navigating a path between mainstream social science and abstract social theory, Kipnis presents a more nuanced examination of guanxi than has previously been available and contributes generally to our understanding of relationships and human action.

Sinascape

Sinascape
Author: Gary G. Xu
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2007
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9780742554504

Sinascape: Contemporary Chinese Cinema is a comprehensive study of Chinese-language films at the turn of the millennium. Emphasizing the transnational nature of contemporary Chinese cinema, it provides close readings of most of the important films of China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and explores the interactions and transactions among these films and between Chinese cinema and Hollywood. General readers, film enthusiasts, and critics will all benefit from Gary Xu's discussion of popular films like Hero, House of Flying Daggers, Kung Fu Hustle, Devils on the Doorstep, Suzhou River, Beijing Bicycle, Millennium Mambo, Goodbye Dragon Inn, and Hollywood Hong Kong.

The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas

The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas
Author: Carlos Rojas
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 730
Release: 2013-04-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 019976560X

What does it mean for a cinematic work to be "Chinese"? Does it refer specifically to a work's subject, or does it also reflect considerations of language, ethnicity, nationality, ideology, or political orientation? Such questions make any single approach to a vast field like "Chinese cinema" difficult at best. Accordingly, The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas situates the term more broadly among various different phases, genres, and distinct national configurations, while taking care to address the consequences of grouping together so many disparate histories under a single banner. Offering both a platform for cross-disciplinary dialogue and a mapping of Chinese cinema as an expanded field, this Handbook presents thirty-three essays by leading researchers and scholars intent on yielding new insights and new analyses using three different methodologies. Chapters in Part I investigate the historical periodizations of the field through changing notions of national and political identity — all the way from the industry's beginnings in the 1920s up to its current forms in contemporary Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the global diaspora. Chapters in Part II feature studies centered on the field's taxonomical formalities, including such topics as the role of the Chinese opera in technological innovation, the political logic of the "Maoist film," and the psychoanalytic formula of the kung fu action film. Finally, in Part III, focus is given to the structural elements that comprise a work's production, distribution, and reception to reveal the broader cinematic apparatuses within which these works are positioned. Taken together, the multipronged approach supports a wider platform beyond the geopolitical and linguistic limitations in existing scholarship. Expertly edited to illustrate a representative set of up to date topics and approaches, The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas provides a vital addition to a burgeoning field still in its formative stages.

To Live

To Live
Author: Yu Hua
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2007-12-18
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307429792

Originally banned in China but later named one of that nation’s most influential books, a searing novel that portrays one man’s transformation from the spoiled son of a landlord to a kindhearted peasant. “A work of astounding emotional power.” —Dai Sijie, author of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress From the author of Brothers and China in Ten Words: this celebrated contemporary classic of Chinese literature was also adapted for film by Zhang Yimou. After squandering his family’s fortune in gambling dens and brothels, the young, deeply penitent Fugui settles down to do the honest work of a farmer. Forced by the Nationalist Army to leave behind his family, he witnesses the horrors and privations of the Civil War, only to return years later to face a string of hardships brought on by the ravages of the Cultural Revolution. Left with an ox as the companion of his final years, Fugui stands as a model of gritty authenticity, buoyed by his appreciation for life in this narrative of humbling power.

Reclaiming Chinese Society

Reclaiming Chinese Society
Author: You-tien Hsing
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2009-10-16
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 113527729X

Analyses the mechanisms, processes and actors producing a wide spectrum of social and cultural changes in reform China. Contrary to most literature that emphasize economic and political processes at the expense of Chinese society, the book argues for the centrality of the social in understanding Chinese development.

Post-war Cinema and Modernity

Post-war Cinema and Modernity
Author: John Orr
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2019-08-06
Genre: Modernism (Aesthetics)
ISBN: 1474471471

Post-war Cinema and Modernity explores the relationship between film and modernity in the second half of the twentieth century. Its distinguishing feature is the focus on the close connections between history, theory and textual criticism. The first section, on Film Theory and Film Form, begins with a sustained group of theory readings. Bazin and Telotte critique new post-war forms of film narrative, while Metz and Birch respond to the filmic innovations of the 1960s and the question of modernism. Pasolini's landmark polemic on the cinema of poetry is a vital springboard for the later critiques by Deleuze and Tarkovsky of time and the image, and for Kawin and De Lauretis of subjectivities and their narrative transformation, while Jameson deals with the topical question of film and postmodernity. There follows a series of essays grouped around different aspects of film form. General discussion of changes in film technology and cinematic perception can be seen in the essays by Virilio, Wollen, Aumont and Bukatman, and is extended to a discussion of film documentary. Finally, there is a focus on cinematographers and their filmic collaboration, with a specially commissioned essay on post-war British cinematography, and readings featuring the work of Michael Chapman with Martin Scorsese and Nestor Almendros with Terrence Malick.The second section looks at International Cinema, placing filmmaking and filmmakers in a social and a national context, as well as taking up many aspects of film theory. It brings together landmark essays which contextualise feature films historically, yet also highlight their aesthetic power and their wider cultural importance. Filmmakers discussed include Ozu, Bresson, Hitchcock, Godard, Fassbinder and Zhang Yimou. There is a new translation of Kieslowski's essay on Bergman's The Silence and an essay specially commissioned for the volume on the work of Theo Angelopoulos.Features* Filmmaking and filmmakers are placed in social, nat