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Thread: How do tvb name their series

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    Senior Member teddybear's Avatar
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    Default How do tvb name their series

    its puzzles me as to how TVB get to name their titles..some series had their english titles rephrased/ renamed.. for example "My wife your honour to be "just love"

    anyway.. i think TVB have made great titles to their series as it goes along with the plot to the series .. in my opinion , examples of this:-

    Files of Justice
    Revolving Doors of Vengeance (twists/plots/evil characters)
    The awakening Story
    DIF
    Family man (eveyone's ideal father here)

    these are just the few where i think the english title was exactly wot the theme of the series was about.
    Last edited by teddybear; 08-22-05 at 03:28 PM.

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    Senior Member i_fotted's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by teddybear
    its puzzles me as to how TVB get to name their titles..some series had their english titles rephrased/ renamed.. for example "My wife your honour to be "just love"

    anyway.. i think TVB have made great titles to their series as it goes along with the plot to the series .. in my opinion , examples of this:-

    Files of Justice
    Revolving Doors of Vengeance (twists/plots/evil characters)
    The awakening Story
    DIF
    Family man (eveyone's ideal father here)

    these are just the few where i think the english title was exactly wot the theme of the series was about.
    HAHA, I TOTALLY AGREE WITH YOU! I think "Justice Love" would make more sense.

    There are a few that really puzzles me.
    1.) Secreat of the Heart - WTF, I know it should have either Heaven, Earth, or Love in it, but it has NEITHER!

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    Senior Member Bubblegum's Avatar
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    I kept asking myself the same question.

    examples like "Tough Side of a Lady" - commonly known as Hua Mulan. I supposed it describes Mu Lan/feminin characters as being really tough hehe but I still wonder how they come up with such names.
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    Senior Member James Ko's Avatar
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    For the english title I thought it was direct translation of the chinese title...
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    Senior Member infinity6424's Avatar
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    no they usaully are not direct translations

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    Senior Member linghuchong's Avatar
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    Most the names are pretty bad IMO with the exceptions of a few. Some of them don't even have anything to do with the series
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    Senior Member teddybear's Avatar
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    Default english titles

    i am not "shouting" at tVB..but i cannot understand why some english titles were changed like the example of "just love"..

    TVB have been with us for xxx years and remain a top tv station producing good outstanding quality series..

    i am not saying that the rest were utterly bad..as i have enjoed many many titles ..
    i just wanted to bring across how some english titles matched the theme of the series.. eg.. awakening story- how liza's marriage was before accident and what she had to face up to after awakening from the coma

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    Senior Member cherrie's Avatar
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    how about tien ti nan er? it's english title is cold blood warm heart and until now i still wonder how did they think of that title
    cherrie
    currently watching: best selling secrets (tvb), the money-maker recipe (tvb), forensic heroes 2 (tvb), super trio supreme (tvb)

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    Senior Member xiaoshan's Avatar
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    Oh wad about Street Fighters? It's totally out of the chinese title which translated is 'Miu Gai, Ma Heng Dai'. So weird
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    Senior Member infinity6424's Avatar
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    Most if not all english title are not direct translations of the chinese title. They prob think of it separtely, what ever some english titles are just ???, like Just Love, The workign title was better MY Wife your Honor, that was a direct tranlation, oh well. BUt they sometime think of very clelver titles...

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    i don't mind "Just Love". i thought that was a clever title.
    is it just simply love or is it love with justice?

    and yes, there was no grammatical erroers in that title "Just Love". "Just" is to "Justice" as "Glutton" is to "Gluttony"

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    Senior Member cherrie's Avatar
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    and to add another weird title, lofty waters verdant bow. is that the real title of the novel itself? or just another product of tvb? i wonder how it became related with its chinese title. i think the only common title is bow (kong in chinese)
    cherrie
    currently watching: best selling secrets (tvb), the money-maker recipe (tvb), forensic heroes 2 (tvb), super trio supreme (tvb)

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    Senior Member linghuchong's Avatar
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    To be honest, I don''t think they care too much about the english. The chinese is what they are most concered about.
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    Senior Member cherrie's Avatar
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    yeah i agree with you. sometimes their english titles do not sound good/not appropriate at all. look at twin of brothers. they could have named it twin brothers. including 'of' just made the title sound awkward.
    cherrie
    currently watching: best selling secrets (tvb), the money-maker recipe (tvb), forensic heroes 2 (tvb), super trio supreme (tvb)

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    Moderator Em's Avatar
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    TVB don't use direct translations for their English titles. They have someone from the translation department read the synopsis and come up with something suitable. Either that or the writers give it their own English title.

    The so-called 'Working Titles' are given by the people (including myself) who do translations and provide preview information in English sites like this and others. Normally we will give a direct translation from the Chinese titles, just for continuity, because no-one knows what the 'official' TVB title is until they release the 'highlights' documents just before they are released.

    Of course, I prefer the direct translations, but then again, I am biased. They do need to give these 'official' titles a grammar check sometimes because they are so horrific.... 'Twin of Brothers' springs to mind for example.


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    Senior Member cherrie's Avatar
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    yes i certainly agree. oh i thought the scriptwriters give the english titles!
    cherrie
    currently watching: best selling secrets (tvb), the money-maker recipe (tvb), forensic heroes 2 (tvb), super trio supreme (tvb)

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    Member hiiragi's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by cherrie
    and to add another weird title, lofty waters verdant bow. is that the real title of the novel itself? or just another product of tvb? i wonder how it became related with its chinese title. i think the only common title is bow (kong in chinese)
    'Lofty Water Verdant Bow' is a fair English title for the series. The original novel by Liang Yu-Sheng (as well as the chinese title for the series) is called 雲海玉弓緣.

    雲海 = 'Cloudy Sea' (which amounts to the same thing as Lofty Water. The lofty waves of the water are implied as being like clouds)
    玉弓 = 'Verdant Bow'
    緣 = Tryst or Destiny (more likely the latter)

    So, a direct english translation would be: 'A Destiny of Cloudy Water and Verdant Bow' (but that's too long )
    Last edited by hiiragi; 09-04-05 at 07:04 PM.
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    Senior Member shanghai girls are hot's Avatar
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    is "twin of brothers" correct english?

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    Senior Member i_fotted's Avatar
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    Please explain "Secreat to the Heart". That has no correlation to the Chinese title whats so ever....

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    Senior Member cherrie's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by hiiragi
    'Lofty Water Verdant Bow' is a fair English title for the series. The original novel by Liang Yu-Sheng (as well as the chinese title for the series) is called 雲海玉弓緣.

    雲海 = 'Cloudy Sea' (which amounts to the same thing as Lofty Water. The lofty waves of the water are implied as being like clouds)
    玉弓 = 'Verdant Bow'
    緣 = Tryst or Destiny (more likely the latter)

    So, a direct english translation would be: 'A Destiny of Cloudy Water and Verdant Bow' (but that's too long )
    thanks for that explanation but what does 'verdant'mean?
    cherrie
    currently watching: best selling secrets (tvb), the money-maker recipe (tvb), forensic heroes 2 (tvb), super trio supreme (tvb)

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