Per reporter: Li Jianning Per editor: Dong Xingsheng
In recent years, the scale of domestic digital cultural products represented by games, online texts, film and television, and animation has been expanding in overseas markets, and has become an important way for overseas users to understand Chinese culture. In the process of cultural exchange, language has always been the first link that needs to be solved.
At the 4th Transponder Conference held at the end of December 2021, He Enpei, founder and chairman of Transsion Language Association, Gao Dongxu, founder and chief analyst of China Entertainment Think Tank, and many other experts from the cultural communication and language service industries shared their views on topics such as the trend of cultural overseas travel in the digital age, the ecology of language communication, and the transformation of translation models.
Image source: Photo by reporter Li Jianning
"The Eskimos had never seen sand, so their language used the analogy of 'snow', while in Arabic there were more than four hundred descriptions of 'camels'. Language comes from the recognition of the world, and new languages will be born in the increasingly hot metaverse. He Enpei said.
He Enpei told the "Daily Economic News" reporter that the help of digital technology has made the human-machine co-translation model constantly innovate, improving the efficiency and quality of the overall translation, and with the advent of the new translation era, it is even more necessary to express the core and charm of culture through language, so that cross-language cultural exchanges are no longer obstacles.
Language barriers are the biggest pain point for the cultural industry to go to sea
The game industry has always been one of the important windows for China's foreign cultural dissemination and exchange, and embedding China's excellent traditional culture in game products can not only enhance the international competitiveness of the game industry, but also expand the global influence of Chinese culture.
According to the "2021 China Game Industry Report" released by the Game Working Committee of the China Music and Digital Association, the actual sales revenue of China's self-developed games in overseas markets in 2021 reached 18.013 billion US dollars, an increase of 16.59% year-on-year. The scale of China's game industry going overseas, the scope of overseas market penetration and product sales continue to rise, and the number of user downloads, usage time and user payment have also maintained a good growth trend.
While the game industry is riding the waves in overseas markets, many cultural products such as online literature and animation films are also actively "going out". Gao Dongxu believes that the formation of the wave of China's cultural industry going to sea is not only supported by national macro policies and promoted by the development of technologies such as 5G, but also because of the increase in original cultural products and the enhancement of cultural self-confidence of relevant practitioners.
"With the acceleration of the pace of China's cultural industry going to sea, the number and quality of 'going out' enterprises have been continuously improved, and the industrial chain of content creation, distribution channels, and promotion models has gradually matured and improved, and a competitive situation of China's digital entertainment industry has been formed." Gao Dongxu said that China's self-developed games have achieved fruitful results in overseas markets, and cultural products such as animation and movies that have lagged behind have also been catching up and surpassing in recent years.
Gao Dongxu Image source: Photo by reporter Li Jianning
However, Gao Dongxu also admitted that cultural products still face many challenges in the process of "going out", and language barriers are one of the most critical problems.
"The languages of different countries are very different, which leads to the need to spend a certain amount of energy on cultural products in the process of going to sea to adapt to the local language and culture." Gao Dongxu pointed out that on the one hand, many small and medium-sized cultural enterprises do not have enough funds to establish their own translation systems, on the other hand, due to the lack of professional talents and the lack of translation accuracy, it will also lead to problems such as sensitive subject conflicts, poor search experience, and large cultural differences in the process of going to sea. "Language barriers have a great impact on product development and operation, and have become one of the biggest obstacles for the cultural industry to go to sea."
Digital technology reconstructs translation patterns
At present, the number of young people who can use English proficiently in our country is increasing, and there are also some talents who have mastered many foreign Chinese. In this case, why does the language barrier become an obstacle for cultural products to go to sea?
Taking online literature as an example, the "2021 China Online Literature Overseas Report" released by iResearch Shows that the scale of the online literature overseas market will reach 1.13 billion in 2020, an increase of 145% year-on-year, and it is expected that the market size will exceed 3 billion in 2021, achieving double growth.
Screenshot of the 2021 China Internet Literature Overseas Report Image source: iResearch
Behind the rapid expansion of the market scale is the sustained growth force brought about by the stock of nearly 28 million online literary works, but in the face of such a large-scale work stock, coupled with the length of hundreds of thousands of words or even millions of words of online literary works, the traditional translation model is difficult to meet the demand in terms of translation speed, translation quality and translation cost. The report also clearly points out that at this stage, language barriers and translation capabilities are the biggest pain points that shackle the large-scale output of China's online literature.
He Enpei pointed out that in the process of going out of the network, more than 60% of users think that the quality is poor and difficult to understand, and more than 50% of the people feel that the update is not timely, and the foreign translations have not come out after the domestic update for a long time.
"No matter how many foreign languages we speak, we instinctively think in our native language when we think." He Enpei believes that language comes from culture and also lays the foundation for a unique world view of a nation, so the most effective way to communicate information in the process of dissemination is through the mother tongue of the other party. "Only by describing our culture from the other person's point of view can the other party truly understand and accept it."
In the process of going to sea with cultural products represented by online literature, some content is only translated literally and simply, and foreign users cannot fully understand the cultural core behind it. In addition, He Enpei also proposed that new languages may be born under the concept of metacosmology.
He Enpei took "The Lord of the Rings" as an example, and in order to construct a complete "Middle-earth" by the original author Tolkien, he created a fictional language of elves, half-orcs, dwarves, hobbits and other creatures, of which there are more than a dozen dialects of elven language alone. "This fully shows that the language in the real world is not enough to depict such a fictional world where history, environment, culture, etc. are intertwined, so in the virtual world that we are in full swing, new languages will inevitably arise, and perhaps even many new languages."
He Enpei Image source: Photo by reporter Li Jianning
The use of technology tools has changed the mode of human translation, but the speed increase compared to traditional translation is still limited. With "AI" as the center of translation and human assistance such as translators and quality inspectors, through distributed online translation technology and human-computer collaboration system, the English manuscripts that take 2 to 3 days to complete in the traditional mode are compressed to delivery within 90 minutes, and the translation speed is increased by more than 30 times.
He Enpei also stressed that the most important thing for translation is not to be beautiful but to be consistent. "We must first build the infrastructure for the spread of Chinese culture to the outside world, first let us say the same thing to the outside world, and then pursue exquisite on the basis of consistency." Only in this way can we build a Chinese language chain faster and let the world better spread and share Chinese culture. ”
Daily economic news