The Future & A Chinese Meme

I find it such a strange feeling –– that I have no idea where I'll be this November. Only 2 out of 10 college decisions have come in so I still don't know where I'll be going. I could be in the UK or in the US. This September I could either still be chilling at home reading books, or I could have started my first semester at an American college... This is the first time I don't know what the future looks like! And the feeling is weird but very cool! I can't visualise anything beyond the summer! It makes me feel like:

Cy Twombly

Untitled (1970)

and:

Jean-Michel Basquiat

Untitled (1981)

and:

Wassily Kandinsky

Composition X (1939)

Abstract and colorful and active and vibrant and also a little shaky and scared!

***

Today in the Sine Theta group chat we talked about a lot of things, actually, but one of the points we raised is something I've been thinking about a little (but not too much because then I go ?????? I'm not very good at having conversations with myself, which I guess is just thinking. When I grapple hard concepts I need to talk it over with someone else. I can't be a philosopher. I can be a... co-philosopher.) 

It's this video that is an online parody video from China. It's very funny to me, but the context is so specific and complex that it's incredibly difficult to explain. 

When they dub foreign, especially American, media into Mandarin, there's a special voice they use. Especially older media, like 90s, maybe, early 2000s. And especially nature documentaries, or just documentaries in general... You don't hear it as much in contemporary dubs. You don't turn on My Little Pony and hear people speak like this. But some dubs, many dubs are like this –– enough to make a meme about it. 

The inflections in these dubs are very specific. The tones seem quite exaggerated. And they use more complex vocabulary. Syntax that wouldn't be used colloquially by native speakers. The video translates actual Chinese dramas into these "foreign dubs". 

So why do these dubs sound like this? We talked about it a little and wondered if it had to do with English (and most languages in general) being atonal, but Mandarin being tonal. The emotional tones in English are very strong, because tones are malleable. In Mandarin, emotional tones are more subtle, because you can only inflect your voice to a certain extent. When these dramatic inflections in English are translated into Mandarin, voice actors will try to mimick the original, but it just sounds comical to a Chinese ear. 

The parody also refers overly to "god" (上帝) for comedic effect, because foreigners are seen as constantly talking about God. God in China is a foreign concept, I think. There is Buddha, and there are various mythological deities, but they don't have the omnipotence and omniscience that an Abrahamic God does.

And I wonder if the English-language equivalent to this phenomenon is the "Orientalised" language that is often used when translating Chinese into English. A vocabulary and syntax that just sounds Oriental. Like: "twenty-six malignant gates". Malignant, instead of bad, or evil. Gates, not doors, portals. Or translating names literally, like 兰花 becoming Orchid Blossom and 明珠 Precious Pearl. Or, I don't know: "Uphold the Fires of the Glorious Socialist Revolution." It sounds very stiff. I can't really explain this either, but there's definitely a linguistic pattern.
Edit: On Jan 4th, a Guardian article quoted the Global Times as saying: "May the arrogant Americans realise that the United States of America is perhaps just a shooting star in the ample sky of history." It sounds so incredibly stiff and foreign when phrased like this. Probably because it's translated word for word. Already "These arrogant Americans should realise that the USA is just a shooting star in the ample sky of history" is a lot less alienating. But I guess it sounds less formal or whatever. I don't know. I'm not equipped to analyse stuff like this. But constant such attitudes of translation construct this image of China and Chinese being all like this, speaking in inextricably foreign ways.

Both of these are ways of Othering, perhaps. They translate while retaining the inherent foreignness of the source text. 

It's all very interesting.