scholarly journals IN THE MASK OF A MARTIAL ART FILM: A CHINESE FILM ADAPTATION OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE’S HAMLET

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (41) ◽  
pp. 95-102
Author(s):  
Zhang Ying
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Culture ◽  
White Paper ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Chinese Film ◽  
Martial Art ◽  
The Two Cultures ◽  
Cultural Ideology ◽  
Art Film ◽  
Symbolic Approach

Abstract: The release of Chinese film director Feng Xiao Gang’s The Banquet in 2006 declares the first Chinese Hamlet film adaptation. Feng chooses to sinicize the play and interweaving cultural elements by framing the play into a Chinese martial art film and by applying Chinese Nuo mask and its variation in his filmic interpretation of the play. The frame of martial art film is heavily featured as the Chinese cultural touch deployed by the director in the transformation of a western play into a Chinese film, which proves to be an effective tool for displacing the western cultural elements with Chinese cultural ideology and principles. The use of the Nuo mask motif throughout the film is discussed with the following examples: 1. The director’s choice of using the Chinese Nuo mask in his adaptation of the play-within-the-play scene in the film, displacing the Mousetrap with its Nuo drama counterpart. 2. The director’s re-interpretation of Hamlet’s hesitation and madness, his representation of the Ghost and his symbolic approach to the building of characters by adopting a white paper mask. 3. The director’s transfer from the Ghost of Old Hamlet to copper carved mask symbolization. 4. The director’s building of characterization by using one’s own face as the mask. The framing of martial art film and the adoption of Nuo mask are the tools of sinicization in the process of the intercultural film adaptation of the western classic. The success of the film has explored the connections between the two cultures and challenged the transfer of Chinese culture into a western play.

Subtitle Translation Strategies of Dish Name in the Chinese Documentary-A Bite of China 1

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhang Qi ◽  
◽  
Ang Lay Hoon ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Dietary Habit ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Translation Strategies ◽  
Cultural Ideology ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Chinese Films

With the implementation of “go globally” strategy of Chinese culture, a large number of Chinese films and TV programs have been produced to go abroad. As a medium and carrier of cultural communication, the quality of documentary subtitle translation determines whether Chinese culture can be appropriately disseminated or not. This paper aims to investigate the translation strategies of culture-specific items with special focus on name of dishes. The object of study in this paper is A Bite of China 1 produced by CCTV in 2012, which is not only about Chinese foods but also geography, local customs and dietary habit. Firstly, by using comparative approach, the linguistic characteristics are discussed to identify the similarities and differences between source and translated dish names. Then the translation strategies for dish name are examined. Next, such factors affecting translation strategies as cultural ideology is analyzed. The objective of this paper is to study what translation strategies are possibly adopted when translating Chinese dish name into English in the documentary. The findings show that in the process of dish name translation of Chinese documentaries, domestication and foreignization are two frequently used strategies which is complementary to each other.

scholarly journals Culture under Complex Perspective: A Classification for Traditional Chinese Cultural Elements Based on NLP and Complex Networks

Complexity ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Lin Qi ◽  
Yuwei Wang ◽  
Jindong Chen ◽  
Mengjie Liao ◽  
Jian Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Complex Networks ◽  
Song Dynasty ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Detection Algorithm ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Scale Free ◽  
Northern Song ◽  
Reliable Classification ◽  
Community Detection Algorithm

The cultural element is the minimum unit of a cultural system. The systematic categorizing, organizing, and retrieval of the traditional Chinese cultural elements are essential prerequisites for the realization of effective extracting and rational utilization, as well as the prerequisite for exploiting the contemporary value of the traditional Chinese culture. To build an objective, integrated, and reliable classification method and a system of traditional Chinese cultural elements, this study takes the text of Taiping Imperial Encyclopedia in Northern Song Dynasty as the primary data source. The unsupervised word segmentation methods are used to detect Out-of-Vocabulary (OOV), and then the segmentation results by the THULAC tool with and without custom dictionary are compared. The TF-IDF algorithm is applied to extract the keywords of cultural elements and the Ochiia coefficient is introduced to create complex networks of traditional Chinese cultural elements. After analyzing the topological characteristics of the network, the community detection algorithm is used to identify the topics of cultural elements. Finally, a “Means-Ends” two-dimensional orthogonal classification system is established to categorize the topics. The results showed that the degree distribution in the complex network of Chinese traditional cultural elements is a scale-free network with γ = 2.28. The network shows a structure of community and hierarchy features. The top 12 communities have taken up to 91.77% of the scale of the networks. Those 12 topics of the traditional Chinese cultural elements are circularly distributed in the orthogonal system of cultural elements’ categorization.

scholarly journals Qipao: The Carrier of Chinese Cultural and Philosophical Symbols

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-116
Author(s):  
Cheng Fung Kei
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Group ◽  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Chinese Women ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Chinese Values

The qipao has become the symbol of identity for Chinese women. It is a tight-fitting dress with a standing collar, an asymmetric left-over-right opening and two-side slits. Chinese knot buttons are also an essential part of the qipao. While the garment serves to express Chinese values and has philosophical connotations, its colour, fabric pattern and Chinese knot buttons express wishes for happiness, luck, fortune, longevity as well as a yearning for peaceful interpersonal relationships and harmony with nature. The qipao was developed not only from a traditional gown used by the Han (the majority Chinese ethnic group), but also integrated minority cultural elements and has recently added Western sartorial patterns. This has resulted in a national dress that is more harmonious with contemporary aesthetics, manifesting the adaptability, versatility and inclusiveness of Chinese culture.

Hitchcock with a Chinese Face: Cinematic Doubles, Oedipal Triangles, and China's Moral Voice (with DVD). By Jerome Silbergeld. [Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004. 160 pp. £22.95. ISBN 0-295-98417-1.]

2005 ◽  
Vol 182 ◽  
pp. 454-456
Author(s):  
Chris Berry
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
Chinese Film ◽  
Moral Voice ◽  
History Approach ◽  
Contemporary Chinese Cinema ◽  
Contemporary Chinese ◽  
Chinese Face

Jerome Silbergeld introduced an art history approach into Chinese film studies with China into Film: Frames of Reference in Contemporary Chinese Cinema in 2000. Hitchcock with a Chinese Face goes further. Like an art historian selecting three seemingly disparate paintings and demonstrating their links, Silbergeld chooses a film each from Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China, but argues that they pursue similar aesthetic and political directions. The result is a virtuoso display of intense textual and inter-textual exegesis, informed by an in-depth knowledge of the pre-modern Chinese arts, contemporary Chinese political culture, and globally circulated Western culture (including Hitchcock). It is also a challenge to the discipline of film studies itself.The three films Silbergeld selects for analysis are Lou Ye's 2000 film from mainland China, Suzhou River (Suzhou he); Yim Ho's 1994 Hong Kong film, The Day the Sun Turned Cold (Tianguo nizi); and the final part of Hou Hsiao Hsien's 1995 Taiwan trilogy, Good Men, Good Women (Hao nan, hao nü,). He acknowledges that the project began as a personal indulgence allowing him to explore further some of his favourite films. However, his engagement with the films leads him to argue that each one, in its own way, deconstructs the commonly circulated idea of a unified Chinese culture, engages powerfully with morality, is narratively complex and anti-commercial, mobilizes a cosmopolitan knowledge of world cinema, and displays an unusual degree of interest in individual psychology and oedipality. The latter elements help to ground the comparisons to Hitchcock (as well as to Hamlet, Dostoevsky, Faulkner and others).

Samurai Kabuki

2020 ◽  
pp. 281-286
Author(s):  
Jonathan R. Eller
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Late Life ◽  
Time Travel ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
Honorary Degree ◽  
Special Effects ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
John Huston ◽  
The University

The ghosts that Bradbury had carried since his challenging time in early 1950s Ireland with John Huston were finally laid to rest when Bradbury received an honorary degree from the University of Ireland, Galway, home to the Huston School of Film and Digital Media. Chapter 41 also describes the film adaptation of A Sound of Thunder (2005) and the need to extend this time travel story into a feature film requiring more special effects than the production could afford. In spite of excellent casting and strong performances, the film fell short of the mark for critics and audiences. The chapter also describes Bradbury’s late-life reflections on Japanese and Chinese culture and his attempts to have Samurai Kabuki produced as a film.

The Journey of Silk to the International Fashion Design World

2011 ◽  
Vol 175-176 ◽  
pp. 981-986 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jian Ping Yang ◽  
Yu Qi Sun ◽  
Shao Ning Qing
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Fashion Design ◽  
Western World ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Clothing Design ◽  
The World ◽  
Main Factors ◽  
Fashion Designers

The eastern cultural elements, especially represented by Chinese traditional cultural elements, are widely applied in the fashion design when some major international fashion brands introduce the latest design to the world. Silk as one of main factors of Chinese culture has caught lots of attention of international fashion designers and has won great recognition in the western world. The mixtures of cultural elements give those international fashion brands big profits both in the publicity and economy. However at present in china silk is mainly employed into the bed clothing design, underwear design and craft design. Although there are some designers who try silk into the fashion design, the patterns they use are mostly the Chinese traditional ones. The limit of patterns and styles of silk design puts the domestic silk fashion design in the dilemma. The success of the employment of eastern cultural elements of those international fashion brands inspires a new trend of the silk fashion design. This thesis will try to explore approaches to combine the western cultural elements and Chinese traditional cultural elements into the silk fashion design. And at the same time, we like to talk about the concepts of using the Chinese traditional ways of sewing and embroidery in the showing western cultural elements by silk. Also we want to discuss the new access of the silk to the international fashion design world.

Zeno's Paradox

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 491-519 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jieyoung Kong
Keyword(s):  
Tai Chi ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Appropriation ◽  
Cultural Resources ◽  
Art Practice ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Transformational Process ◽  
Martial Art ◽  
Cultural Spaces ◽  
Moving Bodies

Scholars have noted the increase in “Eastern movement forms” (e.g., non-sporting martial arts, yoga, meditation, and Tai Chi), which have been penetrating into social-cultural spaces and institutions outside their native contexts. The practice halls and studios where such movement forms are trained are intercorporeal communicative spaces where practitioners are not only grappling with the specificity of movements, but enmeshed in an assemblage of moving bodies and cultural resources. By plunging into the practice of aikido, a martial art style originating from Japan, this study explores how practitioners in the United States understand their martial art practice through their bodies. Three themes emerged: practicing, ki, and mastering. Listening to the voices of martial art bodies revealed that skillfulness is a ceaseless endeavor that uses movement to draw new relationalities between one's own corporeal assemblage and those of others rather than the internationalization of movement techniques. In the case of aikido practice, the on-site learning and practice open the way for new relationship-making across multiple lines of difference, suggesting cultural appropriation as a transformational process that exceeds the simple use and borrowing of cultural elements.

scholarly journals Indigenous Socio-political and Cultural Similarities in Africa: The Case of the Igbo of Nigeria and the Jola of the Gambia

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Cajetan Ifeanyi Nnaocha ◽  
Frederick Ugwu Ozor ◽  
Edeh Joseph Nwokpoku
Keyword(s):  
Social Consciousness ◽  
The Gambia ◽  
Traditional Society ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
Attitudes And Perceptions ◽  
The Two Cultures ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Kinship Ties

A major thrust of this paper’s analysis is the indigenous socio-political and cultural similarities in Africa, in particular the case of the Igbo of Nigeria and the Jola tribe of The Gambia. The study aims at identifying the areas of similarities between these cultures in a context in which indigenous cultural and socio-political framework of society has witnessed significant transformations over the years. Using multi case studies strategy of inquiry, this paper addressed two key broad research questions, first, whether veritable similarities could be found between the two cultures, or whether identified similarities mere coincidence or did arise from the fact both groups having the same ancestry but subsequently dispersed into different directions and locations in search for arable lands?  Second, does ethno-cultural interrelatedness of societies arise from shared historical ancestry? In this context, it established strong link between the cultures the Igbo of Nigeria and the Jola ethnic of The Gambia suggesting that the similarities are real and pervasive. The paper further suggests that the complex network of relationships and kinship ties found in both Igbo and Jola cultures appear to provide the impetus for persisting social consciousness and observance of the customs, traditions, and cultural ethos, attitudes and perceptions that animate and sustain cultural colourations, which have survived over the years retaining some key cultural elements of traditional society that sets them apart from other ethno-cultural groups in contemporary West Africa.

scholarly journals A Study of the English Translation Strategies of Chinese Film and Television Animation from the Perspective of Skopos Theory

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Wenbo Zhao
Keyword(s):  
English Translation ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
International Exchange ◽  
Translation Strategies ◽  
Chinese Film ◽  
Film And Television ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Skopos Theory ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Translation Methods

The English translation level of domestic film and television animation not only affects the appreciation effect of English-speaking audiences, but also affects the communication and exchange of Chinese excellent culture in the world, and even affects the commercial interests of film and television production. With the increasing international exchange of various cultures, the traditional theoretical views on translation are no longer suitable for the enrichment and development of modern literary forms. Based on the Skopos Theory, this paper will discuss the translation strategies of film and television animation works and propose the translation methods of film and television animation, to enhance the communication and influence of Chinese culture.

scholarly journals Research on multi-dimensional translation of Chinese folk songs

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Liu Wei
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Folk Songs ◽  
Folk Song ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Multi Mode

Folk songs reflect the unique spiritual value, customs and culture of a nation. The translation and transmission of folk songs is part of the effective way for Chinese culture to go abroad. The paper points out the necessity of and major tasks in folk song translation, namely the reproduction of cultural elements and rhythmic features and propose the application of multi-mode translation to bring out the best translation of folk songs.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document