The Romance of Three Kingdoms

[Yo Kang]

One thing I noticed about ROTK subtitling. I think it's based on the Brewitt Taylor translation of ROTK.

[Enquea]

I used to wonder why English subtitles always deviated so much from the actual dialogue (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon for instance).
I realized that the main problem with translating Chinese to English in movies is that the Chinese language uses _much_ less syllables than English does in conversations. The fact that Chinese can succintly express something in 4 characters while it takes a whole sentence for English means that the subtitles would run forever as a person reads and the actual character talks. Dubbing the voices would be worse.
It's most probably true that the producers spends something like 1 night and $20 to hire a guy to sub/dub the whole movie, the majority of the problems are with the linguistics.

[Yo Kang]

heh. Maybe they don't want to overmilk the cashcow. They make good money just for releasing series without subtitles. They don't care about making more b/c what the huge profit are "enough"/

[qiaofeng]

the thing thats difficult to understand abt the series is the dialogue. i speak mandarin and yet i can only understand abt 50% of what they're saying. its probably an ancient way of speaking since the people phrase their sentences differently. its utterly confusing. lucky i know the story beforehand or i wont have clue whats going on

[Zhuge Liang]

Really good series.

However, the cantonese dubbing is pretty bad though. A lot of people sound the same and most of them sound half dead or something.

The china cantonese dub was not very good. There was only a handful of voice actors doing like a million characters and sometimes the same voice actor would be doing voices for ppl who were talking to each other. They had to distort their voice slightly so you could differentiate.

When Liu Bei is defeated at Yiling & is about to enter Baidi Cheng there is a bunch of peasants there and 2 ppl do the voices for the whole crowd. -.-

The Hong Kong cantonese dub is much better. They also have Vactors doing more than one character but there is more of them and the core characters have very good Vactors doing their voices. Also they improve the music greatly. What is lacking with alot of those china historical series is there is little or just lame music.

If you want a real laugh you should watch the Eastern Zhou series. They were apparently so short for cantonese voice actors that there was like 2 female voice actors doing most of the roles. Some days they must have called in sick or something since some females have a male voice actor doing their voice.

[Omniflame]

The china cantonese dub was not very good. There was only a handful of voice actors doing like a million characters and sometimes the same voice actor would be doing voices for ppl who were talking to each other. They had to distort their voice slightly so you could differentiate.

When Liu Bei is defeated at Yiling & is about to enter Baidi Cheng there is a bunch of peasants there and 2 ppl do the voices for the whole crowd. -.-

The Hong Kong cantonese dub is much better. They also have Vactors doing more than one character but there is more of them and the core characters have very good Vactors doing their voices. Also they improve the music greatly. What is lacking with alot of those china historical series is there is little or just lame music.

If you want a real laugh you should watch the Eastern Zhou series. They were apparently so short for cantonese voice actors that there was like 2 female voice actors doing most of the roles. Some days they must have called in sick or something since some females have a male voice actor doing their voice.

Where can the Hong Kong cantonese dub be found? The version I have is the DVD collection from a few years back.

Wasn't there a part where a man did the voice of a woman in 3 Kingdoms (canto dub) as well?

[Yo Kang]

I think it's this one..... http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...335878804&rd=1

I've been presuming, however, that all the dvd versions have Cantonese dubs and English subtitles ( at leat, the ones I've been seeing on ebay)

[Lady Zhuge]

I've been presuming, however, that all the dvd versions have Cantonese dubs and English subtitles ( at leat, the ones I've been seeing on ebay)

I have a RoTK DVD set that looks exactly like the one from the link you posted from Ebay and it doesn't have Cantonese dubs or English subs.

[AnalyticChick]

I finally but the bullet and got this monster. So now it is sitting in my house daring me to watch...all 80 episodes of it.

I just started with the first episode, and I'm already confused who everyone is. Is there some kind of English or pinyin cheat sheet I can refer to for easy character identification? Right now, they all look like big bushy bearded guys to me.

[Lady Zhuge]

Yay, I'm glad to hear that, Weiyi!!! I mean, the part where you've gotten the 84 episodes and have started watching it, that is. As for being confused about the characters, perhaps this page can help you out. It doesn't contain everyone in the epic, but it's still a decent number of characters. One thing to watch out for, though. Some characters are played by multiple actors, but luckily, that's mostly only the case for minor figures (with the main exception being Zhao Yun).

[Yo Kang]

Read the book. It'll help you understand the story and the character better.

[Yo Kang]

I don't know, Lady Zhuge, mine has english sub and Cantonese dub.

[Yide85]

Idk, I agree with Lady Zhuge on the part that the main series beginning can be very boring, unless your me or you are a big fan of chinese history. I find one of my favorite episodes was the beginning episode with the oath at the peach garden. It usually gets finally kicked off as Liu Bei gets Zhuge Liang. Although i'll admit some of the parts of the movies were sad. Like the parts when the 3 brothers die. I also almost had tears in my eyes when i saw the episode when zhuge liang dies and drops his fan. That was sad. But overall i think it was a masterpiece.

Its too bad that the water margin doesnt have a complete series box with english subtitles. Because those are my 2 favorite chinese tv series.

[Zhuge Liang]

I also almost had tears in my eyes when i saw the episode when zhuge liang dies and drops his fan. That was sad. But overall i think it was a masterpiece.

Its too bad that the water margin doesnt have a complete series box with english subtitles. Because those are my 2 favorite chinese tv series.

I actually cried when ZLiang died... so sad...

I just started watching the Water Margin series and after 5 eps... it is so boring i don't want to watch anymore. -.-"

[Sepiraph]

ROTK... ah good series. My brother owns the DVD although I think it's a bootleg verison. I watched it originally on TV many, many years ago, and then re-watch it twice on DVD. Read the novel in chinese twice... and played a few games with the titles.

I just love strategy and tactics, but I'd imagine it may be boring to those who doesn't like that.

Anyhow, the part where Zhuge Liang dies in the series is pretty sad, with that sad music theme they have (I can still remember it ). Another character that I felt pity for is Zhou Yu, and even though he tried to kill Zhuge Liang many times, he is acting in the best interest of his country because Zhuge Liang is a threat. Especially his famous last line... such a classic. The actor who played him did a good job.

The only thing that irks me in the series is that they kept changing the actor who played Zhao Yun, since he's one of my favourite characters in the novel.

[Gunner]

yeah, it was so odd to see the actor for Zhao Yun change so much. Even more disturbing was the change in actors for Lu Su. The actor for him during the Battle of Chibi was pretty young-looking (mid 30s) and then later, they suddenly get an old man to play him. All this while Zhuge Liang has hardly seemed to age in the same period of time...

[Lady Zhuge]

It's tough for an entire cast to stay the same for a grand production over 4 years. We should be glad that most of the main characters stayed the same. Imagine if they changed Zhuge Liang, Liu Bei, Cao Cao, Guan Yu, or Zhang Fei numerous times.

[mind_wander]

If they changed the 4 main character numerous times then it's hard to pay attention, but I only stopped at ch.10. My younger brother finished the entire series and loves the story, but I am going to plan to rewatch the series coming up summer. Being distracted with so many other tv series like Jiang shan feng yue qing, and interesting Yang meng hu jiang(to bad it been cut many areas of the story).
I am happy that my first chinese name is rather famous Zhang Liang. So I being wondering does it means, when I keep hearing" You can lose so many important people, but can't never lose Zhang liang." Also the second meaning for the prime minister of China Zhang Qun, if take out the Liang I don't know if anyone ever decypher their name like I had. So all three my chinese characters is rather famous, but Zhang liang is better.

[Gunner]

If they changed the 4 main character numerous times then it's hard to pay attention, but I only stopped at ch.10. My younger brother finished the entire series and loves the story, but I am going to plan to rewatch the series coming up summer. Being distracted with so many other tv series like Jiang shan feng yue qing, and interesting Yang meng hu jiang(to bad it been cut many areas of the story).
I am happy that my first chinese name is rather famous Zhang Liang. So I being wondering does it means, when I keep hearing" You can lose so many important people, but can't never lose Zhang liang." Also the second meaning for the prime minister of China Zhang Qun, if take out the Liang I don't know if anyone ever decypher their name like I had. So all three my chinese characters is rather famous, but Zhang liang is better.

are you referring to the Zhang Liang that was one of Liu Bang's generals?

anyway, yeah I suppose it is hard to keep the same cast for a period of 4 years. Btw, I heard that there's a new ROTK drama series being made? Is this true?

[mind_wander]

Yeah, I was referring the Zhang liang with liu ban, and I also heard about ROTK is gonna be made into a movie. It only going to show the one of the main battles in ROTK, unsure when it is going to be made.