Translating & adapting the script

The production is back on. Our Shanghai producer has re-structred the investment and production team and now Manfred Wong (Wen Juan) from Hong Kong is co-producer and co-writer (along with the original writer, He Zizhuang). Jun and I are responsible for the English translation and adapting the script for Australia. (More on our creative contribution in a future post.)

Chinese film makers do not use the standard Western screenplay format. The image on the left shows the first scene of the Chinese script with the DIALOGUE set out like a stage play and ACTION in brackets.

We could have hired a professional translator to turn the 58 pages of Chinese into 90 pages of English. SBS charges around $10,000 for a standard feature script. Considering that this is likely to be the first of at least half a dozen drafts, SBS is well outside our budget. Hiring someone cheaper, like a Chinese student, will have other problems, like awkward English and non-standard screenplay formatting. So I decided to do it myself.

I have a basic knowledge of Cantonese, which shares the same grammar as Mandarin, and Google Translate is surprisingly effective in turning the Chinese characters into meaningful English words, but it doesn't always succeed, particularly where idioms are concerned. Here is the Google translation of the highlighted text in the script.

King: K City, a building top restaurant

Hour: evening to night

People: Tang Tiekai, Tang wife, small party, Tang mother, sister, other people

(K city panorama, dusk, cloudy clouds)

(The sky suddenly a ringing thunder, dark clouds inlaid Phnom Penh, a mountain rain scene)

(Tang Tiekai and secretary of the small side looking out the window)

Small side: variable days!

Chinese characters often have multiple meanings, so the first character 景 can mean 'king', but it also means 'scene'. Google often doesn't realise that some characters are names, so 'Small Side' is actually the name Xiao Fang. (What 'inlaid Phnom Penh' means will always be a mystery!)

It is quite a slog for a non-Mandarin speaker, but after applying come common sense, some Cantonese grammar, consulting the excellent Pleco dictionary, and asking native speakers for help, we end up with a slice of screenplay that makes sense.

INT. K CITY RESTAURANT - EVENING

The restaurant has been set up for a private function: Tang Tiekai’s birthday. An important group are seated at the main table: TANG TIEKAI, MRS TANG, XIAO FANG, MOTHER TANG, SISTER and several more. The window opens on a hazy panorama of K City.

There is a sudden crack of thunder, dark clouds layer the sky like a painting of a mountain rain scene.

Tang Tiekai and Secretary Xiao Fang stare out the window.

XIAO FANG

Changeable weather.

Translating the 54 page Chinese script into a 90 page English screenplay took about a week.