From Eoin Cullen:<\/p>\r\n
This is a really fascinating story:\u00a0 a Taiwanese film (\"D\u0101ng n\u00e1nr\u00e9n li\u00e0n'\u00e0i sh\u00ed \u5f53\u7537\u4eba\u604b\u7231\u65f6\" [\"Man in Love\"]) where the main character has been dubbed for the mainland Chinese release. The film is mostly in accented Taiwan Mandarin and the protagonist peppers his speech with Southern Min (Taiwanese \/ Hoklo), so someone decided there\u2019d be a comprehensibility issue for mainland audiences (despite the fact that there are Chinese language subtitles on all films, Chinese or otherwise). In the dubbed version the protagonist has a notable mainland Mandarin accent, which is hilarious for Taiwanese netizens. This to me would be like if the film Trainspotting<\/a> had been dubbed into American English for its US release.<\/p>\r\n <\/p>\r\n The Chinese article discussing the mainland release has a short trailer<\/a> (0:58) where you can hear the ludicrous effect discussed by Eoin Cullen above.\u00a0 To me, this trailer is a work of genius — the actors are fabulous and the shots, including the music and sound effects, are memorable.\u00a0 We've often discussed \"earworms<\/a>\" on Language Log, so now — just on the basis of this sub-minute trailer, I'd like to propose the notion of an \"eyeworm\" (separate from the parasitic disease). 1. Why do all films in China, whether foreign or Chinese, have subtitles?\u00a0 Think what it would be like if it were de rigueur for all films made in America \/ England, France, and Germany respectively to have English, French, and German subtitles — and so on and so forth.\u00a0 This is a topic we've discussed on previous occasions and is a good index of linguistic realities in China compared to the rest of the world — realities that are underappreciated both by Chinese and non-Chinese alike. In the festering, incipient war between Taiwan and China, creative cinema is a powerful weapon in the hands of the Taiwanese — just one of many that are non-kinetic. \"Subpar subtitles<\/a>\" (2\/9\/19) From Eoin Cullen: This is a really fascinating story:\u00a0 a Taiwanese film (\"D\u0101ng n\u00e1nr\u00e9n li\u00e0n'\u00e0i sh\u00ed \u5f53\u7537\u4eba\u604b\u7231\u65f6\" [\"Man in Love\"]) where the main character has been dubbed for the mainland Chinese release. The film is mostly in accented Taiwan Mandarin and the protagonist peppers his speech with Southern Min (Taiwanese \/ Hoklo), so someone decided […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,90,230,224],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-and-the-movies","category-languages","category-subtitles","category-topolects"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51069"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51077,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51069\/revisions\/51077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Points to emphasize and contemplate:<\/p>\r\n
2. The gap between Taiwan Mandarin and mainland Mandarin is sufficiently large as to result in a problem of the two sides comprehending each other.
3. If the original film had been in Taiwanese \/ Hoklo \/ Southern Min rather than Taiwan Mandarin, the level of comprehensibility would be almost zero for speakers of mainland Mandarin.<\/p>\r\n
Selected readings<\/b>
<\/b><\/p>\r\n
\"Barbarian Language in a Chinese movie<\/a>\" (9\/20\/20)
\"Mutual unintelligibility among Sinitic lects<\/a>\" (10\/5\/14)
\"Language Diversity in the Sinophone World<\/a>\" (10\/26\/20)
\"Triple topolectal reprimand<\/a>\" (5\/29\/16)
\"Trainspotting-like Voices in Chinese<\/a>\" (3\/12\/11)<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"