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Episode Description

Anyone from an English speaking country who flips to Cartoon Network in Taiwan can tell you, it sounds a little different from back home: The whole thing is dubbed from start to finish into Chinese.

 

But it’s not just a simple matter of translating straight from English to Chinese. In fact, cartoon network’s dubbing studios in Taiwan spend weeks reworking the dialogue and adding in local references so the humor and the ideas will make sense to a Taiwanese audience.

 

In this episode, we speak to Cartoon Network’s Head of Dubbing in Taiwan, April Chang, to learn a little bit more about the process and what it takes to make dialogue that works in Taiwan.

 

We add in many things which local kids and adults are both familiar with, for example local celebrities…. So when the kids watch Cartoon Network they will feel “Oh, Cartoon Network knows what I like.”

How to listen

You can download episodes of this program online at the ICRT website and on the show’s iTunes page. New episodes are added every Wednesday.

You can learn more about Taiwan Talk at the show page here.

You can also find past episodes on this blog here.

Normally for comedies if we want to make a character sound really funny and familiar we will use Mandarin with a Taiwanese accent. It’s just like every day life…. In Taiwan we have so many language resources…. So I just think it’s interesting to use all these resources in a flexible way.

Recommended reading

I’ve only got one article this time around, and unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find anything in English, but here’s a great Chinese interview with April and the voice actor who voices Jake (or 老皮) in Taiwan that explains a little bit more about what goes into the dubbing process.

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