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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2025
This article examines the translation of foreign films in cosmopolitan Shanghai from 1896 to 1949. Silent films were introduced to China at the end of the nineteenth century, and live narration was provided to allow Chinese audiences to better understand Western shadow plays. With an increasing number of foreign films exhibited in Shanghai theatres, distributors and exhibitors made printed film plot sheets and experimented with the use of subtitles. With the arrival of sound cinema, experiments with techniques such as simultaneous interpretation, voiceover, and dubbing were also conducted. At this time, Shanghai was a semi-colonial city, where the languages spoken included the Shanghai dialect, Cantonese, standard Mandarin, and English, among others, and where the written Chinese language was transitioning from classical Chinese to vernacular Chinese. Film translation is perceived as a space where the mediation between the foreign and the local is materialized. Using materials such as official regulations, newspapers, memoirs, and archives, this article examines various modes of foreign film translation in Republican Shanghai to demonstrate the ways in which the vibrant translation activities of early cinema mediated between languages and cultures, connected local audiences with the foreign, and constructed a cosmopolitan cultural scene.
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