Getting the words in focus(2)

According to the students and the SIFF, neither the universities nor the festival has placed any restrictions or demands on applicants for the translating work. "The applicants are all English students from reputable universities," Ju said. "We believe they are well qualified for the subtitling work."

Although one anonymous former student translator claimed on the social networking site Douban that many were reluctant to do their best for the festival because they were not volunteering for this but "just earning modules," some say this is not the case.

One of this year's translators, Jing Chi, said most of her co-interns were very enthusiastic. "We knew the subtitling work would be non-paid and exhausting from the beginning, but we were eager anyway," she said. "From what I have seen, most people are very devoted - many put in extra work off their own bat by only taking the first hour of their two-hour lunch breaks."

Jing said she kept at the job because she enjoyed the sense of achievement it created. "Once I completed subtitling my first assignment, I started to imagine how an audience sitting in the dark would respond to it and couldn't help but feel a sense of pride. This helped keep my spirits up for the work to come. Having subtitled a number of films now, I feel it is great that I can make use of my translation skills to help the SIFF and its audiences."

Involved work

Many of the foreign films Jing and her co-translators have subtitled come from English-speaking countries. These films have no English subtitles and the translators have to copy down the dialogue and then translate it.

Translator Zhou Ailing said it initially took her up to four hours to copy and translate a 20-minute section of an English film. "To complete an unsubtitled English film generally takes an entire week." 

Jing found it helpful to adopt a slower approach sometimes. "It all begins with listening carefully. Every language is unique and it's important to take time to work out how to express the dialogue in Chinese."

For non-English-language films, the job primarily involves translating the English subtitles into Chinese. While this takes usually about two days, it is not necessarily an easier or more accurate job. English subtitles can have their own problems.

This is where students with a third language have an advantage. Zhou has been studying Japanese for several years and has been correcting the English translations for a Japanese film, replacing the dialogue with a more accurate rendering in Chinese.

"In one of the Japanese films I subtitled, the characters were having a meal and said 'i ta da ki ma su' before eating. The English subtitles clearly took it for a prayer and had translated this as 'thank God for the food.' This would amuse the many Chinese who speak a little Japanese and understand that it meant nothing more than 'let's eat.'"

Lost in translation

There are times when the translators are baffled. Former interns told the Shanghai Evening Post that appropriate translations of slang and profanities were the hardest. But Zhou and her colleagues told the Global Times that they have found more problems with the names of people or places.

"There is currently no one at the SIFF to turn to for guidance if we have problems," Zhou said. "When we can't translate we leave the section in parentheses and wait for the next intern who is checking to clear it up."