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When it comes to making translations more meaningful, add oil!
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The game “Black Myth: Wukong” owes its popularity among gamers around the world to refined graphics, difficult gameplay, storytelling and, perhaps most of all, to the English translations of the texts.
Developed by China-based Game Science, the game doesn’t use the traditional translation of the ancient Chinese novel “Journey to the West,” on which the game is based. Rather, it uses pinyin — the most common Western alphabet transcription of the sound of Chinese words.
For example, the main character, the Monkey King, is translated as Wukong, his Chinese name. The Black Bear Monster is “Black Bear Guai,” with guai the abbreviation of yaoguai, which means “monster.”
It is interesting that while most Western players are helping each other with the texts online, their Chinese counterparts are arguing whether the translation sets the bar too high for foreign players.
“It’s too confusing, and I believe they should at least unify pinyin or English words,” said one user on Weibo.
That raises some interesting questions. What is good translation? How should we pursue translations — by adhering to original meaning as much as possible or compromising a bit to make them more understandable to foreigners?
The answers are complicated.
Hugo Tseng, professor of English and college dean at Sanda University, told Shanghai Daily that there is no “standard, correct translation.”
He explained, “You can translate ‘Black Bear Monster’ as such or by its pronunciation ‘Hei Xiong Guai.’ The latter will definitely be more confusing to foreigners, but it is the more accurate one. ‘Black Bear Guai’ combines the two, and it has both pros and cons.”
The key point of translation is to bridge the language of one culture with another one. It’s normal that some cultural differences may be lost in translation. Therefore, transliteration is an accurate way to translate terms such as “dim sum,” “mahjong,” “kungfu” and “sushi.”
According to Tseng, languages can be influenced by strength and weakness. A weaker language is generally more capable of absorbing words and phrases from a stronger one, though sometimes the opposite is true.
During the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and early Republic of China era (1912-1949), a great many borrowed words came into Chinese from English, Japanese and French, such as “沙发 (shafa),” which means “sofa,” and “巴士 (bashi),” meaning “bus.” Both were transliterated from English and were adapted into Chinese characters that have similar pronunciations to the original words.
Nowadays, however, things are changing.
“We can say that now English is the only international language and that Chinese people still need to use English to communicate with people from other countries,” Tseng said. “But we can see that China’s development has resulted in its culture influencing the world. Thus, we can be more confident in displaying our culture and customs in English, using transliteration instead of settling with not-so-accurate terms in English.”
He added, “When it comes to a culture, it’s always good to learn something new, and ‘I don’t know it’ is not an excuse for being lazy. In translation, it’s not wise to settle for a general idea or even go along with a mistake. But that happens to all the languages in the world.”
The inclusion of “Chinese dragon” in the Oxford English Dictionary earlier this year is an example of changing times. The updated term replaces the simple “dragon” used previously.
“There was sound reasoning behind the change,” Tseng said. “The two types of dragons are polar opposites — one represents benevolence; the other, wickedness. It was deemed unsuitable to use the wicked and inauspicious Western dragon to refer to the benevolent, auspicious Chinese dragon.”
Transliteration from the Chinese language has also appeared in pop culture. In the media franchise of role-playing video game “Fallout,” a fictional monster is called “Yao Guai.” Although it has little to do with the Chinese concept of yaoguai, or “monsters,” the term has piqued interest from Western players.
Meanwhile, Chinglish, a slang for spoken or written English language that is either influenced by the Chinese language or is a poor translation of it, has also become more accepted.
Recently the term “u swan, he frog” has gone viral on the Internet. The original post, shared by a netizen calling herself “YourKris” on the platform Xiaohongshu, or Red, features a picture of her looking tearful alongside her boyfriend at the airport, with the words “bye baby.”
In response, Chinese netizens quickly flooded the comments section with humor and wit. The comment, “u swan. he frog,” resonated widely. This phrase echoes the Chinese saying “a toad who wants to eat swan meat,” which is used to describe someone reaching beyond their ability.
The term soon spread to TikTok, X and Instagram, becoming a meme. No one was mocking the broken Chinglish of the phrase, but rather using it in good-natured humor. It feels like “long time, no see” all over again.
In fact, Chinglish has also been included in the Oxford English Dictionary.
In 2018, Tseng found the term “add oil” was included in the dictionary. In Chinese, jiayou (加油,) or literally “add oil,” is a versatile expression used to express encouragement and support.
“We can see from these examples that China is getting more attention in the world,” Tseng said. “And we are getting more confident about our language and culture.”
After all, language is just a tool for communication, and people don’t need to feel ashamed if they don’t speak a second language authentically or even speak it in a broken way. When people understand what you mean and even find it all fun, you know you’re speaking English well enough.
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