Since the release of the movie Guardians of the Galaxy in China, a heated discussion about the translation of the movie have spring up among its audience. There is a debate about how imported movies can achieve a satisfactory translation, and comment about how some background information on the characters has been lost in translation.

The debate on the translation of the movie has now gone viral. Many people have criticized the translator of the movie, Jia Xiuyan, suggesting that she has almost ruined the science fiction comedy. One micro-bloger has listed 80 mistakes Jia made in the translation. There is a slogan in the TV show Hero - "Save the cheerleader, save the world." Only in this case, it seems that people would like to change the slogan to "Expel the translator, save the Galaxy."

On the one hand, it is true that Jia Xiuyan's translation does have some shortcomings. For example, when Ronan says "My father and his father shall finally be revenged", this has been translated into Chinese as "My father and his father fermented this revenge". The movie has also lost some of its unique tones in the translation. When Ronan yells out "You call me boy!!!" for instance, the neutral Chinese translation completely loses the infuriated "how dare you" tone. In fact, this is not the first time that Jia Xiuyan has been widely criticized. The translations of Men in Black III and Pacific Ring were both her works, and just like the Guardians of the Galaxy, they elicited considerable criticism.

On the other hand, translating imported movies has never been an easy job. First of all, because of confidentiality agreements, translators often do not have access to the whole movie, but have to produce their translations based on the scripts, and under considerable time pressure. Secondly, in superhero movies like Guardians of the Galaxy, foreign names of characters, places, and other important elements might have been dictated by the parent film company, and the translator may not have any right to change them. Moreover, the Chinese subtitles of an English movie have to follow the dubbed Chinese, which places strict timing requirements on each sentence, and even individual words. Translating imported movies is not a free market; instead the work is assigned by the authorities. As a result, you cannot simply replace a translator who is not up to the job.

A movie containing a lot of American pop culture references, slang, and phonetic puns from the 1970s and 1980s, like Guardians of the Galaxy, is very difficult to translate. Few members of a Chinese audience would get the point of having a song like "Cherry Bomb" right before the decisive battle, and how this arrangement would be considered as enthusiastic and humorous at the same time. Is it not a little unreasonable to expect the translator to capture and represent every cultural feature of the background?

Translating imported movies can be a big issue. Expelling one translator will not save the Galaxy. To marketize the translation of imported movies and to find the most suitable translator for every movie would be a good start in remedying the problem.

This article is edited and translated from 《干掉一个坏翻译，拯救不了银河系》，Source: Beijing News