Media and China English (I): print media and the movie industry

  According to Jin (2002), the definition of China English being put forward is that it builds around the core of 'normative English' while aims at facilitating transmission of Chinese-specific cultures, linguistics expressions and ideologies in traditional setting by means of transliteration, borrowing and semantic transfer. In order words, it refers to a continuum or interference variety of English used by Chinese people to express content ideas specific to the Chinese culture.


  China Daily and Beijing Weekend are two renowned English newspapers with a national and international circulation in China. While important issues such as visits of Chinese leaders for diplomatic purposes, policies implementation in the country, wars and natural disasters are being covered by China Daily, Beijing Weekend reports shopping, travel, art, entertainment and other various aspects of the privileged life in Beijing to foreigners and visitors. In a research (Yang, 2005) where 84 copies of these two newspapers were studied, it was found that loanwords (lexical item imported in the form of 'pinyin' from one language to another without substitution) such as "pipa" (traditional Chinese music instrument), "mantou" (steamed bun) and "mingong" (rural workers) also loan translations (direct translation of Chinese terms) such as "red envelops" and "dumpling" and "mother country" are the most common types of lexical innovations. 


The phrase "mingong" (rural workers), now appearing almost daily in various  English media in China, made its first appearence in China Daily on Ocbober 2, 2004. (Yang, 2005)
  Moreover, Chinese values being upheld in the movie industry helped China English lexical items gets infiltrated into English vocabularies of foreign media. For example, "Mulan" was introduced to the West by Disney Studio's making of its movie in the U.S. in 2004 and Gong Li's movie, "Raise the Red Lantern" in 1991.


  Along with the "kung fu" craze, words such "shifu" (master), "qi" (energy) with reference to Chinese culture in actions movie series like "Rush Hour" and "Matrix" gained the chance to meet the West. In the following clip extracted from Kill Bill Vol.2 (2004), though the character "Pai Mei" (the master) spoke in Cantonese, terms like "swordmanship" (values of the person versed in the art of sword), "Tiger's Crane", "Eagle's Craw" (two types of martial art) appeared in the subtitles are made known to the West by the popularity of the film.