Audience reception of translated classic films: Zhang Yimou’s Hero in the digital English world

ABSTRACT

Against the backdrop of cultural globalization, more and more Chinese films are being introduced to the Anglophone world, and Zhang Yimou’s Hero is a particularly informative case because of its huge success. The present study describes and analyzes the reception of Chinese films in the Anglophone world by conducting an in-depth case study of Hero. Drawing on sentiment analysis and corpus-based keyword analysis, we find that Hero received a positive response from both professional and general audiences in four aspects. For character, both groups preferred the complex political characters, love-hate relationships, and certain Chinese actors/actresses. For plot, both groups valued Chinese elements and the wuxia genre. Regarding the scene, both groups enjoyed the fight scenes, but the professional audiences highlighted the aesthetic value of each scene while the general audiences expressed their feelings about the beauty of the piece as a whole. Finally, in terms of translation, the professional audiences focused on the quality of subtitles, while the general audiences highlighted the modality, preferring dubbing to subtitles. This positive but differentiated reception between professional and general audiences can be attributed to cultural discounting, cultural hybridity, cultural memory, translation modalities and translation quality.

KEYWORDS:

• Audience reception
• Hero
• sentiment analysis
• corpus-based analysis
• professional and general audiences

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China under Grant No. 23AYY018; the Zhejiang Provincial Philosophy and Social Science Program of Leading Talents Cultivation Project for Distinguished Young Scholars under Grant No. 24QNYC02ZD; the Graduate Education Program of Graduate School of Zhejiang University under Grant No. 20220319; and the Zhejiang Provincial Graduates’ Science and Technology Innovation Program under Grant No. 2023R401173.

Notes on contributors

Huiyu Zhang

Huiyu Zhang is currently Professor of linguistics and translation studies at Zhejiang University. Her research interests include translation studies, language policy, and discourse studies. Her publications appear in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, International Journal of Multilingualism, Intercultural Pragmatics, and some prominent Chinese journals.

Qi Jin

Qi Jin is a research student in translation studies at Zhejiang University. Her research interests include audio-visual translation and translation policy.

Binji Zao

Binji Zao is a Ph.D. candidate in translation studies at Zhejiang University. His research interests include sociology of translation and multimodal studies.