Why is it difficult to dub in Mandarin?

I can't remember how many times I opened Tomb Raider: Shadow, trying to successfully end my journey of "New Trilogy", but I gave up halfway. This time, it's actually okay. A few achievements have promoted the plot, but personally, the biggest "harvest" is to find that the whole Chinese dubbing is not as beautiful as I thought.

A similar feeling appeared in my impression around 20 18, when World of Warcraft 8.0 was about to open. In the trailer, Jaina sang "Daughter of the Sea", which not only narrated the past events that she deeply regretted in a sad and firm tone, but also pushed the irreconcilable contradiction between the alliance and the tribe to a climax with the last sentence "Be careful of me", which made people feel happy. But it's a pity that I accidentally opened the Chinese version of this CG when I was happily recommending it to people, so after a burst of inexplicable embarrassment, I finally chose to leave quietly, and then everyone ignored it as if nothing had happened ... Almost after that, I began to pay attention to all kinds of news that seemed to be related to it, and then found that similar problems didn't just appear in the game circle, so it's not surprising.

Why do China people prefer to leave letter combinations on T-shirts, while international friends prefer to carve Chinese characters on their skin? Why can we say "I love you" to the person we like, but when we say "I love you", we get goose bumps all over? Similar questions have long drawn a big question mark in many people's minds, prompting them to discuss and study together and get a summary of "mother tongue shyness" (note that "mother tongue shyness" is by no means a real psychological concept, but a routine description of similar phenomena in recent years). To put it simply, people are expressing something in their mother tongue, or as bystanders, they will feel particularly embarrassed, or at least something is wrong; As for the reasons, there is no authoritative explanation at present, but some seemingly reasonable explanations can be found by summarizing many existing phenomena of "mother tongue shyness" on the Internet.

To put it simply, the meanings of words in everyone's mother tongue are firmly bound to emotions, and in some cultural backgrounds, some emotions are not suitable for direct expression, otherwise Natsume Sosuke is not worth replacing mutual admiration with "the moonlight is beautiful tonight"; Similarly, due to the insurmountable differences between cultures, some expressions that are used to in foreign language contexts will also appear embarrassing in native language contexts. The most typical representative is the rough translation cavity and the frequent phenomenon of Chinese dubbing in games, which is difficult to cause a sense of * * * because of lack of emotion.

Although Chinese dubbing in games appeared much earlier than we thought in history, due to the special market situation in China, these excellent works have never caused any waves, so Chinese dubbing in games has been an elusive luxury for a long time. Interestingly, these so-called "luxury goods" that are still crossing the river by feeling the stones in the early days have well avoided the trap of "mother tongue shyness"-whether in Radiation 3, when China soldiers liberated the 1 12 shelter, they shouted "Standing on the same paper, our nests are sniffing out these empires one by one (comrades stand aside! Battlefield 2, when the soldier reported, he said, "The line was cut off by the local dealer (enemy armored vehicle was found)". These so-called Chinese words are very different from the language we have been speaking, and they sound like another foreign language, so naturally there is nothing to be ashamed of.

Unfortunately, Deiss did not retain the language features of "active hand (sniper)" and "dealer cut (armored vehicle)" in his later works. Although General China, who appeared in Battlefield 4, could not speak decent Chinese, with the help of a group of China students from Stockholm University, China soldiers who came out later not only learned the natural expression of "Lao Zi was shot", but even easily mastered a classic sentence. As a result, the Chinese dubbing of the battlefield series, which was once a joke, suddenly became one of the most successful cases in the industry. Regardless of whether this brainstorming idea is intentional or not, DICE shows colleagues the most important principle to eliminate "mother tongue shyness": nature, being close to life, in other words, grounding.

It's easy to say, but it's actually difficult. Battlefield 4 (multiplayer part), as a military game with short sentences and few articles, can rely on group wisdom to determine the most "grounded" expression without touching the "red line". Historical masterpieces such as Total War of the Three Kingdoms can weaken the influence of "mother tongue shyness" in an antique tone, but other games involving plots and requiring emotional expression are not so lucky. The Tomb Raider: Shadow mentioned above is a typical example that it is difficult to be grounded. As Laura's voice actor Yang Menglu, the blackened "Go to hell" sounds really chilling. However, due to various domestic restrictions, the blackened Laura's new hatred and old hatred are piled together in the story, but she refrains from "national abuse" and blurts out "bastard", which is a bit unsatisfactory. As a singer of China's "The Greatness of the Sea", the singer's singing skills are not so beautiful (singing skills and emotional input may be better), but the place name in that story sounds good. If Amway really wants to participate in it, it will inevitably feel ashamed. Not to mention the Japanese game lines with slow temperament, it is a bit of a public punishment to let the voice actor read them in his mother tongue.

Based on these two reasons, to some extent, it is almost not worth the loss to completely localize a game to the extent of eliminating "mother tongue shyness". Even though all the details are covered up, the voice actor's performance is remarkable, but under the influence of various reasons, the actual effect of Chinese voice-over still sounds a bit perfunctory (excitement and anger are almost impossible). However, for this reason, I think it is necessary to pay tribute to Capcom. After they bravely accepted the challenge of Chinese dubbing in the remastered version of Resident Evil 2, in their recently released remastered version of Resident Evil 3 (trial play), the hostess's Chinese has reached a level that almost all players are satisfied with. As for whether she can completely break the curse of the official version of "mother tongue shyness", let us wait and see.