Rebecca Williams Photo: Courtesy of Rebecca Williams

Rebecca Williams Photo: Courtesy of Rebecca Williams

In 2013, when Australian voice actress Rebecca Williams recorded her lines for a not-yet-listed Chinese game's background voice in a small recording studio in Beijing, she never knew that she would become famous because of that among Chinese online gamers in nine years, and later a natural ambassador of Chinese entertaining culture as a dub actress. 

"That was a time when I just launched my voice acting career and I recorded as I remembered 20 lines for that game company. And that was it then. I had no idea which game I had voiced for at that time," Williams recalled to the Global Times.

It was not until years later when she accidentally found that two random boys were playing Tencent's Honor of Kings, a popular online battle arena game in China, where she surprisingly heard her voices in the game.

"I turned around and told them, I am the female background voices inside the game and they were so excited to ask me if they could take a photo with me," she said, "and I was shocked because I didn't realize the game I recorded has been such a hit."

"In fact it was quite normal because there are so many voice actors across the country and you never know that the person you've encounter on street might be a voice actor appearing on television or an audio book you listened to."

Gifted with difference

Expecting for the background voices for the game, Williams has been dubbing for many well-known Chinese TV series for the last nine years ever since 2013. From Chinese time travel costume drama Treading on Thin Ice, historical drama Nirvana in Fire, to modern family dramas such as A Little Reunion and A Love For Separation, she has been dubbed for over 100 TV dramas in English.

"One needs to change the voices and accents while trying to adapt to different roles, and luckily I'm gifted in doing different voices with feelings and imitating different English accents such as Australian, British, Scottish and American when it comes to different occasions."

"For example, there was one character in a drama that I need to be a Goddess so I tended to do it in a rather gentle way," Williams added.

And when there was an empress in the story she would change her accent into the British Received Pronunciation.

Talking about this dubbing job, "it's very enjoyable since we can watch TV while talking all the time and acting at the same time." 

And it's also a good way to learn China as "we will learn the traditional culture while dubbing English version of costume dramas and learn what is really happening in every corner of China, for example how people in different part of the society make a living, when we dub for documentaries."

'Country full of richness' 

Twenty years on, Rebecca Williams has been stepping in different parts of the country using different identities. From East China's Shandong Province to Southwest China's Yunnan Province to Beijing, she has been a student, a teacher, a singer and a dub actress.

"For me, I think it's hard to define China and it's also unfair to define it by one single perspective since it's so huge," she said.

"It's a country full of richness of all culture and customs from various backgrounds when you really get to know it. 

And sometimes people would ask me what's China like and I would say 'it's hard to say,' since you can find different lifestyles and personalities in all parts of the country concerning its wide land area."

She was still at college in Shandong as an exchange student when she first came to China, where she said: "Actually, I had already decided that I wanted to live China since then, though my understanding of China was very shallow at that time."

After graduation, Williams went to Kunming, Yunnan Province and stayed there for five years as an English teacher, where she considered the city as her favorite place as it is very similar to her hometown Australia where the pace of life is rather slow.

"After I moved to Beijing from Kunming, I got lost in streets a lot. The subway lines were not as many as they are now; there is no high-speed rail, nor navigation apps. All I got at that time were a bicycle and a map of Beijing to explore the city."

Until now Williams shares an apartment in Beijing with two of her Chinese friends. 

"We have more animals than people in our place. We have a dog and four cats." 

"I am in my 40s now and have lived in China for almost half my life. I think the point of home is not about where you live, but where your friends are and how your lifestyle is."