A still of Pacific Rim Photo: CFP

Jia Xiuyan, 29, a translator with August First Film Studio Photo: Courtesy of Jia Xiuyan

Hollywood sci-fi film Pacific Rim retains the top spot at Chinese box offices this week gaining 485 million yuan($79.2 million) since its debut on July 31. But the translation of this import is proving to be controversial. When one of the robots shouts "Elbow Rocket" as a fighting style, the subtitle turns it into "Pegasus Meteor Fist," which comes from a Japanese animation series Saint Seiya. As that show is so popular in China, some moviegoers love the surprising reference while others harshly criticize the translator for changing the meaning too much from the original.

For translator Jia Xiuyan from August First Film Studio, this is not the first time to find herself at the center of a debate. A series of reports on her translation of Men in Black 3 (MIB3) made her controversial in 2012 because she used Chinese traditional poems to translate the dialogues between Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones.

When asked about whether she felt too much pressure in the face of so much criticism, Jia said, "We talked a lot since the case of MIB 3 last year. Though many audience members enjoy seeing imported movies in cinemas, nobody cared about our work in the past. I think it's good for the industry to make people concerned and discuss our work."

The process



Though the audience can choose to watch the dubbed version with Chinese voice actors or the original English version with Chinese subtitles, both versions involve the work of a translator.

"Except for musical films such as Les Miserables, most of the imported movies are required to produce both dubbed and subtitled versions, so we have to consider the mouth movements when we are doing the translation, and that is where we are different from the online translating subtitle groups," Jia told the Global Times.

Jia explained her job as translating the dialogue of the script into Chinese: "Usually, the dubbing director and I get the script at the same time... It takes me about 10 days to finish the first draft... After that, I will stay in the recording studio, to adjust the dialogue with the dubbing director and voice actors during the dubbing process."

As Jia said, some experienced dubbing directors and voice actors gave her a lot of really helpful advice in adjusting the words, so it is actually not only herself to decide every word shown in the subtitles and heard in the dubbed dialogue. For a typical imported Hollywood film, the whole process from translation to finished product takes only about 20 days.

Controversial localization



Many professional translators and online translating subtitle group members criticized the translation of MIB 3 last year. Gu Qiyong, a senior translator from Shanghai Film Studio, also used Internet slang when he was translating Garfield and Night At The Museum. But he criticized Jia on his Weibo for misusing some popular items in translating without making clear the original English meaning.

After that, a lot of netizens posted "bug finding" articles online to point out Jia's mistakes in her MIB3 translation, and the bug-finding trend continued into this year when Jia again used her imagination while translating Pacific Rim.

Besides the "Pegasus Meteor Fist" reference, the translation of the heroine's name as well as the "Jaegor (giant armored robots)" and a different understanding of the word "doctor" are hot topics on Weibo and douban.com. Some netizens said Jia was too careless to ignore the different meanings of the words. In response, Jia explained that the director of Pacific Rim, Guillermo del Toro, is a fan of Japanese anime. "I did a lot of research before deciding to translate it like that," she said, "The 'Elbow Rocket' and the 'Pegasus Meteor Fist' are very similar styles." She thought it would be acceptable to use the reference in her translation.

Jia also explained that she did not misunderstand the original text as some netizens have said. She told the Global Times that there is a lengthy introduction to the original script that explains what the dialogues imply.

"For the word 'doctor,' there is an explanation in the script that says, 'I'm a doctor: Implying that he is in a hurry due to a medical emergency - Note that while Newt has a degree that allows him to be addressed as 'doctor' he is not a medical professional. So I decided to translate it as a [medical] professional (医生) instead of Ph.D. (博士)," Jia explained.

Not part-time



Some previous reports called Jia a "part-time translator," a claim Jia does not agree with.

After graduating with a Chinese major, Jia joined August First Film Studio in 2008. In the first two years, Jia was trained to translate film scripts. She started to translate the scripts of imported movies, such as The Hunger Games and Looper, independently since 2010.

Jia felt it was unfair that some media said that her English level is only in College English Test 6(CET-6). "As a student who is not an English major, that is the highest level test I can take, but it does not mean that just anyone with CET-6 can get this job.

"Though most of my colleagues were English majors, our leader thinks the high level of Chinese and the ability of expression are also important in doing the translation," she said.

Jia did some work as a publicist for August First Film Studio at first, and that is why some media and critics regard her as a part-time translator.

"I am definitely a full-time member... and translation is my responsibility," said Jia. She explained that the limited number of imports are spread among different studios and she may get tasked to do translating work only once in two months.