Translation in the video When Your Girlfriend Bring You Home For Dinner by Wing Kwok

I read an article in the House News  today which talks about a popular video originated from an online article titled “女朋友帶你返屋企食飯” (When Your Girlfriend Bring You Home For Dinner). I found the video quite interesting as the video is really able to point out the pressure of owning a flat which many  post-80s and post-90s, especially male, in Hong Kong may face. The video portrays 3 different scenarios about a boy who visited his girlfriend's family. In each of the case, the boy with different social status received different responses from his girlfriend’s mother simply base on her judgment about how wealthy he was simply by asking where he lived. This video depicts the snobbishness of some of the Hong Kong mothers in a sarcastic way.

After watching this, I thought of how this video may create an effect on the audiences of a different culture. Though this video has English subtitle, I wonder how effective is the subtitle in expressing the message of the video. First, I think the English subtitle was able to transmit the literal meaning of the video. However, I doubt if foreign watchers especially whose who are non-Chinese may understand the underneath meaning of the video well. For example, in the introduction, it talks about the different backgrounds of the boys in the 3 scenarios; Public Estate, Home Ownership Scheme flat and Private Housing. Foreigners may lack the knowledge of the difference of the 3 kinds of flat, especially when talking about the Home Ownership Scheme flat and Private Housing.

In the first case, when the boy mentioned about where he lived. the mother said in a scornful way, “That means you are living in Sau Mau Ping, not Kwun Tong” . People who are not from Hong Kong may not know what Sau Mau Ping means to the mother as they may not know Sau Mau Ping is an area where public housing estates located. Since the audiences who have no experience living in Hong Kong, they cannot decode the signified meaning of Sau Mau Ping; which from the mother points of view, it means poor, dirty, crowded, dangerous and of lower social status, etc.

        Other example would be the difference of underlying meaning  of the act of the mother who passed a piece of chicken breast than passing a chicken leg to the boys in the second and third case respectively. From the westerners’ point of view, they may think that the mother in the second case was acting as friendly as the mother of the third case. This is because westerners used to eat chicken breasts and chicken legs. In the West, chicken breasts are indeed more expensive than other parts of the chicken. In contrast, Chinese eating culture values chicken legs better than chicken breasts. So, Chinese audiences may understand better. The mum in the third case was trying harder to be friendly to the boy because chicken legs are considered as more delicious than the chicken parts. It is the difference in  eating culture of the target audiences, i.e. Hongkongers, and other audiences which matters the message delivered to different audiences.

  

The limitations mentioned above may be difficult to avoid as subtitles have to be short. I find it helpful if translators can write a piece of footnote explaining those concepts may help the non-targeted audiences understand the context betters. The provision of extra information can help creating a dynamic equivalence of meaning to audiences who are not from Hong Kong.

References:

1. [公屋潮文] 公屋●居屋●私樓

http://youtu.be/NSy5VsWjFkA

2.公屋潮文再拍成短片 「住喺邊」決定港男命運 

http://thehousenews.com/society/%E5%85%AC%E5%B1%8B%E6%BD%AE%E6%96%87%E5%86%8D%E6%8B%8D%E6%88%90%E7%9F%AD%E7%89%87-%E4%BD%8F%E4%BF%82%E9%82%8A-%E6%B1%BA%E5%AE%9A%E6%B8%AF%E7%94%B7%E5%91%BD%E9%81%8B/