破解周星馳的《唐伯虎點秋香》:從粵語 18 禁到國語普遍級的翻譯過程

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(1)國立臺灣師範大學翻譯研究所碩士學位論文 A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE INSTITUTE OF TRANSLATION AND INTERPRETATION NATIONAL TAIWAN NORMAL UNIVERSITY. Translation and Transcreation of Cantonese Offensive Language to Mandarin through Dubbing: The Film ‘Flirting Scholar’ As a Case Study 破解周星馳的《唐伯虎點秋香》: 從粵語 18 禁到國語普遍級的翻譯過程. 指導教授：胡宗文 Thesis Advisor: Prof. Zong Wen HU. 研究生：黃穎妍 Advisee: Wing In Chloe WONG. 中華民國一零七年七月 July, 2018.

(2) 誌謝三年走來，經歷各種高低起伏，總算為翻譯所的學習旅程畫上一個美好的句點。首先，感謝爸爸、媽媽、Punky、親戚對我的支持和包容，讓我可以在無後顧之憂下完成學業。你們的鼓勵，足以讓我在無助時得以振作，一心一意走完這趟旅程。遠在天上的爺爺，雖然你已經離開我已有十年之多，但今天孫女還是想借此機會跟你說一句來不及說的話：我畢業了。本論文得以順利完成，由衷感謝胡宗文老師的指導，適時給予建議。口試委員李根芳教授和洪媽益教授的寶貴意見，提供明確的修改方向，讓論文內容更臻完善。不得不感謝翻譯所的戰友，包括 Jessi、Angela、Lin、Chloe、 Athena、Megan、Heidi，你們這三年的陪伴，讓我在心很累、不知所措的時候也有動力繼續走下去，寫論文時的痛苦和心情，也大概只有你們才了解。還有遠在香港的姊妹淘 Connie 、Shirley、Wing，在我第三次出國流浪的時候也對我不離不棄。最後，特別感謝東咖啡的傅東和淯元在過去三個多月給予的鼓勵，提供舒適的環境，還適時餵食，幫我補充咖啡因，讓我得以專心完成論文。. 2018 年 7 月於東咖啡.

(3) Abstract Offensive language has always been an essential part of the Hong Kong culture and lingua franca – Cantonese. In the past, due to its taboo nature, offensive language has received little attention in the field of academics. However, Stephen Chow and his unique style of nonsense comedies have popularized the use of offensive language both in Hong Kong and other Chinesespeaking communities. This thesis uses the film Flirting Scholar as a case study to compare the original Cantonese and its Mandarin-dubbed version. The tools used to analyse the Cantonese offensive language and Mandarin translations are Lawrence Venuti’s foreignisation and domestication theory, and, Teresa Tomaszkiewicz’s audiovisual translation strategies. The result shows that due to film censorship in Taiwan, most of the Mandarin versions do not recreate the same effect as Cantonese offensive language nor do they replicate the connotations rooted in the examples presented in this thesis.. Keywords: Offensive language, vulgarism, dubbing translation, Cantonese, Stephen Chow.

(4) 摘要語言深受一地文化與歷史影響，即便是同語系，也會產生落差。華語地區中，香港的粵語和台灣的國語便是同中存異的最佳例子。有喜劇之王之稱的周星馳，從九零年代開始便以無厘頭為賣點，打造出一系列經典之作。其中，《唐伯虎點秋香》更是深入民心，把獨特的無厘頭搞笑文化推廣至兩岸三地，甚至全世界。礙於香港與台灣的文化用語有著本質上的差異，要以國語重現香港電影的不雅和禁忌用語，對譯者而言極具挑戰。本論文採用 Lawrence Venuti 的歸化與異化理論及 Teresa Tomaszkiewicz 的影視翻譯策略為分析工具，以《唐伯虎點秋香》為例，探討譯者處理該作之禁忌用語的手法與策略。研究後得知除了語言本身，譯者對於文化的認知也非常重要，才可產出與原文相近之譯文。另發現由於台灣片商對於電影內容的自我審查，大幅刪減粵語版本的髒話和不雅用語，加上譯者對粵語文化中的隱喻亦缺乏深刻理解，導致國語配音與粵語原文出現重大落差。. 關鍵字: 配音翻譯、髒話翻譯、粵語、周星馳、唐伯虎點秋香.

(5) Table of Contents Chapter One – Introduction. 1. 1.1 Research Motivation . 1.2 Significance of the Research . 1.3 Methodology . 1.3.1 Lawrence Venuti’s Theory . 1.3.2 Strategies for Translating Offensive Language 1.4 Thesis Structure. 1.5 Introduction to the Film ‘Flirting Scholar’ . 1.5.1 Film Plot. 1.5.2 Flirting Scholar’s Success . 1.6 Dubbing Stephen Chow’s Comedy . Chapter Two – Literature Review. 4 6 7 7 7 9 9 11 12 13 16. 2.1 Audiovisual Translation (AVT). 2.1.1 Dubbing. 2.1.2 Subtitling. 2.2 Audiovisual Translation in Hong Kong. 2.3 Characteristics and Constraints of AVT in Hong Kong 2.3.1 Characteristics. 2.3.2 Constraints . Chapter Three – Hong Kong and its Language . 16 21 24 27 28 28 29 33. 3.1 Brief History of Hong Kong . 3.2 Overview of Hong Kong Cantonese . • Cantonese – a Language or a Dialect? 3.3 English Influence in Hong Kong. • Linguistic Phenomena in Hong Kong 3.4 Post-1997 Language Policy in Hong Kong Chapter Four – Offensive and Taboo Language. 33 34 37 39 41 43 45. 45 46 48 48 49. 4.1 Definition of Vulgarism. 4.2 Vulgarism in the English Language . 4.3 Vulgarism in the Cantonese Language. 4.3.1 Cantonese Offensive Language. 4.3.2 Cantonese Chòu Háu . Chapter Five – Examples and Analysis of Offensive Language in ‘Flirting Scholar’ 5.1 Hardcore Swearing 5.2 Softcore Swearing 5.3 Swearing Euphemisms 5.4 Insults and Curse Words 5.5 Sex and Sexual Organs 5.6 Triad Language. 5.7 Summary. 53. 56 57 64 72 76 79 84.

(6) Chapter Six – Conclusion . 87. References . 90. 97. Appendix B – Film Censorship Guidelines for Censors . 103. Appendix A – Table of Swearword in Flirting Scholar.

(7) List of Figures Figure 1.1 Tomaszkiewicz’s AVT Strategies. Figure 2.1 The Polysemiotic Nature of Audiovisual Products . Figure 2.2 Gambier’s AVT Categories. Figure 2.3 Films Submitted for Classification and the Category III Films Released from 1989-1999. Figure 4.1 The Five Hard-Core Cantonese Swearwords . Figure 5.1 Statistics of Vulgar Utterances in Flirting Scholar . Figure 5.2 Total Count of Offensive Language in Different Strategies . 8 18 19 31 50 54 55.

(8) 1. Introduction The advancement of technology has helped the audiovisual technician to. achieve state-of-the-art productions. Along with this development, audiovisual translation (AVT) has been attracting scholars’ interests in recent years. AVT includes the translation of films, television productions, animations, theatrical performances, etc. Though the visuals of the performing art can be interpreted in many different ways by the audience, when dialogue is used it instantly becomes a cultural specific piece that requires subtitling or dubbing, which is used to assist the audience to fully understand what is being said, especially if the dialogue is not in the audience’s mother tongue. Film production, for example, has many genres. An action film may have as many set phrases or culturalspecific terms as a gangster film; on the other hand, puns, jokes and wordplays, in particular, are frequently presented in the form of dialogue or as a visual clue in comedies. When two different linguistic systems collide, it is important for the translator to present the joke in a way that the audience will laugh just as much as if they are watching a comedy written in their own language. Apart from the action of translating between two languages that can cause difficulties for the translator, cultural-specific language such as humour and swearing have proven to be challenging, especially in audiovisual pieces where time is limited. Many consider swearing as a social taboo, and those who swear are rude, of the lower class, and in extreme cases, the language of criminals. Because of that, even to this day, society tends to ignore the fact that offensive language exists in almost every language, instead they are considered as a. 1.

(9) ‘forbidden fruit’ and not to be discussed or used in public. Offensive language often reflects the culture and sub-culture embedded in a society’s language and is definitely worthy of academic attention. The creativity being put into creating swearword euphemisms by the young generation is at an unprecedented high that may be due to censorship in a country, or it simply being a taboo. When it comes to subtitling or dubbing a film that contains swearwords or culture-specific offensive language, the language is often toned down or even left untranslated. For one, the use of swearwords has always been associated with the criminal underworld and language used by the lower class. The mainstream media, Hong Kong in particular, dare not to translate vulgarity into its equivalent, leading to an altered and unauthentic experience for filmgoers who do not speak the source language and can only rely on dubbing or subtitling (Fong, 2009). Furthermore, the tendency to do so may be due to the fact that an equivalent cannot be found in the target language, or due to time constraints placed on the subtitler. Therefore, almost all dubbed or subtitled films have toned down their swearing significantly. Although swearwords have a negative image in general, some filmmakers attempt to use vulgarity, wordplay, and euphemism as a selling point in the industry (Chen, 2004). Such productions have achieved box office success and are especially popular amongst the younger generation. Another highlight of Hong Kong culture is kung fu comedy. Since the early 1970s, the rise of kung fu films is highlighted by the late Bruce Lee. He gradually gained popularity in Hong Kong, and the fascination with kung fu and Bruce Lee soon spread across the globe (Lau, 1998; Yau, 2001). Other martial arts actors such as Jackie Chan and Jet Li soon followed this path and kung fu comedy. 2.

(10) became a signature genre in Hong Kong. During the 1990s, kung fu comedy was taken to a new level by Stephen Chow. He is the actor most famously known for his clever use of puns, wordplays, and swearword euphemisms in many of the comedies he starred in, creating a new form of cinema with the use of nonsense language – mo lei tau（無厘頭）. Chow’s use of nonsense language has created and added a new layer of meaning and connotation to the Cantonese language, contributing to the language used both in everyday life and on the Internet. Many of the vocabulary and phrases he created are still commonly used by the public on a day-to-day basis. Apart from the Cantonese-speaking population, Chow’s films have also broken culture and language barriers, creating a significant impact on the Asian film industry. Although a lot of people in the general public believe that both Cantonese and Mandarin belong to the Chinese language family, linguists are supporting the fact that Cantonese is a language, instead of a dialect of the Chinese language family. This is mainly because Cantonese, the one spoken in Hong Kong in particular, has undergone different culture influences compared to Mandarinspeaking nations such as China and Taiwan. As a British colony for over 150 years, Hong Kong is also known for absorbing foreign vocabulary into its language to fulfil the lexical gap between Cantonese and English. A combination of historical and cultural influences have made Hong Kong Cantonese to be one of a kind language that stands out from other regional dialects in China. At the same time, because of this, translation between Cantonese and Mandarin has proven to be rather difficult, even though both of them use Chinese characters.. 3.

(11) With this in mind, this thesis aims to investigate the translation strategy used to translate the Cantonese offensive language into Mandarin in the film Flirting Scholar. Examples used in this thesis mainly consist of Cantonese vulgarism, insults and curse words, sexual oriented and triad language. . 1.1 Research Motivation As a child growing up in the 90s, I have always enjoyed watching kung fu comedies with my family; movie stars such as Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Stephen Chow can always be seen on television. Whenever a Stephen Chow film was showing on television, I would stop whatever I was doing and watch the entire film. But as I got older and re-watched the same comedies again but dubbed in Mandarin, I realized that the dubbed version is nothing like the original – many swearwords were replaced or omitted altogether. Most of the underlying meanings, connotations, or cultural references in the dialogue, commonly known by the Cantonese-speaking audience, were translated and adjusted for the Mandarin audience; the non-Cantonese-speaking audience would never be able to understand the humour behind the jokes, which significantly decreased the quality of the outcome. After much research, I realised that many R-rated films in Cantonese were G-Rated in their Mandarin versions. In my opinion, although the version did not quite match or fully represent the humour of the original, it somehow created a different kind of humour specifically targeting the Mandarin-speaking audience. As it is impossible to look at all the films by Stephen Chow, Jackie Chan and Jet Li in one thesis, I have decided to focus on one particular film, Flirting Scholar. 4.

(12) (1993), my favourite out of all Stephen Chow classics, which has received little attention in academic research, as the case study of this thesis. In addition, after studying at the Graduate Institute of Translation and Interpretation of National Taiwan Normal University, the more I learned about translation and linguistics, the more I thought about Stephen Chow’s films and their translations. I realize that humour in one culture may not be funny to the other. Even when Stephen Chow’s jokes and mo lei tau are translated into Mandarin, a lot of the wittiness, humour behind the clever use of euphemism and wordplay are lost. In addition, I believe that this form of humorous nonsense has become an inseparable part of the Hong Kong culture, which has a great impact on the TV and film industry, as well as contributing to the development of the Hong Kong-Cantonese language, and in turn created a popular cultural phenomenon deeply embedded in the everyday life of the young adults even to this day, which is definitely worth looking into. Lastly, as 2017 marks the 20th anniversary of Hong Kong returning China, there is a worrisome degradation of Hong Kong-Cantonese by the local government; I feel the need to do something to embrace my mother tongue and culture. Therefore, by using Stephen Chow’s classic comedy, Flirting Scholar, I would like to investigate, compare, and analyse the similarities and differences in the use of translating offensive language from Cantonese and Mandarin. . 5.

(13) 1.2 Significance of the Research Offensive language is considered as taboo in society. Those who swear are often labelled as bad and impolite, portraying a negative image in general. This has in turn restricted the representation of authentic vulgarism being presented in films. While some academic scholars believe that due to box office concerns, film distributors often undergo self-censoring before sending the films to the Office of Film, Newspaper and Article Administration (OFNAA) in Hong Kong (Chen, 2004; Fong, 2009; Lim & Lee, 2015). Moreover, despite the differences between the East and the West, the perception on the use of offensive language are similar, resulting in the lack of academic research in this area. Even when the public’s attitude towards swearing has changed to be less negative over the past decades, film distributors and translators dare not to translate swearwords into their equivalents (Chen, 2004). While many academic scholars (Lee, 2009; Yu, 2010) have written on Stephen Chow’s more recent films such as Shaolin Soccer, Kung Fu Hustle and CJ7, little has been done on his earlier works from the 90s. Flirting Scholar is a piece that contains Stephen Chow’s signature nonsense humour throughout the entire film. The film includes bilingual subtitles (written Cantonese and English), and subsequently dubbed into Mandarin and Taiwanese in order to be released in Taiwan. During the dubbing process, translation is required despite the fact that both Cantonese and Mandarin belong to the Chinese language family. Since only a few studies have been done to look into the intralingual translation issue between spoken Cantonese and Mandarin, this thesis attempts to fill the gap and add further insights to this area of study.. 6.

(14) 1.3 Methodology 1.3.1 Lawrence Venuti’s Theory Lawrence Venuti first discusses a translator’s invisibility along with foreignization and domestication translation strategy in his book The Translator’s Invisibility in 1995. The root of these strategies is developed based on Friedrich Schleiermacher’s perspective on translation and on Venuti’s observation about the Anglo-American publishing industry. In his influential paper, Über die verschiedenen Methoden des Übersetzens (On the Different Methods of Translating), Schleiermacher claims that foreignization is a strategy to bring the target-text audience toward the original text, while domestication does the opposite - ‘leav[ing] the reader in peace, as much as possible, and moves the author toward him’ (as cited in Munday, 2008, p. 144). Venuti shares the same opinion as Schleiermacher, stating that foreignization should be adapted over the use of domestication, as the former introduces foreign elements to the text recipients. By doing so, readers will have more opportunities to be exposed to different cultures (Munday, 2008; Venuti, 1995), as well as encouraging language and cultural exchange (Yang, 2014).. 1.3.2 Strategies for Translating Offensive Language There are close to none in-depth research looking at the strategy and process of language transfer for dubbing, most of the research on dubbing mainly focused on the quality of the outcome or simply listing out the process of dubbing. In contrast, scholars have come up with numerous subtitle translation strategies looking at the process of language transfer between the two languages. . 7.

(15) Teresa Tomaszkiewicz (cited in Pettit, 2009, p. 45) offers her view on the strategies in operation in film subtitling1, as well as to “describe the processes which occur in the dubbed version”. Pettit (2009) analysed the English and French extracts of three featured films using Tomaszkiewicz’s AVT strategies. Figure 1.1 shows the strategies of AVT adapted from Tomaszkiewicz:. Figure 1.1 Tomaszkiewicz’s AVT Strategies Strategy. Explanation. Omission. Cultural reference is omitted altogether. Literal Translation. The solution in the target text matches the original as closely as possible. Borrowing. Original terms from the source text are used in the target text. Equivalence. Translation has a similar meaning and function in the target culture. Adaptation. The translation is adjusted to the target language and culture in an attempt to evoke similar connotations to the original. Replacement. Replacement of the cultural term with deictics, particularly when supported by an on-screen gesture or a visual clue. Generalisation. Also referred to as neutralization of the original. Explication. Usually involves a paraphrase to explain the cultural terms. 1 The book Les operations linguistiques qui sous-tendent le processus de sous-titrage des. films by Teresa Tomaszkiewicz was written in French. The English version is adapted from Zoe Pettit (2009, p. 45).. 8.

(16) The strategy proposed by Tomaszkiewicz will be used to analyse the Cantonese (original) and Mandarin (dubbed) examples extracted from Flirting Scholar. The aim is to investigate and compare the similarities and differences, and which strategy is used during the translation process, as well as looking at whether the Mandarin version is able to produce the same effect with the domestication and foreignization theory proposed by Venuti.. 1.4 Thesis Structure The thesis is divided into six chapters. Chapter One introduces the background and motivation of the thesis, as well as the methodology, followed by a detailed profile of the film Flirting Scholar. Works on audiovisual translation and the language pair will be reviewed in Chapter Two. Chapter Three will continue to look at the history of Hong Kong, the characteristics of Hong KongCantonese. In Chapter Four, the issue of offensive language will be closely examined, with topics such as vulgarism, swearwords in the English language and Cantonese, as well as a thorough explanation on the different types of Cantonese swearwords. Chapter Five consists of the examples and analysis of the film Flirting Scholar, with a brief summary at the end. Chapter Six is the conclusion of this thesis.. 1.5 Introduction to the Film ‘Flirting Scholar’ Flirting Scholar《唐伯虎點秋香》(1993) is a Hong Kong film production based on the Chinese folktale Three Smiles《三笑姻緣》, a love story between the Ming dynasty scholar Tong Pak Fu（唐伯虎）and Chou Heung（秋香）. The. 9.

(17) comedy is directed by Lee Lik-Chi（李力持）, who worked with Stephen Chow in several other films such as From Beijing with Love《國產凌凌漆》, Forbidden City Cop《大內密探零零發》and Shaolin Soccer《少林足球》. The pair has worked together since the early 1990s, making the mo lei tau culture flourish to become an avant-garde form of comic cinema, which later played a significant influence on the Hong Kong film and television industry. Since the release of Flirting Scholar in 1993, Lee Lik-Chi has also directed Flirting Scholar 2《唐伯虎點秋香 2 之四大才子》in 2010, as a sequel to the 1993 film, as well as a Chinese television series, The Four Scholars in Jiangnan 《江南四大才子》in 2014. All three of them are stories that revolve around Tong Bak Fu, a Chinese scholar, painter, calligrapher, and poet of the Ming dynasty. There are other productions about the talented scholar, but none can be compared to the Stephen Chow version from 1993. Moreover, the film is often replayed on television as well – it is reported that in 2011 to 2015, Flirting Scholar was shown on television over 230 times, making it the most replayed film on Taiwan television (潘鈺楨, 2015), showing the achievements and success of the film even 20 years after it was released. In addition to Tong Bak Fu, Stephen Chow’s early filmography includes a series of so-called ‘existing character, new plot’ films, in which Chow played famous historical and fictional figures with new storylines, such as Sung Sai Kit （宋世傑）in Justice, My Foot《審死官》, Wai Siu-bo（韋小寶）in Royal Tramp 1 & 2《鹿鼎記》《鹿鼎記 2 神龍教》, and So Chan（蘇燦）in King of Beggars 《武狀元蘇乞兒》, just to name a few. These films have marked the beginning of. 10.

(18) Stephen Chow’s successful career in the entertainment industry, as well as bringing a distinct mo lei tau comedy style to the Hong Kong public and Chinesespeaking audience abroad.. 1.5.1 Film Plot In Flirting Scholar, Tong Bak Fu (Stephen Chow) is famous for having eight beautiful wives, topped with his expertise as an artist, poet, and calligrapher. Tong not only excels in art, he is also a master in martial arts. The Tong family has two major enemies in the martial arts world: the Evil Scholar and an exgirlfriend of Tong’s father. As the only male heir of the family, he was forbidden by Chussy, Tong’s mother, from using martial arts under any circumstances. One day, during an outing with his friends, Tong stumbles upon Chou Heung (Gong Li), one of the four maids of the House of Wah. He believes this encounter is a destiny for him to find his one true love. In order to get to know Chou Heung, Tong disguises himself as a poor young man in order to gain employment in the House of Wah. Tong finds life as a servant difficult, but after an incident, Madame Wah finds out that Tong is educated. He is given a new name, Wah On（華安）, and has a new job working as a junior studying companion in the study room. After Chancellor Wah accidentally kills the head teacher, Tong is subsequently promoted as a senior studying companion and manages to form a closer relationship with Chou Heung. However, a sudden visit by Prince Ning goes violent as the Evil Scholar, now a subordinate under Prince Ning, starts a fight. 11.

(19) with Madame Wah. When Madame Wah is injured, Tong steps in to end the fight in favour of the Wah family. Embarrassed by the defeat at the hands of a servant, Prince Ning leaves and orders the Evil Scholar to return for revenge. In reproducing a painting during Prince Ning’s visit, Tong accidentally reveals his true identity to Madame Wah, who also reveals herself as the ex-girlfriend of Tong's father and still holds grudges against the Tong family. A couple of days later, the Evil Scholar returns aiming to kill the entire Wah family. Madame Wah attempts to defend, but is almost killed by the Evil Scholar. Tong appears and once again, he steps in in favour of the House of Wah. After a fierce battle, the Evil Scholar is killed. In the end, Tong Bak Fu gets to marry Chou Heung, at the courtesy of the Wah family.. 1.5.2 Flirting Scholar’s Success Flirting Scholar received instant box office success after it was released in Hong Kong on 1st July, 1993, grossing an estimate of over HK$40 million. This also put Stephen Chow’s mo lei tau style comedies at the top of the Hong Kong box office for four consecutive years from 1990 to 1993 (梁德輝, 2017). The film was also dubbed into Mandarin by the Taiwanese dubbing actor Shi Banyu（石班渝）, who mainly dubs for Chow’s comedies and is famously known as the voice of Stephen Chow among the Taiwanese people. The film was released in Taiwan in the same year, which also grossed over NT$28 million in box office. In an interview in the book 《我愛周星馳》, Shi Banyu revealed that he also dubbed the Taiwanese version of Flirting Scholar, and the film was only. 12.

(20) released in Southern Taiwan for three days because the owner’s mother of the distribution company only speaks Taiwanese (p.92). Shi Banyu also mentioned the difficulties he faced when he was dubbing Stephen Chow’s films such as translating the Cantonese slangs and swearwords into Mandarin for the nonCantonese speaking audiences. This issue will be discussed in detail later in this thesis. In addition, it is evident that Japanese popular culture played a significant role on Hong Kong (Bolton & Hutton, 1997), and it is evident in many of Stephen Chow’s films. For instance, Kame-hame-ha（龜派氣功；かめはめ波）in Flirting Scholar is a perfect example. Kame-hame-ha is originally found in the popular Japanese comic Dragon Ball（七龍珠）. Although it is completely out-of-place to have such things appear in a film set in the Ming dynasty, the public seems to have accepted it as part of Chow’s nonsense style. Shaolin Soccer, inspired by Captain Tsubasa（足球小將）, had opened the door for Chow to enter markets outside of Chinese-speaking countries, which also achieved great success in Japan in 2002. This had caused a Stephen Chow sensation across Japan – Shaolin Soccer received Best Foreign Film at the Blue Ribbon Awards in Japan. As a result, some of Chow’s earlier films such as Flirting Scholar were dubbed into Japanese and the DVD was released in 2003 (吳偉明, 2015).. 1.6 Dubbing Stephen Chow’s Comedy Throughout Stephen Chow’s career, he and his team have created many iconic lines in his comedies, primarily targeting Cantonese-speaking audience. The connotations and nonsense creation are now known as mo lei tau. Mo lei tau. 13.

(21) culture is not limited to only Cantonese language, but unexpected and random behaviour too. Chow takes puns and wordplays to another level in his comedies, and brings new perspectives to the Hong Kong film industry. The dialogues in Stephen Chow’s films have also earned him a place in the hearts of many Chinese-speaking audiences. Chow was presented the Contemporary Chinese Contribution Award（當代漢語貢獻獎）by the Beijing Institute of Contemporary Chinese （北京當代漢語研究所 2 ） in 2001, acknowledging his creativity and contribution to the Chinese language. However, as language is still considered as a barrier to effective cultural exchange, no matter how creative Chow’s films are, non-Cantonese speakers will never be able to fully enjoy the jokes in his films. The language barrier between Cantonese and Mandarin in Stephen Chow’s film was broken down by Shi Banyu and his creativeness. In an interview, Shi Banyu talks about the many obstacles he faced during the translation and dubbing process: 有很多廣東話的笑話是我們聽不懂的，那就要把它改成國語的笑話。像原來的廣東對白有很多諧音，只有廣東人聽得懂……很多都要在現場掰。譬如廣東話裡的罵人諧音，我們都不能罵……[像] 廣東話的「頂你老母」是很粗的話… 國語版又要普通級。 (何穎怡, 2004, pp. 91-92). 2 The English of. 當代漢語貢獻獎 and 北京當代漢語研究所 are my own translations.. 14.

(22) As a Mandarin speaker, there are many Cantonese jokes we do not understand. I can only translate them into their Mandarin equivalents. For example, a lot of the jokes are playing with the tones and pronunciations of Cantonese, only Cantonese speakers will understand the connotations behind them… a lot of the times we can only improvise at the scene. For example, the Cantonese swear phrase ‘mother fucker’ is extremely rude. We cannot translate it literally because the Mandarin version has to be Grated3. This shows that the film distributor in Taiwan was aware of the Cantonese swearwords and connotations used in Stephen Chow’s films, but due to box office concerns, the translator and dubbing actor had to tone down this type of language significantly.. The Bureau of Audiovisual and Music Industry Development (BAMID) classifies films into the following categories before they are released in Taiwan, effective from 16 October, 2015: G (General Audience 普遍級): Viewing is permitted for audiences of all ages; P (Protected 保護級): Viewing is not permitted for children under 6; children between 6 and 11 shall be accompanied and given guidance by parents, teachers, seniors, or adult relatives or friends; PG12 (Parental Guidance 12 輔導十二歲級): Viewing is not permitted for children under 12; PG15 (Parental Guidance 15 輔導十五歲級): Viewing is not permitted for those under 15; R (Restricted 限制級): Viewing is not permitted for those under 18. 3. 15.

(23) 2. Literature Review In Chapter Two, an overview of audiovisual translation will be provided,. along with a review on the history and development of the Hong Kong Cantonese language. The characteristics and constraints of audiovisual translation will also be presented, with the discussion on the issue whether Cantonese and Mandarin, both considered as Chinese, should be categorised as inter- or intralingual translation, as well as the importance to distinguish between the two for the non-Chinese speakers.. 2.1 Audiovisual Translation (AVT) Without a script to accompany the visuals, the experience presented for moviegoers may not be as impactful. With great technological advancement, the film industry is able to produce films with breath-taking visual effects never seen before. While Hollywood is still leading the trend in film production and has a major influence in the industry, the number of independent short films and documentaries has been on the rise as well. Producing and distributing independent productions have never been easier – through online platforms such as YouTube and Facebook, the world can have instant access to the videos. Therefore, it is important to address the need of trans-cultural communications onscreen. Audiovisual translation (AVT) is an overall term which includes ‘media translation’, ‘multimedia translation’, ‘multimodal translation’, and ‘screen translation’. These terms are often used interchangeably to describe “the. 16.

(24) interlingual transfer of verbal language when it is transmitted and accessed both visually and acoustically” (Chiaro, 2009, p. 141). At the beginning, before television and computers were widely available to the general public, research conducted in the field of translation studies mainly focused on film translation. It was not until the 1960s when the term audiovisual translation and multimedia translation began attracting scholars’ attention. Cattrysse (2001, p.1) defines AVT as “the verbal translation of the linguistic part of multimedia messages”, which includes translation for film, radio, television and video media (Gambier, 2003). For the past two decades, AVT has been the fastest growing strand in translation studies both in academic and practical field, mainly because communication technology has become a great part of our social lives (PerezGonzalez, 2014), and “has been gaining ground in recent years and is fast becoming the standard referent” (Diaz Cintas & Remael, 2007, pp. 11-12). With the increasing rise of independent audiovisual productions being released worldwide through different media channels and the Internet, the demand for translation has never been greater. In a film, both the verbal and non-verbal meanings are displayed to the audience. Cattrysse (2001) mentions that even though the audience is exposed to both verbal and non-verbal signs throughout the film, translation of the verbal parts are never purely verbal because through those words, because words with cultural and political elements are translated. Besides dialogue (conversation) and text (subtitle), the audience is also given additional in-depth information. As screen products (i.e. films, television programs, documentaries etc.) are considered fully audiovisual in nature, it means that they are polysemiotic,. 17.

(25) functioning simultaneously on verbal/non-verbal and visual/acoustic levels. Figure 2.1 shows the factors that interact to produce a single effect in screen products (SP):. Figure 2.1 The Polysemiotic Nature of Audiovisual Products. Visual. Acoustic. Scenery, lighting, costumes,. Music, background noise,. props, etc.. sound effects, etc.. Also:. Also:. Gesture, facial expressions;. Laughter; crying; humming;. body movements, etc.. body sounds (breathing;. Non-verbal. coughing, etc.). Verbal. Street signs, shop signs;. Dialogues; Song-lyrics; poems,. written realia (newspapers;. etc. . letters; headlines; notes, etc.) Chiaro (2009) summed up the complexity of SP: Films and television… are made to be seen… at one level, SP will be made up of a complex visual code comprising elements that range from actors’ movements, facial expressions and gesture to scenery, costume and use of lighting and colour. However, this visual code will also include verbal information in written form that will comprise features… [making] SP both seen and heard by audiences. (p. 142). 18.

(26) On a similar note, scholars of the translation discipline have also been trying to identify different types of AVT methods. Chaume (2004a) states that the hybrid nature of SP makes it difficult to give it a clear cut on where one genre ends and the other begins, just as AVT is a combination of film and translation studies. Furthermore, in the Introduction of the special issue of the journal The Translator, Yves Gambier (2003) writes about screen translation, acknowledging that the two most commonly known methods of screen translation to most people are only limited to subtitling and dubbing, but he goes on to discuss there are so much more than just the two. In his article, Gambier has categorized crosslanguage transfer in AVT into two types: ‘dominant type’ and ‘challenging type’. ‘Dominant type’ is the most prevalent practices in translation, while ‘challenging type’ is more difficult to process. Under these two types, there are different modes of translation adapted by the industry. The table below provides a summary of Gambier’s AVT categories:. Figure 2.2 Gambier’s AVT Categories Audiovisual Translation Categories Dominant types Interlingual subtitling. Moving from the oral dialogue to one to two written lines and from one language to another, sometimes to. (open caption) . two other languages Adapts a text for on-camera characters. Intralingual. Dubbing dubbing may also occur. 19.

(27) Consecutive. Can be done in three possible modes: live, prerecorded. interpreting . or link-up . Simultaneous . Used, for instance, during a debate in a studio such as. interpreting . presidential debates . Voice-over or . Occurs when a documentary or an interview is translated/adapted and broadcast about in synchrony. ‘half dubbing’ . Free commentary . by a journalist or an actor Clearly an adaptation for a new audience, with additions, omissions, clarifications and comments . Simultaneous (or sight). Done from a script or another set of subtitles already available in a foreign language (pivot language) or. translation . from a dialogue list Double versions (same actors, but film dubbed) and. Multilingual production remarks (recontextualization in accordance with the new target culture). Challenging types Required to get subsidies, grants and other financial Scenario / script support for a co-production Intralingual subtitling . Done for the benefit of the deaf and Hard of Hearing in. (closed caption). the same language as content. 20.

(28) Live (or real time). Used in various types of interviews, such as Clinton’s hearing in the Supreme Court for sexual harassment in. subtitling. 1998 One-line subtitling placed above a theatre stage or in. Surtitling. the back of the seats, and displayed non-stop (i.e. without interruption) throughout a performance. Audio description. A kind of double dubbing in interlingual transfer for the blind and visually impaired. Broadcasters will pick the most suitable form of translation depending on the genre or the target audience. Undoubtedly, out of all the modes of translation mentioned above, dubbing and subtitling are the two most commonly used methods by the media, and have received the majority of attention in academic research as well (Chiaro, 2009). The two will be discussed in greater detail in the following sections.. 2.1.1 Dubbing Dubbing, also known as lip-synchronization, or lip-sync, is a process where the original source language voice track is replaced by the target language voice track that attempts to follow as closely to the timing and lip movement of the on-screen actor as possible (Luyken et al., cited in Chiaro, 2009; Munday, 2008). As the dubbing script is translated and written to maintain audio communication in the target culture setting, dubbing can be seen as a process of domestication, with the goal of making the dubbed dialogue look natural as if the. 21.

(29) original actors are speaking the target language in order to fully enhance viewers’ enjoyment. It is important to note that where cultures differ greatly, “a dichotomy of foreignization versus domestication has [to be] put forward to explain linguistically diverse translation from the same source in a cultural dimension” (He, 2009, p. 63). Similar to subtitling, there are two types of dubbing – interlingual and intralingual. Interlingual dubbing is a transfer from one language to another; whereas intralingual consists of re-voicing or replacing the original audio. This practice is mostly done in countries where many dialects exist, such as Italy, the UK, and China. For example, the first twenty minutes of Trainspotting, a film which the characters were talking in heavily-accented Scottish English, has to be dubbed4 (The Independent, 1996); just as Harry Potter has been translated into American English, so that the audience can fully comprehend the dialogues (Gambier, 2003). Moreover, almost all screen productions and foreign releases in China are dubbed for different reasons, such as accent issues, or matching the character with a suitable voice. The dubbing process is not as simple as it appears to be, and it involves many highly complex steps from start to finish. Martínez (2004, pp. 3-5) discussed the process of dubbing in great details in her article Film Dubbing, its Process and Translation. The process includes the following steps: 4 Trainspotting (1996), a British black comedy directed by Danny Boyle, follows a group. of heroin addicts in an economically depressed area of Edinburgh and their passage through life. When the film was set to release in the US in July, 1996, the US film distributor had asked the British producers to dub the first 20 minutes of the film, “[f]earing that audiences will find the Edinburgh vernacular incomprehensible” (The Independent, 1996).. 22.

(30) 1. Client sends a copy of the film, the script, and instructions to the dubbing studio; 2. Translator translates or transcreates the script; 3. A proofreader proofreads the translated dialogue and prepares it for synchronisation; 4. Synchroniser goes through the script so that it matches the actors’ lip movements; 5. Production assistants prepare the script, divide the texts into segments and draw up a schedule to facilitate the dubbing process 6. Dubbing actors record their assigned parts. Although dubbing is favoured by central and southern European countries such as France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Austria, as well as China, Japan, and Latin American nations, dubbing is bound by many constraints. Firstly, many scholars (Lu, 2009; Zhang, 2009) mentioned that dubbing suffers from three major problems, 1) non-synchronised lip movements; 2) mismatched body language; and 3) the loss of musicality and cadence of the original language. On top of that, the dialogue writers often criticize the quality of the translated script on the grounds that the translators are “incapable of producing credible, oral text” (Chaume, 2004b, p. 37). Thus, the final product is not natural or domestic for the target audience. In other words, the translated script and dialogues should produce the same effect as the original, making the target audience to share the same experience as those who speak the source language.. 23.

(31) Secondly, since foreign film productions only make up a low percentage of the entire industry, production companies seldom dub films. The article by Chiaro (2009) used the UK as an example, stating that in 2006, less than four per cent of the UK’s box office gross revenue is generated from foreign language films, of which Hindi only made up approximately two per cent; while nonEnglish speaking films was as low as two per cent of all the films broadcast on television. Although dubbing may appear to be unpopular nowadays, dubbing has many advantages and still holds a strong stand around the world. Dubbing allows the audience to enjoy watching the film without having to concentrate on reading the subtitles shown at the bottom of the screen. Moreover, films and programmes for children are almost always dubbed, even in countries that prefer subtitling to dubbing, so that they can enjoy foreign productions too (Chiaro, 2009). A dubbed film is almost for certain to suffer various kinds of losses due to the constraints mentioned above, it also pushes the translators to be creative when they write the dialogues, and tries to match the original to the target language.. 2.1.2 Subtitling Another popular form of translation in the audiovisual industry is subtitling. Gottlieb defined subtitling as “diamesic translation5 in polysemiotic media” in the form of written text, usually presented at the bottom of the screen in sync with the original dialogue exchanges of the speaker (2012, p. 37). It can 5 By ‘diamestic translation’ is meant the type of verbal transfer that crosses over from. writing to speech, or –– as in the case of subtitling – from speech to writing.. 24.

(32) also be referred to as a “double conversation” – from one language to another and from one medium to another (Fong, 2009). However, Catford (1965) believes that “translation between media is impossible… [p]honic and graphic substance are absolutely different, therefore there can be no question of a phonological item being relatable to the same substantial feature as a graphological item” (1965, p. 53). Same as dubbing, there are two kinds of subtitling methods: interlingual and intralingual. Interlingual subtitling refers to translating the dialogue to a written text from one language to another, sometimes even to two languages, while intralingual subtitling is “done for the benefit of the deaf and Hard of Hearing in the same language as content” (Gambier, 2003). Interlingual subtitling, also known as diagonal subtitling, involves a transfer of the spoken form (dialogues) to the written form (subtitles), from foreign speech to domestic writing (Gottlieb, 2012, p. 43). Since film dialogues are usually faster than the subtitles, subtitles tend to be shorter than the audio, often reduced or condensed by 40 to 75% in most cases, because the viewer needs an adequate amount of time to read the texts while watching the film and at the same time. Subtitle reduction is even more obvious in films that are dense in dialogues (Chiaro, 2009; Delabastita, 1989). Intralingual subtitling, on the other hand, consists of transferring the dialogues to a written form and stays within the domestic language. There are two types of intralingual subtitling (Gottlieb, 2012, p. 43):. 25.

(33) I.. Same-language subtitling of foreign productions for language learners;. II.. Same-language subtitling of domestic productions for the deaf and Hard of Hearing.. Gottlieb (2012) also mentions that there is a new hybrid type of subtitling emerged that sits between intra- and interlingual subtitling – subtitling dialect into standard language. Dialects have always been an issue in the film industry due to the fact that not all viewers understand the linguistic connotations. However, the implementations of dialects can often add authenticity to the characters, or even allowing the audience to relate their identity to the characters or film plot, which is not uncommon in film productions. Countries where subtitling dialects into standard language are common include Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Scotland, Ireland, etc. The case of Hong Kong, which is the main focus of this thesis, will be discussed in greater detail later. In general, subtitling has a more positive image in comparison to dubbing, as it is “added to the original”, whereas dubbing is substituting the original audio (Chiaro, 2009). Firstly, the original dialogue is always present and accessible by the viewers; the original voices of the actors are also audible to the audience familiar with the source language of the film. Furthermore, bilingual subtitling can be implemented to accommodate a larger audience. For example, Hong Kong used to show films with both standard Cantonese and English subtitles before its return to China in 1997 (Chiaro, 2009; Gottlieb, 2012; Delabastita, 1989).. 26.

(34) Moreover, with the necessity to shrink the subtitles, it gives the translator the freedom to be creative when he or she goes through the domestication process. However, as mentioned earlier, subtitles are often compressed for several reasons: the limited space available on the screen has restricted the number of characters that can appear at the bottom of the screen, especially with the case of bilingual subtitles, which takes up at least two separate lines. This can significantly lower the cinematographic qualities, and ultimately affect audience enjoyment. Hesitations, false starts, and taboo language that may appear in speeches are often eliminated in order to create precise, standard language subtitles because it takes longer to read the text than to listen to the audio. Another issue with subtitling is that English-speaking countries have a negative attitude towards intralingual subtitles, i.e. an Anglophone production with English subtitles appearing at the bottom. Fong (2009, p. 39) stated that the most common complaints from filmgoers are: “I don’t like reading at the movies” or “I spend so much time reading that I never get a chance to look at the visual elements”. The text may be helpful for non-English-speaking audiences, but intralingual subtitling is often viewed as redundant, distracting, and unnecessary to many. It seems that to dub or to sub will remain a debate in the academic and film industry for years to come.. 2.2 Audiovisual Translation in Hong Kong In Hong Kong, a wide variety of films and television programs, both Cantonese and English ones, is available to the public. It is observed that all nonCantonese speaking programs and series shown on television had to have duo. 27.

(35) audios available for the audience to select from, meaning that the original audio and a Cantonese-dubbed version were in place to accommodate the multilingual population. Not only English-, Japanese-, and Korean-speaking programs, even Mandarin-speaking programs would have a Cantonese dubbed audio available. Intralingual subtitles were also showing at the bottom of the screen to assist the deaf and hard of hearing community.. 2.3 Characteristics and Constraints of AVT in Hong Kong 2.3.1 Characteristics In the context of Hong Kong, film subtitling is not just translation; it involves voice and script, dialect and standard language. Even though most people in Hong Kong are functionally literate in both Cantonese and English, all Hong Kong films, even those released locally, have both Chinese and English subtitles since the mid-1960s. English subtitles were mandatory under British colonial law; however, there is no evidence of any colonial rule enforcing the necessity of English subtitles. As for standard Chinese subtitles, they are used to accommodate those Chinese who do not speak Cantonese, and all Englishspeaking films shown in Hong Kong must have Chinese subtitles as required by the law (Chen, 2004; Lo, 2005). However, this has also caused problems for cinemagoers because to many of them, particularly Cantonese speakers, subtitles are considered to be supplementary materials to the information they already receive from listening to the dialogue (Fong, 2009). For non-Cantonese speakers, they need to take into account that spoken Cantonese cannot be fully ‘translated’ into its written form in the case of subtitling. Colloquial Cantonese undergoes. 28.

(36) some form of intralingual translation first (from spoken Cantonese to written Chinese), proposing challenges for local subtitlers as to whether “it is right or ‘legitimate’ to employ colloquial Cantonese, and if so, to what extend” (Kei, 2009, p. 218). While some viewers may prefer subtitled films because they find the outof-sync dialogue in dubbed movies irritating, others prefer the dubbed versions because subtitles are considered as a disruption to the visual of a film (Lo, 2005). Moreover, Cantonese subtitles often draw criticisms from non-Cantonese speaking audiences due to the lexical and linguistic difference, as well as the differences in colloquial and written Cantonese (Lo, 2005; Fong, 2009). Some critics and theorists even consider subtitles as “highly defective translation” (Fong, 2009, p. 39) and tend to disagree as to whether subtitling should be labelled translation at all (Gottlieb, 2012). . 2.3.2 Constraints Although Hong Kong appears to have a better acceptance of western culture and influences, Hong Kong has a strict censorship beginning from its colonial rule by the British government. The Three-Tier film rating system was first introduced by the government in 1988 under Section 30 of the Film Censorship Ordinance. The censorship system is divided into four categories: I.. Approved for exhibition to persons of any age;. IIA.. Approved for exhibition to persons of any age but subject to displaying the symbol “Not suitable for Children”;. 29.

(37) IIB.. Approved for exhibition to persons of any age but subject to displaying the symbol “Not suitable for young persons and children”;. III.. Approved for exhibition only to persons who have attained the age of 18 years.. These classifications serve two different purposes: first, to lay a set of legally enforceable rules to restrict admission and access to adult films by minors; second, to serve as guidelines for parents about the suitability of the film so that they can decide whether the films are suitable to show their children, thereby exercising appropriate parental guidance (Office for Film, Newspaper and Article Administration of the HKSAR, 1999). Under the Ordinance, each film is subjected to undergo censorship evaluation by the OFNAA. Films with excessive violence, vulgarities, nudity (soft porn) would be given a Category III rating. Censors should follow the Film Censorship Guidelines for Censors (see Appendix B) when they rate the films submitted to the OFNAA. Category III films made up almost 45% of all the films submitted to the OFNAA for classification. Figure 2.3 is the total number of films submitted to the Hong Kong Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority (TELA) for classification from 1989 to 1999: . 30.

(38) Figure 2.3: Films Submitted for Classification and the Category III Films Released from 1989-1999 Year. Total. Category III. 1989. 1206. 582 (48%). 1990. 1294. 524 (40.5%). 1991. 1337. 563 (42%). 1992. 1190. 473 (39%). 1993 (through Sept.). 1083. 503 (46%). 1994. 879. 391 (44.5%). 1995. 1807. 697 (38%). 1996. 761. 298 (39%). 1997. 867. 376 (43%). 1998. 963. 450 (47%). 1999 (through Sept.). 640. 303 (47%) (Adapted from Davis and Yeh, 2001, p. 12). The figures in the table above include all films submitted for classification, with foreign films and straight-to-video releases included in the total column. The ones shaded in grey indicate the years in which Category III made up the greatest share of the material submitted to TELA. Despite the sharp decline of films submitted for classification since 1996, Category III films still made up a great portion of the total number.. 31.

(39) Under most circumstances, hard-core Cantonese and English swearwords are left untranslated, translated over-formally, translated into Putonghua or its equivalent euphemism most of the time due to concerns over box-office revenue (Chen, 2004; Fong, 2009). In fact, both the original and translation remain undertranslated because “in deciding between Category IIB or III, the censor should consider the degree of offensiveness of any such language” (Office for Film, Newspaper and Article Administration of the HKSAR, 1999), meaning the degree of vulgarity and language used in the film can affect the final rating, and if any hard-core Cantonese swearword is found either in the dialogue or subtitles by OFNAA, the film will automatically be given a Category III rating, which means that the film can only be shown to persons 18 years or above (Chen, 2004; Fong, 2009). It may due to the fact that bad and taboo language is more shocking when it is presented in written form instead of spoken – writing it down brings forward the ‘reality’ and the literal meaning is presented (Bolton & Hutton, 1997, p. 303).. 32.

(40) 3. Hong Kong Chapter Three will focus on different issues of Hong Kong. A brief history. of Hong Kong is provided, along with an overview on the history of Hong Kong Cantonese and its development. It is then followed by a discussion of the influence of the English language on Hong Kong, as well as the linguistic phenomena derived from it.. 3.1 Brief History of Hong Kong Hong Kong was a fishing island, and remained so until the Qing dynasty opened up its ports along the coasts of Canton (modern-day Guangdong) to foreign traders at the beginning of the nineteenth century. At the end of the First Opium War, China ceded the Hong Kong Island to Britain in the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842 (BBC, 2018). By the end of the Second Opium War, China was forced to give up further control of its mainland when the British government gained a perpetual lease over the Kowloon Peninsula which came into effect once the Convention of Beijing was signed in 1860. Towards the end of the century, the incursion of western power allowed the British to extend their power further up north, when the British and Chinese government signed the Second Convention of Beijing, which included a 99-year lease agreement for the New Territories, together with 235 small outlying islands surrounding Hong Kong (BBC, 2018; Hong Kong Tourism Board, n.d.; The Economist, 1997). Towards the end of the lease term, Britain and China began talks over the future of Hong Kong. The British had hoped that China would simply agree to continue British Sovereignty, but China repeatedly refused to recognise any of. 33.

(41) the ‘unfair’ Treaties regarding Hong Kong, insisting a full return to China (The Economist, 1997). In 1984, the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration, in which Britain agreed to return not only the New Territories, but also Kowloon and Hong Kong Island when the 99-year lease term expired. On 1 July, 1997, the British government transferred control of Hong Kong back to China (BBC, 2018; Hong Kong Tourism Board, n.d.).. 3.2 Overview of Hong Kong Cantonese Hong Kong is a political, cultural and linguistic frontier. Hong KongCantonese, under the Chinese dialect group Yue（粵）, is the most widely known and influential variety of the Chinese language family after Mandarin or Putonghua6. Spoken by 60 million people worldwide, it is generally considered as the only language that can match the status of Mandarin, the official language of China (Tam, 2017; Valentini, 2014). It is believed that the reason Cantonese was able to achieve such a prominence status was because of its historical connection with the British Crown Colony, which painted the image of Hong Kong as a “populous, modern, prosperous, highly-urbanized, educated, and internationally-influential community has raised the status of Cantonese to that of a prestige language in the eyes of Hong Kong Cantonese-speakers” (Bauer, 1984, p. 57). In addition, unlike other Mandarin-speaking regions such as China and Taiwan, where regional dialects are available, Hong Kong is considered as a 6 Putonghua (普通話, ‘common language’) is the term used by the Chinese government. to emphasise Mandarin is the mainland’s official lingua franca.. 34.

(42) monolingual region7. Although colonial Hong Kong emphasises the importance of English in political, legal, business, and education sectors, Cantonese enjoys a predominant status amongst the locals. For Hong Kong's ethnic-Chinese community, Cantonese functions as the community's standard form of speech, its lingua franca and mother tongue. English, as a language, first came into contact with the Cantonese people group during the seventeenth century8. Since foreign traders, the people of Hong Kong and Macau did not speak each other’s language, they communicated in Chinese Pidgin English. At the time, Chinese Pidgin English was a new, simple trade language based on selected vocabularies from different languages, such as Malay, Portuguese, Indian English, Cantonese and Standard English (Bolton, 2002; Cummings & Wolf, 2011; Wong, Bauer, & Lam, 2009). The term ‘Pidgin English’ was not used until the late-1850s, and the term was only used to refer to “’broken English’, ‘jargon’, or ‘mixed dialect’ used at Canton/Guangdong” (Bolton, 2002, p. 184). Historical influences as such allowed Hong Kong Cantonese to have a remarkable capacity for absorbing foreign words into its vocabulary and adapting them to its sound system. Even though the status of English remained in colonial Hong Kong, Cantonese has evolved over time to become a one of a kind language, filled with English loanwords (Wakefield, 2018) and newly 7 Even though English was, and still is one of the official languages used in Hong Kong,. Cantonese is the language used by the locals on a day-to-day basis. With an increasing amount of citizens learning English and Mandarin, along with Cantonese during their time in school, more and more people now consider themselves as trilinguals, whereas the older generations remain monolingual. 8 A. detailed account of the very first contact between English speakers and Chinese occurred in 1637 is available in the article Chinese Englishes: From Canton Jargon to Global English by Kingsley Bolton.. 35.

(43) created written Chinese characters which only exist in the Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong and cannot be found in standard Chinese. These characters have been created on purpose to represent Cantonese morphemes (Bauer, 1982; 1988; Wong, Bauer, & Lam, 2009). Such evolution of the Cantonese language has also created problems within the Chinese-speaking population in regards to understanding Cantonese, because some Cantonese characters and vocabulary are not commonly used, or even do not exist in the Mandarin vocabulary9. Moreover, a language not only goes hand-in-hand with culture, it also represents the people and its society. As culture changes over time, language will soon follow in its footstep. It is apparent that Hong Kong’s colonial history has played a strong influence on the development of both spoken and written Cantonese10, which has created a lexical gap between Cantonese and standard Chinese (Bauer, 1984; 1988). It is also difficult to ignore the fact that the growing power and dominance of Mandarin over Cantonese and other dialects in China is causing alarming concerns as Hong Kong’s predominant tongue may die out in a couple of generations. Robert Bauer, an honorary professor in linguistics at the University 9 Robert Bauer (1988, pp. 255-256) mentioned that, “I showed a cartoon clipped out of a. Hong Kong Chinese-language newspaper to my linguistics graduate students in Taiwan and asked them if they could understand the cartoon’s caption written in ‘Chinese’ characters. None of the… [Taiwanese] students were able to interpret the caption”. He describes this incident proved that “different Chinese speech communities… are not completely, linguistically-congruent entities – neither from the point of view of the spoken Chinese language nor of the written Chinese language”. 10 Bauer (1988) came up with a working definition of written Cantonese as “any text. which contains at least one Cantonese lexical item and is intended by its writer to be read by a Cantonese-speaking reader” in the article Written Cantonese in Hong Kong. However, linguists have yet to come up with a mutually agreed definition of what written Cantonese is at the time when this thesis is written.. 36.

(44) of Hong Kong and a fluent speaker of Cantonese and Mandarin, has decided to take it upon himself to preserve the language. Back in 1988, Bauer briefly commented on the future of Hong Kong Cantonese in the article Written Cantonese of Hong Kong, stating that as the second official language in colonial Hong Kong (English was the first official language at the time when the article was written and published), Cantonese still holds a significant position in all sectors throughout the region. In the eyes of the Hong Kong community, it is important for China to acknowledge Hong Kong Cantonese, a congeries of historical factors which has permitted its separate development from China, is different from Cantonese spoken in Guangdong or Guangxi (Bauer, 1988, p. 291). Over the 40 years of studying the language, Bauer has collected over 15,000 characters, colloquial terms and set phrases that only exist in Cantonese, and published ABC Cantonese Dictionary, aiming to preserve the language from extinction (Chan, 2017), proofing the lexical differences between Hong Kong Cantonese and the ones spoken outside the region. In addition, the advancement of technology has led to a further separation of Cantonese and Mandarin. The constant input from the western world, Internet/cyber language, along with the new phrases used by the young generation has made Cantonese to no longer be a dialect of the Chinese language, but a unique language only understood by the Hong Kong locals. . Cantonese – a Language or a Dialect? Many would argue that Cantonese is a dialect under the Chinese language family, but in recent years, it has become more and more apparent that. 37.

(45) Cantonese, Hong Kong Cantonese in particular, has moved away from only being a dialect under the Chinese language, and is slowly becoming a language of its own. The article How a Dialect Differs from a Language in The Economist (2014) explained that there are two different kinds of criteria that are used to distinguish languages from dialects – social and political, and linguistic. The social and political criteria see languages as “prestigious, official and written”, whereas dialects are “mostly spoken, unofficial and looked down upon”. In contrast, linguists have a different criterion (The Economist, 2014): If two related kinds of speech are so close that speakers can have a conversation and understand each other, they are dialects of a single language. If comprehension is difficult to impossible, they are distinct languages. Of course, comprehensibility is not eitheror, but a continuum—and it may even be asymmetrical. Nonetheless, mutual comprehensibility is the most objective basis for saying whether two kinds of speech are languages or dialects. Amongst the regional minority dialects in Mainland China, Cantonese still ranks as the second-most important dialect after Mandarin (Bauer, 1984). Although there is little research looking into this phenomenon, linguistically speaking, Cantonese, Taiwanese and Hakka are not mutually intelligible with Mandarin, and are often deeply stigmatized. The differences between Cantonese and Mandarin have reached a point where Mandarin speakers, from China and Taiwan alike, cannot understand spoken Cantonese, nor fully comprehend a Cantonese text even though it is written in Chinese characters. This is even more obvious when idiom and slang are used: these characteristics not only. 38.

(46) distinguish Cantonese from Mandarin speakers, but also Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong from those who live in places such as Guangdong, Malaysia, Canada, etc. (Bauer, 1984; Lai, 2001; Yau, 2001). Academically speaking, scholars are split into two camps regarding this argument; however, recent publications are in favour of treating Cantonese as a language instead of a Chinese dialect. Historical accounts show that Cantonese, a mix of the Han Chinese, Mongolian and Manchu languages from the Qing dynasty, has a much longer linguistic history than Mandarin. Cantonese emerged as a recognizable language during the Tang dynasty when the An-Shi Rebellion（安史之亂）took place (Tam, 2017). Moreover the mutual exchange between English and Cantonese has continued from the seventeenth century to the present day. Since then, the Cantonese language has been adapting English words into its phonological system and lexicon (Bauer, 1988; Wong, Bauer, & Lam, 2009). These borrowed words, also known as loanwords, will be discussed in the following section. . 3.3 English Influence in Hong Kong The first written account of English coming into contact with Cantonese was recorded by Peter Mundy in Macau in 1637 (Bolton, 2002). Since the late nineteenth century, English has remained as a strong influence in the region. After the Hong Kong Island, Kowloon Peninsula, and the New Territories were ceded on an indefinite basis to Britain, on a 99-year lease term respectively, the status of Cantonese remained as a language only spoken by the locals. During the 150 years of ruling the city, English was considered as the first language, and its. 39.

(47) status gradually gained attention when the colonial government began to promote the English language to its Cantonese-speaking locals in their education policy (Pennington & Yue, 1994). Even though Cantonese is considered as the lingua franca of Hong Kong, the prominent position of English cannot be ignored. Lord (1987) observed the status of English in Hong Kong back in the 1980s: In Hong Kong… English has changed from being a purely colonial language whose use was largely, restricted to government circles, the law, high-level business, and a few other sectors, to becoming an indispensable language of wider communication, for a growingly large range of people, all the way down from top brass to clerks, from taipans to secretaries. This latter local trend has been strictly a function of the growth of Hong Kong, especially during the 1970s, as a major international trading, business, banking, and communications centre. (p. 11) In 1987, the government implemented a compulsory nine-year free education policy as an education reform, aiming to provide accessible education for children11. Because the policy was successful in improving the literacy rate, the government extended the free education policy to 12 years12, and is in talks of further extending it to provide an optional free pre-school. It seemed that 11 The. nine-year compulsory education policy was enforced since September 1987, where parents have to enroll their children to attend primary school for six years of primary school (P.1 to P.6) to the first three years of secondary school (S.1 to S.3). 12 The government had an education reform, extending its compulsory free education. policy to twelve years, covering both primary and secondary school (P.1 to P.6; S.1 to S.6) when students attend government-aided schools (private and international institutes are not included in this scheme).. 40.

(48) English shares equal status within the society. The importance of English in Hong Kong’s education system has remained even to this day – at secondary and tertiary level, English is still wildly used as a teaching medium (Pennington & Yue, 1994).. Linguistic Phenomena in Hong Kong Walking down the streets of Hong Kong, it can be observed that during day-to-day conversations amongst the local people, it is not uncommon to hear English words being used in a Cantonese-dominated sentence. Such a phenomenon can be described as ‘code-mixing’ or ‘code-switching’ – a type of sociolinguistic behaviour in which two grammatically different languages are juxtaposed within a phrase or sentence (Li, 2000). English, being the dominant language of the world, has traditionally been used as a tool to judge the society’s level of education, literacy rate, and social status. It has become a norm, even a habit for people in Hong Kong to use English words and phrases when they communicate, not only to fill the lexical or stylistic gap in Cantonese, it is also done as a way of displaying their knowledge of the language, in attempt to raise their social status (Valentini, 2014; Wakefield, 2018). It is interesting to note that code-switching only happens between Cantonese and English, and not Mandarin. It may be due to the fact that Cantonese and Mandarin are two similar languages grammatically and lexically. Moreover, code-mixing is especially evident in the younger generation, who had been through the nine- and twelve-year compulsory education with English. 41.

(49) included as a compulsory subject. It is also popular for schools to use English as a medium of teaching, in the primary to tertiary institutes. Another linguistic phenomenon commonly seen in Hong Kong Cantonese is the use of loanwords. Hong Kong has had a long history of being in contact with European countries along with their language through trading, resulting in their mutual influences and enriching the languages (Bauer, 1984). One of the most noticeable influences is the mutual exchange of vocabulary – under British sovereignty, Cantonese has adapted many English words to its sound system to enrich its vocabulary and to fill the lexical gap between the two languages. It should also be noted that although English loanwords are frequently used in Hong Kong Cantonese, many have not fully integrated into the language, meaning that quite a few of them have yet to have their designated written standard Cantonese form (Liu, 1977; Wakefield, 2018). Not only in Hong Kong, the use of loanwords is also commonly seen in Japanese and Korean, where English words are adapted to the languages using their sound systems. English has also adapted vocabularies from many languages, such as Mandarin, Cantonese, French, etc. Code-switching and loanwords are inevitable when one language comes into contact with another. Hong Kong is only one of the many that has inherited these habits of speech, making Hong Kong Cantonese uniquely different to the ones spoken outside of Hong Kong13.. 13 The issue of code-mixing and English loanwords in Hong Kong Cantonese received scholarly attention since the late 1970s, however, since it is not the main focus of this dissertation, the discussion is kept to a moderation amount.. 42.

(50) 3.4 Post-1997 Language Policy in Hong Kong During the 1980s, when talks concerning the future of Hong Kong began between Britain and China, many linguistics scholars (Bauer, 1988; Bolton, 2000; Lord, 1987, etc.) were particularly concerned over the status of Cantonese (and English) being overtaken by Mandarin upon the return of Hong Kong to Chinese rule. After the handover, the Basic Law of Hong Kong implemented a ‘Biliteracy and Trilingualism’（兩文三語）language policy, with written Chinese 14 and English as the official languages used by the government, business, legal and education sectors, while Mandarin, Cantonese and English are the official spoken languages (Ho, 2010; Lim & Lee, 2015). Such language policy has encouraged the public to be familiar with all three languages. However, in recent years, Mandarin has been given priority over Cantonese through education reform, such as ‘普教中’ (teaching Chinese through the use of Putonghua), proving Bauer’s concerns of Cantonese losing its prominent status in Hong Kong. As Bolton and Hutton (1997, p. 299) put it, “… Cantonese, as a living, vibrant dialect, actually distinguishes itself from… the standard varieties of Chinese through its use of punning, double entendre, slang and racy wordplay: an aspect of language often seen as ‘naughty but nice’”. With that being said, it is not difficult to tell the status of Cantonese is at a decline, with the Beijing government banning Cantonese broadcasts in the Guangdong region on several occasions in the past. Most of the people born and raised in Hong Kong are still proud of being able to. 14 The Basic Law did not specify whether ‘written Chinese’ refers to Cantonese or Mandarin.. 43.

(51) speak Cantonese, as it is still considered as one of the most difficult dialects in the Chinese language family. . 44.