The Chinese Lion King

I first saw the Lion King animated film when I was very young – but instead of the American version, I saw the Chinese version. I did see the American version sometimes while I was in middle school! When I first saw the film, I knew nothing about symbolism, allusion, and other literary devices. In re-watching the Chinese version of the film, however, I was surprised by a few things. I was surprised to see that the storyline parallels Shakespeare’s Hamlet, although not completely. Just as Claudius killed Hamlet’s father and sent Hamlet away, Scar killed Simba’s father and forced Simba out of the Kingdom – and just as Hamlet returned to avenge his father by killing Claudius, Simba acted similarly. I was surprised to find the film very educational, especially to the K-12 students, and the plot thematically rich, because it teaches young children about media literacy and invites them to critically think about the perception of race, power, gender, class, and even sexuality in our culture.

I was really surprised by the film’s Chinese translation. In the Chinese translation, many things were excluded – the hyenas’ puns on the lion cubs, for example, were left out. The lyrics of the songs were altered – somewhat significantly, in my opinion. Take, for instance, one of the popular (and also one of my favorite) songs in the film:

Readers, you need not to worry about understanding what the actual Chinese lyrics are saying but notice the two highlighted (red) stanzas. The highlighted (red) stanzas differ from one another. Conversely, the two corresponding (blue) stanzas in the American version are practically identical to one another. In both of the highlighted (red) stanzas in the Chinese version, not only were there many idiomatic expressions included but these expressions, in my opinion, don’t really reflect the exact message in the American version. These idiomatic expressions, in fact, translate into something the Chinese populations find relatable but they differ from the author’s original intent. In a situation like this, should the translated version (as well as other translated texts and films) always stay as an “amber” of the original one, preserving the author’s original intent, or should it be tailored specifically to cater each group of audiences? To some, the inconsistencies may enhance the plot – but is that always the case?

The Lion King wasn’t the only film with translational issues. I remember in my sophomore year in which one of my English professors showed the class Chunking Express, a Chinese film, that has similar issues in translation. Although there were English subtitles in the movie, they didn’t fully capture all of the things in the actual dialogues. Many things, especially the Chinese slangs – and many were rich in meaning – were left out. In a sense, while re-watching the Chinese version of the Lion King film, I can’t stop but wonder whether the translational gap between languages will ever be filled – and I am not referring to just English and Chinese, but also to languages like Arabic, Korean, Japanese, Spanish, and the like. Is this issue even important? In the gender context, perhaps – but surely, there are tons of movies out there that altered the actual storyline in the book. In any case, re-watching the Lion King film was fun and very enjoyable – at least for 1 hour and 28 minutes. Oh, and here are the puns I was talking about earlier from the Lion King (and they are too hilarious to be excluded):

And maybe some bloopers too?

– Jason