A Subtitling Review of Upstream

I recently watched 逆行人生 (English title: Upstream) on the recommendation of my friend and colleague Nick Stember. The film, which was released in August of this year, is enjoyable even if parts of it are moralistic. It is genuinely funny and it was the first time that I saw someone using Chinese Sign Language in a film, which was awesome. So even though the main characters are predictable, I think the fact that so many minor characters came from different backgrounds was really cool. The thing that held everyone together was that they all wanted a better life.

Allow me to provide a brief synopsis of the film. When 45-year-old computer programmer Gao Zhilei is fired from his job, he does not take it well. He screams and breaks a window in the office to vent his frustration. But he’s got a wife and child, so he needs some kind of regular income. Then his father falls ill, and Zhilei nearly wipes out his savings on medical bills. After applying to loads of other jobs, Zhilei finally decides to become a delivery person. He assumes it’s easy, and his father believes that it’s a low status job. Over the course of the film, the viewers discover that neither of those things are true. As the months pass by, Zhilei goes from losing money and constantly getting bad reviews to being the best driver on his team. He is proud of the fact that he delivers food and other items to people in his city, and his family is proud of him.

The subtitles were good overall. There were a few excellent renditions that stood out to me. For example, when Zhilei’s father confronts him about being unemployed, he says“可你失业了，我们这个家以后怎么办？” (literally: But you’re unemployed, what is this family going to do?) This is a very long subtitle and it had to be broken into two parts. The translator went for “Now that you’re unemployed, what are we going to do about the family?” While it’s a little long, the original was long too so it’s OK. I think a simpler rendition like “What are we going to do” would not make the point clear. Another good line was delivered by Zhilei’s wife. She is hurt that he did not explain their financial situation sooner, and when he casually says he will think of something, she presses him “你想什么办法？” (literally: You think what method?) This was translated as “Like what?” I love this rendition, it’s shorter even than the original Chinese and it sounds exactly like what Zhilei’s wife would say in this situation. It’s easy to read and it means that the entire conversation is able to flow. Another example of a beautiful short rendition is the short line “你想跑外卖？” which Dashan says to Zhilei, when Zhilei first gets the idea to become a delivery person. Literally 你想跑外卖？means “You want to run delivery?” which is highly confusing. Given that Dashan is young and hip, the translation goes for something that sounds casual but appropriate in the moment: “You want in?” Again, the line is clear, it sounds like it would be uttered by that character, and it’s incredibly short. One last example is a line uttered when one of the other delivery drivers reminds Zhilei that he’s going to have to work really hard in order to make any profit as a delivery driver. This is expressed as “拼一点” (literally: To put together a little). 拼 is a fiendishly tricky word. The dictionary suggests to piece together, to join together, to stake all, at the risk of one’s life, and to spell as possible definitions. When it’s a slang word, it can mean to work incredibly hard, or to do one’s utmost, as in “拼命”. So if I had to come up with a version off of the top of my head, I would probably put “work really hard” which is uninspiring and not terribly authentic. The translation in the film is “bust your ass” which is shorter, funnier, and more authentic. Being a delivery person on a moped is a type of job where you have to bust your ass to make any money, in my opinion. So hats off to that translator!

My main complaint is that people talked quickly and the subtitles did not seem to be shown for long enough. I was not able to catch some of the best lines without pausing the film, but that ruins the comedy. Perhaps this is just something with comedies—funnier parts are said quickly, and that means there is less time for the subtitles to stay on screen. And there is the chance that I was spending too much time trying to read both the English and the Chinese, since both English and Chinese open subtitles were on my version of the film. I could not turn one of them off, and I could not turn my brain off from reading both lines! According to the Subtitling for Streaming class I attended, the average speaking rate in English is 163 words per minute, and speaking rates can range from 150 to 179 words per minute. Chinese speaking rates can be faster, and I suspect in the comedy parts the speaking rate was faster. This means that the translator has to simplify dialogue and their approach will have to be reductionist in a lot of cases. Industry standard subtitles for English suggest a minimum duration of 5/6 of a second (less than one second!) and a maximum duration of 7 seconds per subtitle event. I did not pull out my stopwatch and I did not upload the film to subtitling software, so I could not check if the swiftest subtitles were shown for less than 5/6 of a second. That's just what it felt like.

The other thing that I noticed were some word choice errors, but they were not so clumsy that the reader might have been really confused. The first example of this is when Zhilei arrives at work for his computer programming job. The machine says 打卡成功 (literally: hit card successful). The translation was “Check-in successful” which is clear, but for this kind of job monitored, it would be more common to say “Clock-in successful.” That being said, clocking in is an old concept, so maybe check-in is used by some people nowadays. (Language evolves!) Second, 来了 (literally: come + grammar marker) means “I’m coming” and the person who says this line is facing toward the person who hurried him up. I’m not sure why the translation was “Bye” instead of “I’m coming” because if the person wanted to say goodbye to the people next to him, he would need to look at them, and he’s not looking at them.

The last point where I would have made changes is the use of smile and laugh. Smile and laugh are different words in English, but in Chinese they are both 笑. Basically, when you’re translating from Chinese into English, you need to check if the person makes a sound or not. If they make a sound, then they are laughing. If they do not make a sound, then they are smiling. However, the subtitles used laugh when they were talking about smile in a couple of sentences. So first, “要始终保持微笑” as “always put on a smile” sounds great! Next, “不是假笑” was translated as “not a fake laugh” but I would put “not a fake smile” and “更不是皮笑肉不笑” was translated as “definitely not a creepy laugh” This should be “definitely not a creepy smile.” The thing that confuses me is that laugh and smile are the same length at five letters. So they did not gain anything from making the change. In the next scene, we see Zhang doing a big belly laugh, and the manager of the delivery team says “是微笑不是放声大笑” (literally: It’s a subtle smile, not a loud big laugh) which is translated as “Smile, not laughing out loud.” The meaning is right, but the grammar is not because the tense suddenly switches in the middle of the sentence. I might recommend “It’s a smile, not a big laugh” which would be one character longer than the translator's version. “Just smile, don’t laugh” would be shorter and would keep both smile and laugh in the same tense.

All in all, I thought it was a good translation even I did not agree with the word choices in a few parts. The subtitles seemed a little fast for me. But as I mentioned, this could be because I was accidentally reading the Chinese at times or it could just be that the dialogue was fast for most of the movie so the subtitling team hit the minimum duration more often. If you haven’t seen the film, I would recommend it.