Chinese Dub of Evangelion

[IamtryingtolearnChinese]

As my username states, I am trying to learn Chinese. I would really like to watch my favorite anime (NGE) in the language so I could enjoy it and potentially gain some educational benefit. The only Chinese dub I have heard of was a heavily censored, heavily criticized, and generally hated version from Mainland China that is now no where to be found. Does anyone know if there was EVER a loyal dub of the series (possibly from Taiwan maybe?) If so...was it ever released on DVD or something? Been looking for months before I came across this forum...please help!

In addition...I read that there was a release of the ROE movie in Taiwan. Does anyone know if this release included a Mandarin audio track? Again...I would REALLY appreciate any sort of information.

Thank you in advance.

[Reichu]

Whoops, I meant to unlock this.

[Deathmask]

I remember seeing Evangelion on TV when I traveled to China, so the only possible way to get it would probably be to go there yourself. Visiting the country would also be a huge bonus to your learning experience.

[AyrYntake]

I live in Hong Kong, which means the very few Chinese dubs of the series that I have are in Cantonese, not Mandarin. I don't have many of them anyway; I think the only ones I had were Episodes 1~4, 19 and 20.
On the other hand, I do have a DVD set of the entire series, as well as Death&Rebirth and EoE, with the original Japanese soundtrack and Chinese subtitles. They are by far better than the English ones, and accurate more often than not, though not ALWAYS so.
Um, the obvious problem is getting the set off me, of course. I'm studying abroad in England at the moment, but I should be in HK over Christmas.

[LeoXiao]

I found one episode dubbed. I've always wanted to watch anime in Mandarin, but it's really, really hard to find, particularly when I cant read Chinese very well.

[url]http://www.56.com/u63/v_MTM0Nzk4MDQ.html[/url]

Here it is. It has very bad quality though and depending on how much of the language you know it may be hard to understand.

[NAveryW]

That was pretty humorous. I thought at first the sound was out of sync, but the dialogue really didn't anywhere near fit the lip flap.

[AyrYntake]

It's surprisingly pretty hard to fit the lip movements from Japanese into Chinese.
The opening video itself also confused me. The original OP was tailored to fit the lyrics of the song; what's with the random spoiler scenes right in the start?
Oh, and by the way, the original meaning of "Evangelion" is entirely lost in the Mandarin version; the translation they've given literally means "Skyhawk Warrior". I mean, what?!
Basically, Eva in Mandarin sucks.

[Reichu]

It's surprisingly pretty hard to fit the lip movements from Japanese into Chinese.

Sometimes they really weren't even trying.

Gendo and the committee have pretty dopey voices, and the OP is just painful. Eva-01's berserk vocalizations seem to be missing altogether. Rest doesn't sound too bad, though. (Though I'm not a big fan of the Chinese tongues' acoustic quirks.)

......HEY, WHERE DID PEN-PEN GO?!?

..."Skyhawk Warrior". I mean, what?!

Sounds like a line of toys from the 80s.

[drinian]

I'm not sure I can make it past the OP of this.

Oh, and by the way, the original meaning of "Evangelion" is entirely lost in the Mandarin version; the translation they've given literally means "Skyhawk Warrior". I mean, what?!
Basically, Eva in Mandarin sucks.

Is it just me, or does Chinese have an amazingly hard time accommodating foreign words into its language? It seems like they're long overdue for a phonetic character extension, like every other language in common use today.

[Zeak]

I have Chinese subs ill send them to you when i get home on the 10th next month if you want

[Ornette]

Is it just me, or does Chinese have an amazingly hard time accommodating foreign words into its language? It seems like they're long overdue for a phonetic character extension, like every other language in common use today.

There is one, it's used in Taiwan but not that popular elsewhere. The problem with a phonetic alphabet is that the written language is the same, but there are dozens of spoken dialects. Obviously, the phonetic alphabet maps to Mandarin, but places in southern China are almost strictly Cantonese, so they wouldn't be able to get anything out of it.

As for the video, it's pretty much on par for any Chinese program, or at least, back when I watched a lot of programming on satelite TV. It doesn't seem weird to me at all, aside from the awkwardness of seeing characters that I'm used to hearing Japanese speaking in Mandarin. Maybe it's because it sounds perfectly natural to me, seeing as how Mandarin was my first language.

[NAveryW]

......HEY, WHERE DID PEN-PEN GO?!?

Chinese censors wouldn't allow that scene as it implied that Shinji had a penis.

[The Bastard King]

Isn't there a Chinese sub of the Official Evangelion Hentai out there?

[LeoXiao]

First the Eva business:

Isn't there a Chinese sub of the Official Evangelion Hentai out there?

Yes. I won't tell you a link to where it is but if you go to the "Fandom Area," there should be a topic about a guy by the name of Steve VADER, who has his own website and writes Eva fanfics. Go to his site and well, let's just say you may find something if you look around...

Oh yeah there's no real reason why I know this

Is it just me, or does Chinese have an amazingly hard time accommodating foreign words into its language?

Yeah. They don't want to incorporate a bunch of English into their language (though it does happen occasionally), and with foreign names they have to use a preexisting character for each syllable, which doesn't usually work too well.

Example: Stalin: 斯大林 romanized: sī dà lín

That's one of the better ones. Here's one that really took me by suprise:

Volgograd:
伏尔加格勒
fú ěr jiā gé lè

More often than not there actually are Chinese characters that can convey the original sound of the name more accurately, but then the word becomes hard/awkward for Chinese people to pronounce.[/quote]

[Reichu]

Isn't there a Chinese sub of the Official Evangelion Hentai out there?

Is there a single digitized copy that DOESN'T have Chinese subtitles?

[drinian]

There is one, it's used in Taiwan but not that popular elsewhere. The problem with a phonetic alphabet is that the written language is the same, but there are dozens of spoken dialects. Obviously, the phonetic alphabet maps to Mandarin, but places in southern China are almost strictly Cantonese, so they wouldn't be able to get anything out of it.

I hate to veer off-topic, I'm setting a bad example, but my curiosity is getting the better of me.

So, another question. Obviously foreign names and so-forth are represented using existing characters, but since these characters have different sounds attached to them depending on dialect... how does that work?

I can appreciate the need for a writing system that is functionally separate from spoken language in a pre-modern empire of China's size, but at some point you have to recognize the rest of the world.

What's really fascinating to me, though, is the much stronger connection of new words to their roots in a symbolic language; I have to wonder if it affects the perception of their meaning. For instance, democracy derives from the Greek demos, but most people don't know this; the component characters of "democracy" in Chinese must have more meaning to the Chinese reader. Likewise (perhaps more so?) for "freedom," etc.

[LeoXiao]

The word for 'democracy," mín zhǔ, just means "the people rule," in literal terms. But Chinese almost always has multiple words for the same thing (for different nuances), whereas in most western languages (like German) there is often only one way. English is an anomaly in that it takes lots of words from other languages (it starts with German origins and then goes off on the Romance end) and in fact it has the biggest vocabulary of any European speech.

Basically a lot of words exists in Chinese for the same thing but most of the time it depends on nuance or what other words you are combining them with. It's kinda hard to explain.

So, another question. Obviously foreign names and so-forth are represented using existing characters, but since these characters have different sounds attached to them depending on dialect... how does that work?

I don't know if it works or not. I only know Mandarin, so my knowledge of what goes on in Cantonese is limited. But I was watching a Chinese subbed version of Castle in the Sky, and it said "Laputa" in the Latin alphabet instead of Chinese.

It's possible that different words are used to fit the foreign sounds according to dialect, since sometimes people in various regions in China use different words for things.

I can appreciate the need for a writing system that is functionally separate from spoken language in a pre-modern empire of China's size, but at some point you have to recognize the rest of the world.

It's easier to have people learn English than rework the entire Chinese language. Also, a majority of the Chinese population speaks or understands Mandarin, so there's no problem.
The government once tried to replace the character based-system entirely with Romanized Chinese, but it didn't work because so many characters have the same pronunciation. I suspect this is the reason why Japanese still uses Kanji, because of the high number of cognates. I don't know how Vietnamese and Korean work, since they have entirely gotten rid of characters in their scripts.

I have to wonder if it affects the perception of their meaning.

Definitely. But for a word like democracy, it's just thought of as that system of government. There are other examples but I can't think of them at the moment.

[NAveryW]

Um, guys... there isn't an official Evangelion hentai.

[Count A'ight]

..."Skyhawk Warrior". I mean, what?!

Sounds like a line of toys from the 80s.

*cough*

[Reichu]

Yep, they're the ones to which I alluded. (But the Thundercats were cooler.)