Disney Mulan

8/17/2019 Disney Mulan

1/30182

ISSN 0256-0046/Online 1992-6049pp. 182–210

27 (2) 2013 © Critical Arts Projects & Unisa PressDOI: 10.1080/02560046.2013.783956

Cultural deformations andreformulations: a case study of Disney’sMulan in English and Chinese

Mingwu Xu and Chuanmao Tian

Abstract

The article first introduces the 1998 Disney production of the animated film, Mulan, and

suggests that the film is based on the Chinese legend of Hua Mulan, especially on The Mulan

Ballad . It discusses the cultural adaptations in the production of the film through various

methods, such as additions, omissions, specifications, generalisations, explicitations, and so

on. It focuses on the Chinese translation of the film, examining the cultural restorations and

reformulations in the target text on the linguistic level by means of various domesticating and

foreignising methods. Finally, it discusses and explores the bidirectional transfer between

American and Chinese cultures, holding that there are intracultural and intercultural transfers,

and that the establishment of a cultural repertoire is, in some sense, dependent on culturalborrowings and rewritings which will give rise to cultural deformations and reformulations.

Keywords: Chinese film dubbing, cultural transfer, deformation, Disney, Mulan, reformulation

Introduction

The audiovisual (AV) industry in the United States (US) exercises a worldwide

inuence inasmuch as its products are consumed on such a scale, often through

audiovisual translation (AVT), namely interlingual subtitling and dubbing. American

Mingwu Xu is a professor of translation and interpreting and vice dean of School of Foreign Languagesat Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), Wuhan City, P.R. China. [email protected]. Chuanmao Tian is professor of the School of Foreign Studies of Yangtze University,Jingzhou City, Hubei Province, P.R. China. Please contact the corresponding author Chuanmao Tian, [email protected]


2/30183

Cultural deformations and reformulations

lms, including animated lms, have frequently based their themes on iconic

treasures from world civilisations, particularly from Greek, English, Arabian and

Chinese cultures. In other words, they often seek inspiration in plot design from

literary classics, religious canons, and folk tales in these cultures, such as Aladdin

(Musker & Clements 1992), Troy (Peterson 2004), King Arthur (Fuqua 2004), Kung

Fu Panda (Stevenson & Osborne 2008), Robin Hood (Scott 2010), and so on. It

is interesting to explore the contact between American culture and other cultures

in the design and manufacture of American AV products, and their translation and

dissemination in other parts of the world.

Mulan, a 1998 Disney-produced animated lm directed by Barry Cook and Tony

Bancroft, which draws on the Chinese legend of Hua Mulan to construct its plot

framework, has achieved tremendous success with children around the world. It was

introduced back to China in a dubbed version in 1999. The production and translation

of the lm involves two encounters between American and Chinese cultures in bothDisney’s adaptation of the Chinese legend of Mulan and the Chinese translation of

Disney’s Mulan. The following paragraphs examine the process of bi-directional

cultural transfer through the case study.

Literature review

As a global media giant – second only to Time-Warner-AOL in the world – the Disney

Corporation is one of the major shapers of American and global popular culture, and

much has been written about its power and inuence (see Artz 2004). Many scholarshave devoted their research to studying Disney’s cultural production (especially of

its animated features) from a variety of perspectives, such as cultural studies (Chan

2002; Di Giovanni 2003; Wasko 2001), gender studies (Hoerner 1996), politics

(Hiassen 1998), education (Pewewardy 1996), aesthetics (Ricker 1996), discourse

analysis (Smoodin 1994), psychoanalysis (Berland 1982), and lm studies, which

can be subdivided into lm production (Croce 1990), lm distribution (Edgerton

& Jackson 1996), lm reception (Tang 2008) and character analysis (Benton 1995;

Giroux 1999; Moellenhoff 1989). Below is a review of the literature relevant to the

current study.

The Disney formula

Animation is central to Disney’s economic strength and cultural inuence, and its

great success owes much to an underlying formula which has long been cherished

by the corporation (Artz 2004; Chan 2002; Wasko 2001). This formula generally

includes individualism, the triumph of good over evil, young romance and the use of

animals as sidekicks.


3/30184


Individualism is a key theme of Disney animation, always linked with the story’s

hero or heroine. In Mulan, for example, it is almost the mere effort of the heroine

that overcomes the Huns and saves China. The heroes or heroines are, in addition,

privileged individuals. Examples of this include the sultan changing the laws of

royal matrimony; John Smith ordering the arrest of a governor; and Mulan’s father,

emperor and royal suitor forgiving her indiscretions (Artz 2004). Disney seems to

imply, through its animated stars, that acting against the public interest in one’s search

for individual gratication is natural, legitimate and desirable, and that the future of

the world revolves around the individual, self-interested actions of naturally superior

elites (ibid.). It should be pointed out here that the myth of the individual is not

conned to America. It can also be seen in countless tales in European history, such

as Greek and Roman mythologies and literary works of the Renaissance, and it was

consolidated in the American myth of the frontier, as in novels by James Fenimore

Cooper and Owen Wister.

Individualism also materialises in other cultures, such astraditional Chinese culture which holds that ‘heroes make history’, as manifested in

Sima Qian’s Historical records. Disney’s embrace of the myth of the hero is in line

with its production goal of catering to both local and global audiences (Chan 2002;

Tang 2008).

In Disney’s dream world, visual metaphor persists. Characters are simply either

good or bad. It is easy for the audience to make a distinction between them through

their stereotyped images, dialogues and actions. Good characters such as Simba,

the sultan, Ariel and Pocahontas have big eyes and round cheeks and are drawn in

curves, smooth, round, soft, bright and with European features, while villains such asScar, Jafar, the Hun, Ratcliffe and Ursula are drawn with sharp angles, oversized, and

often darkly (Artz 2004). Bad actions are punished; good ones rewarded. Disney’s

heroes are always stronger, smarter and victorious in the nal conict earning riches,

power or happiness, while the villains cannot win and are doomed to suffer calamity

or death (ibid.). Good ultimately prevails over evil (Chan 2002).

Another trademark technique Disney tends to employ is young romance or

romantic escape (Artz 2004; Chan 2002). For example, Mulan disguises herself as

a man to join the army without informing her family in advance (itself a recurrent

trick played by many Disney characters, such as Aladdin assuming a false identity

and Tarzan conspiring to violate jungle law [Artz 2004]). In her adventure to seekself-fullment and bring honour to her family, though, Mulan nds her ‘Prince

Charming’, Captain Li Shang. In Disney’s fantasy world, the aides to the hero or

heroine are invariably friendly and cute animals, adding appeal for young viewers

and comic relief for older ones (ibid.). The strength of using animals as sidekicks is

underlined by its converse: Sleeping Beauty (Clark, Larson, Geronimi & Reitherman

1959), the only Disney feature without an animal sidekick, failed miserably at the

box ofce. Besides the formulaic routines discussed above, Disney also follows other


4/30185


rules, such as emotional, catchy songs; humorous jokes; and assorted supporting cast

and character voices performed by lm stars (Chan 2002).

Transculturation in Disney animation

Disney’s animations are not original stories but are based on widely-accepted cultural

myths and morals (Artz 2004). This may also be viewed as part of the Disney formula.

Disney tends to innovate, enhance and modify the fairy tales, legends and ctions

it has borrowed from other cultures in its production of animated lms (Artz 2004;

Wasko 2001). Consequently, cultural transformation arises in the animations. Joseph

Chan (2002) calls this ‘transculturation’: a process whereby a culture is transformed

by another for self-aggrandisement. It is analogous to the conceptions of cultural

adaptation, acculturation and assimilation in cross-cultural communication.

As demonstrated by Disney animations, transculturation involves both

organisational routines and experimentation through which the foreign culture is

decontextualised, essentialised, recontextualised, domesticated and sometimes

universalised. The adaptation of foreign stories adds variety to Disney’s productions,

giving it a more global image; and it reduces the risk of production because these

stories have stood the test of time in their home cultures (ibid.). Chan (2002)

points out that to be persuasive, all stories have to be contextualised. The more

contextualised they are, the more believable they will be; in Americanising a story,

it has to be essentialised and stripped of its context, with its core elements identied.

Then the story is recongured and recontextualised. In Mulan, the Chinese avour

is preserved, achieved by situating the new story amidst unique cultural icons suchas the Great Wall, willow trees and pavilions, Tiananmen Square, and so on. It

becomes localised (i.e., Americanised) and globalised through additions of hyper-

individualism, romance, feminism and other Western and modern elements, as

evidenced when Mushu reads a modern paper, when Mulan cooks sausage and fried

egg for breakfast, when the ancestral spirits rock to Western music, as well as Eddie

Murphy voice-acting for Mushu in a street-smart lingo (ibid.).

Transculturation gives rise to cultural hybridisation and may cause intercultural

conict. The latter is evidenced by the fact that Disney animation has angered several

ethnic groups in the recent past: Arab-Americans, with the lyrics of an Alladin song;native Americans, who felt Pocahontas (Gabriel & Goldberg 1995) was unnecessarily

sexualised; and blacks, who took issue with the interracial makeup of voice talent in

The Lion King (Allers & Minkoff 1994).

Previous studies on Disney’s Mulan

So far, a number of papers and works have been devoted to research on Disney’s

Mulan. The online CNKI database indicates that in China over 20 articles have


5/30186


focused on the lm from different perspectives, including cultural communication

and semiotics, transculturation, narratology, postcolonialism, feminism, and so on.1

Some of the most relevant of this work is discussed here.

Zhongshun He (1999) and Renjie Zhang (1999) examine the cultural

transformation in Disney’s Mulan by comparing the lm to the Chinese legend ofMulan. The former claims that the lm conforms closely to ancient Chinese customs

and culture, while the latter argues that the lm-makers are ignorant of Chinese

history and character, and insists the characters do not have normal appearances

or exhibit appropriate Chinese behaviour. Joseph Chan (2002) explores the lm

by following the approach of transculturation. He believes that while the core

narrative of Mulan has been retained, several elements have been altered through

the recontextualisation of the narrative. Some Chinese elements deemed irrelevant

to the original story, for instance, have been added so as to strengthen the Chinese

cultural avour – the signication of China – and some non-Chinese (but Americanand global) elements are added in the lm in the localisation and globalisation of

the story. Georgette Wang and Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh (2005) use Disney’s Mulan to

illustrate the trend of globalisation and hybridisation in cultural products. They hold

that hybridisation is not merely the mixing, blending and synthesising of different

elements that ultimately form a culturally faceless whole, but that in the course of

hybridisation, cultures often generate new forms and make new connections with

one another.

Jun Tang (2008) explores several issues on Mulan, namely globalisation, cultural

authenticity, the reception of the lm in mainland China and the translation of the

lm. Based on the analysis of the Chinese version of Mulan, he argues that a subtitle

translator is likely to adopt target-oriented (i.e., domesticating) rather than source-

oriented (i.e., foreignising) strategies if s/he chooses to conform to the audience’s

expectations and preferences. Yin Jing (2011) adopts the theory of articulation to

investigate the process by which Disney appropriates the Chinese legend of Mulan

into a universal classic, and offers an interpretation of The Mulan Ballad upon which

the lm is based, claiming that Disney’s appropriation simultaneously reinforces

existing racial and gender ideologies by deprecating Chinese culture as an Oriental

despotism, and by dissolving feminism into the cultural/racial hierarchy.

Summary

The abovementioned formula has helped to establish the commercial and cultural

might of the Disney brand as the world leader in animation production (while the

brand has, in turn, strengthened the formula). However, the success of Disney

animation is closely related to its quality. Disney does not cling to the formula

blindly, but is instead aware of trends in American and global popular culture, and is

receptive to introducing new themes and technologies (Chan 2002).


6/30187


Transculturation presupposes cultural transfer. In other words, there would be no

cultural transformation without cultural transfer. This article employs Itamar Even-

Zohar’s theory (1990/1997) on cultural transfer to deal with cultural problems in

the production and translation of Mulan. Even-Zohar’s model (2008) of cultural

contacts is generally applied to historical studies of cross-cultural exchange, but ithas implications for cultural transfer in AV industries.

Many studies have been done on cultural transformations in Disney’s Mulan, but

the available literature has not taken a closer look at the differences between the

lm and The Mulan Ballad . The current study uses ‘cultural deformation’ rather

than ‘cultural transformation’, because in cross-cultural communication, cultural

transformation is, in many cases, an indication of unfaithfulness to and disrespect

for the original culture. In previous studies of Mulan, the Chinese version of the

lm was studied from the angle of translating strategies (Tang 2008), but not from

a cultural perspective. Given that Disney’s Mulan is thematically a borrowing ofChinese culture and that it returns home through the Chinese translation, it seems

more signicant to study the cultural relationship between the lm and the ballad

with regard to adapting and translating methods.2

Chinese culture in the film

Mulan, the 36th animated feature in the Walt Disney animated classics, and part of

the Disney renaissance, was produced primarily at the Disney animation studio at

Disney-MGM Studios in Orlando, Florida. It was directed by Tony Bancroft andBarry Cook, with the story by Robert D. San Souci and the screenplay by Rita Hsiao,

Philip LaZebnik, Chris Sanders, Eugenia Bostwick-Singer and Raymond Singer. Its

production lasted ve years. It originally began as a short, straight-to-video lm

entitled ‘China Doll’ about an oppressed and miserable Chinese girl who is whisked

away by a British Prince Charming to happiness in the West. Then Disney consultant

and children’s book author, San Souci, suggested making a movie of the Chinese

poem, The Mulan Ballad , and Disney combined the two projects. The Mulan

project began in 1994. After the production team had sent a select group of artistic

supervisors to China for three weeks, to take photographs and make drawings of local

landmarks for inspiration and to soak up local culture, the lm-makers decided tochange Mulan’s character to make her more appealing and seless. Released by Walt

Disney Pictures on 19 June 1998, the lm was well received by critics and the public,

grossing $304 million, earning Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations, and

winning several Annie Awards, including Best Animated Feature.3

It is the rst time that Disney has ever drawn on an Asian story when making

an animated feature. Chinese people’s memory of the heroine is mainly related to

The Mulan Ballad , or The Song of Mulan. It has been ofcially included in Chinese


7/30


8/30189


They ask Daughter who’s in her heart,

They ask Daughter who’s on her mind.

“No one is on Daughter’s heart,

No one is on Daughter’s mind.

Last night I saw the draft posters,The Khan is calling many troops,

The army list is in twelve scrolls,

On every scroll there’s Father’s name.

Father has no grown-up son,

Mu-lan has no elder brother.

I want to buy a saddle and horse,

And serve in the army in Father’s place.”

In the East Market she buys a spirited horse,

In the West Market she buys a saddle,In the South Market she buys a bridle,

In the North Market she buys a long whip.

At dawn she takes leave of Father and Mother,

In the evening camps on the Yellow River’s bank.

She doesn’t hear the sound of Father and Mother calling,

She only hears the Yellow River’s owing water cry tsien tsien.

At dawn she takes leave of the Yellow River,

In the evening she arrives at Black Mountain.

She doesn’t hear the sound of Father and Mother calling,

She only hears Mount Yen’s nomad horses cry tsiu tsiu.

She goes ten thousand miles on the business of war,

She crosses passes and mountains like ying.

Northern gusts carry the rattle of army pots,

Chilly light shines on iron armor.

Generals die in a hundred battles,

Stout soldiers return after ten years.

On her return she sees the Son of Heaven,

The Son of Heaven sits in the Splendid Hall.

He gives out promotions in twelve ranksAnd prizes of a hundred thousand and more.

The Khan asks her what she desires.

“Mu-lan has no use for a minister’s post.

I wish to ride a swift mount

To take me back to my home.”

When Father and Mother hear Daughter is coming

They go outside the wall to meet her, leaning on each other.


9/30190


When Elder Sister hears Younger Sister is coming

She xes her rouge, facing the door.

When Little Brother hears Elder Sister is coming

He whets the knife, quick quick, for pig and sheep.

“I open the door to my east chamber,I sit on my couch in the west room,

I take off my wartime gown

And put on my old-time clothes.”

Facing the window she xes her cloudlike hair,

Hanging up a mirror she dabs on yellow ower powder

She goes out the door and sees her comrades.

Her comrades are all amazed and perplexed.

Traveling together for twelve years

They didn’t know Mu-lan was a girl.

“The he-hare’s feet go hop and skip,The she-hare’s eyes are muddled and fuddled.

Two hares running side by side close to the ground,

How can they tell if I am he or she?”

The Chinese legend of Hua Mulan centres on a young woman who disguises herself

as a man to take the place of her elderly father in the army, thus circumventing her

ineligibility, as a woman, to join the army in feudal China.4 The earliest accounts of

the legend state that she lived during the Northern Wei dynasty (386–534). However,

another version reports that Mulan was sought as a concubine by Emperor Yang of

the Sui dynasty (604–617). The lm may be set even later, as it prominently features

landmarks such as the Forbidden City, which was not constructed until the 15th

century, during the Ming dynasty. On the other hand, at the time of the Northern Wei,

the Xiongnu (Huns) had already been assimilated into Chinese culture. However,

according to the style of dress (traditional Han clothing, also known as Hanfu), the

lm is set in the 15th century or sometime before. The reworks featured in the

movie indicate that the events unfolded during the Sui dynasty. Though Mulan is

set in north China, where the dominant language is Mandarin, the Disney lm uses

‘Fa’, the Cantonese pronunciation of ‘Hua’, as her family name. The matchmaking

episode featured in the lm, which includes the bride being made up, bathing anddoing her hair, is intimately associated with China’s marital culture. In a word, the

lm is a mixture of Chinese cultures, with the ballad as its plot basis.

Cultural deformations in the film

Disney’s Mulan is not faithful to the ballad or Chinese culture (Jing 2011; Tang

2008; Zhang 1999). In a sense, the production team merely used the poem to create


10/30191


its own story according to the Disney formula. The ballad is a very short story, and its

lack of detail left much room for Disney’s writers to exercise their imagination. On

the one hand, a few distinctive Chinese cultural artefacts such as the Great Wall, the

Chinese dragon and Tiananmen Square (which are well known to global audiences)

have been added to the lm so as to strengthen its Chinese avour. On the other

hand, some Disneyed elements, such as young romance and individualism, have

also been added so as to prevent the lm from becoming so exotic that it keeps global

audiences away. As a result, the original Chinese culture loses its authenticity, and

cultural deformation arises in the lm.

Definition of cultural deformation

Cultural borrowing is common in human literary and artistic production, and is often

not a mechanical copying but a rewriting or an adaptation of the original culture‘carried out under the inuence of particular categories and norms constituent to

systems in a society’ (Lefevere 1992: 13). In the process of cultural adaptation (Chan

2002; Lotman 1990) the original culture is cleansed, essentialised and transformed.

Due to the fact that Disney’s borrowings are precious treasures of world culture which

have been distorted to varying degrees due to the employment of various adapting

strategies, this kind of cultural transformation can be called ‘cultural deformation’.

In Mulan, many adapting methods are employed, including additions, omissions,

alterations, explicitations, reinterpretations, and so on. Cultural deformations in the

lm can be examined on two levels, namely the content and the linguistic level.

Content deformations in the film

To start, a comparison between the lm and the Chinese ballad, in terms of their

characters and plot, would be useful.

Table 1: A comparison between the characters in Mulan and The Mulan Ballad

Characters

The Mulan

Ballad

Mulan, Father, Mother, elder sister, younger brother, Kehan/Tianzi (Emperor), Hun

horsemen, China’s generals and soldiers, Mulan’s comrades

Mulan Fa Mulan, Mushu (dragon), Li Shang, Shan Yu, Yao, Ling, Chien Po, Chi Fu, Fa

Zhou, Grandmother Fa, the Emperor of China, First Ancestor, Fa Li, General Li,

Cri-Kee (cricket), Khan (horse), Little Brother (dog), and so on


11/30192


Table 2: A comparison between the main plots in Mulan and The Mulan Ballad

The main plot

The Mulan

Ballad

Mulan weaves; the Khan calls troops; disguised as a man, she joins the army in

her father’s place; she fights for 12 years and gains high merit; refusing to be an

imperial minister, she retires to her hometown and is found to be a woman

Mulan The Huns invade China; the emperor calls his troops; disguised as a man, she

joins the army in her father’s place; her father prays to the ancestors and a

dragon protects her; she is trained to become a skilled warrior; she reveals her

deception in battle; she wipes out most of the Huns in an avalanche; she saves

the emperor’s life by killing the remaining Huns who captured him; declining the

offer to become the emperor’s advisor, she retires to her hometown

A comparison between the lm and the ballad clearly indicates that additions,

omissions, specications, explicitations and alterations are employed in the design

of characters and plot structure in Mulan. Additions describe the introduction of episodes not found in the ballad. Many

characters are invented and added in the lm, such as Li Shang, Shan Yu, Yao, Ling,

Chien Po, Chi Fu, Grandmother Fa, First Ancestor, General Li, together with three

animals including Mushu, Cri-Kee and Little Brother. Some details are also added

to the plot of the lm, such as the matchmaking for Mulan, her father’s prayer to the

ancestors, the emperor being captured by the Huns, the combat between Mulan and

Shan Yu, and so on.

Omissions entail the omission of some of the ballad episodes from the lm. Mulan

is described as the only daughter of the Fa family, so her elder sister and younger brother, who appear in the ballad, are not found in the lm. As for the plot, the viewer

does not see Mulan weaving at the start of the lm, her camping by the Yellow River,

or her sister and brother welcoming her when she returns home.

Specications entail ballad details being made more specic in the lm. The ballad

does not provide the specic names of Mulan’s parents, who are labelled as ‘ ye’ (爷)

and ‘niang ’ (娘), which were (and still are) terms used to address one’s parents in

China. But in the lm, Fa Zhou and Fa Li are designated by name. A similar case is

the horse in the ballad, which is given the name ‘Khan’. The description of Mulan’s

war experience is very sketchy in the ballad, which devotes only three sentences

to it. In the lm, though, several stories are invented to detail and complicate theexperience: Mulan’s training; her use of a cannon to wipe out most of the enemy

forces in an avalanche; her being slashed by Shan Yu; Captain Li Shang sparing

her life and leaving her on the mountain after the medical attention she receives

reveals her deception (with the consequence that she must be executed, according to

law); the Huns’ capture of the emperor; her combat with Shan Yu, and so on. Here,

the close relationship between the specications and the additions is evident – the

former are largely dependent on the latter.


12/30193


Explicitations describe the way in which ballad details are made clearer in the lm.

It is impossible to identify the enemies in the ballad – all that is known is that they

come from the north according to ‘hu qi’ (胡骑, northern ethnic horsemen), of which‘hu’ is an umbrella term used by the Han nationality in ancient times to refer to all

ethnic groups to the north of China, such as Huns, Xianbeis, Tibetans, Mongolians,Turks, and so on.5 The Northern and Southern dynasties (420–589) represented an

important period of national amalgamation in Chinese history, when many northern

ethnic groups fought one another before being sinicised. During the time when The

Mulan Ballad was composed, the Xianbeis controlled China and another ethnic

group, the Rourans, established a powerful regime on the Mongolian grasslands and

battled the Northern Wei for domination of the Western Regions. Both mountains

‘hei shan’ (黑山, Black Mountain) and ‘ yan shan’ (燕山, Mount Yen) mentioned inthe ballad were famous battleelds when the Xianbeis and Rourans clashed (in what

is now Mongolia). In the historical records of the Northern Wei, the Rourans weregenerally referred to as Huns, who called their chief Shanyu (Shan Yu) instead of

Tianzi or Kehan.6 In the lm, these historical facts come to the surface through the

invention of certain characters and stories.

Alterations entail the changing of the storyline of the ballad in the lm. The above

rewriting methods can be seen as alterations which also manifest themselves in the

design of plot and character. For example, the lm and the ballad have different

beginnings: the former begins with the Huns invading China and the latter with

Mulan weaving on her loom. The reason why Mulan joins the army in her father’s

place is different: her father is in poor health in the lm, while he is merely old in the

ballad. Another difference relates to the discovery of her true identity: in the lm,

Mulan reveals her deception after medical attention in the war, while in the ballad,

she is found to be a girl only after she returns home and discards her warrior’s outt.

As far as the image of Mulan is concerned, both the lm and the ballad present an

image of a lial and brave girl, but the former changes a gentle girl into a rebellious

one.

Linguistic deformations in the film

The linguistic deformations in Mulan can be looked at from two perspectives: one is

the adaptation of the language in the ballad; the other is the invention of the language

in the lm. The ballad tells us the given name of the heroine, namely, Mulan. Her

family name, Hua, is known through the folklore about her. The whole name Hua

Mulan roughly means ‘magnolia ower’. In the lm, her family name changes from

Hua to Fa, which is a Cantonese pronunciation of the orthodox Mandarin Chinese

Hua.

The lm is full of dialogues in which English-specic expressions are evident. For

example, some terms of address, such as ‘Your Majesty’, ‘Your Highness’, ‘citizens’,


13/30194


‘Sir’, and so on, are literally quite different from the corresponding Chinese terms

used in the same situation. ‘Your Majesty’ and ‘Your Highness’ may correspond to

‘皇上’ (huang shang ) or ‘陛下’ (bi xia) in Chinese culture, ‘citizens’ to ‘乡亲们’( xiang qin men), ‘Sir’ to various terms, such as ‘大人’ (da ren), ‘老爷’ (lao ye), ‘先

生’ ( xian sheng ), ‘师傅’ ( shi fu), and so on, on different occasions. Certain culturalexpressions have also lost their original Chinese forms in the lm. For example,

the Buddhist formula ‘南无阿弥陀佛’ ( Nan Wu Ah Mi Tuo Fo, Namo Amitabha) ismodied as ‘Ya Mi Ah To Fu Da’ and the Chinese dish ‘蘑菇鸡盆’ (mo gu ji pen,mushroom chicken bowl) is phonetically deformed as ‘moo goo gai pan’ which is

clearly a transliteration of the Cantonese version of the dish.

Cultural restorations and reformulations in the Chinese version

of Mulan

China has practised the quota system of AV product importation since its entry into

the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2001. It imports 20 foreign lms annually,

which are generally dubbed but not subtitled. As Yves Gambier (2003) and Eithne

O’Connell (2007) point out, during the second half of the 20th century, China became

a ‘dubbing country’ (Tang 2008: 154). This is quite different from the situation of

China’s planned-economy era, including the 1980s and 90s, when all imported lms

used to be subtitled and dubbed at the same time, often with monolingual subtitles

and sometimes with interlingual subtitles (Gottlieb 1998: 248). As for Mulan, both

dubbed and subtitled versions in the form of versatile compact disk (VCD) or digitalvideo disk (DVD) are available. The version dubbed in Taiwan Mandarin, targeted

at Taiwan and non-mainland Chinese audiences, features a Chinese-American pop

singer (CoCo Lee) and a Chinese kung-fu star (Jackie Chan), while the standard

Mandarin version for the mainland market and the Cantonese version for the Hong

Kong market have Jackie Chan alongside a Chinese mainland actress (Qing Xu) and

a Hong Kong pop singer (Kelly Chen) (Tang 2008: 154).

The Chinese version of the lm was produced by Disney Character Voices

International, Inc. in Beijing Film Studio, and distributed by Beijing-based

CAV

Thakral Home Entertainment Co., Ltd.7 The translator is Weizhong Tu (涂卫中).This article does not discuss the strategies and techniques of dubbing in the Chinese

version, but will instead focus on the script translation of the lm, to look at the

employment of domesticating and foreignising translation methods which are aimed

at restoring the original Chinese cultural context or introducing Americanised

Chinese culture. Domesticating methods are the ones that try to bring the source text

as close as possible to the target language and culture, while foreignising methods

are biased towards the source language and culture, and try to maintain the foreign

avour. Generally speaking, both domesticating and foreignising methods are


14/30195


employed in any translation including AVT (see Tian 2010). The case of Mulan is

complex in that Chinese culture is the source culture in terms of Disney’s Mulan

and American culture is the source culture in terms of the Chinese translation of the

lm. It is possible that the deformed Chinese culture in the lm may be restored as

its original form or it is just presented as a hybridised form in the translation. Theformer is known as cultural restoration, and the latter as cultural reformulation.

Cultural restorations

Cultural restoration means that cultural deformations produced by cultural adaptations

come back to their original forms. Cultural restoration relates not only to linguistic

forms but also to semantic content and contextual atmosphere. It is often achieved by

domesticating translation methods. The Chinese culture in Mulan goes beyond the

ballad to cover more cultural elements of ancient China, due to its many additions.

Therefore, the cultural restoration being spoken of here in the Chinese translation

of the lm is not necessarily the restoration of the culture in the ballad, but that

of Chinese culture in general. The translator of the lm uses such domesticating

methods as diction (choice of words), generalisation (which makes a specic thing

general or abstract), substitution (which substitutes one thing for another), semantic

addition (words are added to reproduce the original meaning), semantic deviation

(in which the target text deviates from the original meaning), free translation (which

reproduces not the literal but the deep meaning of the source text), and so on, to

reconstruct the authentic cultural milieu. Let’s look at some examples.

(1) General Li: Your Majesty, the Huns have crossed our Northern border.

李将军：启禀皇上，匈奴已越过北方边界。

(2) Chi Fu: Yes, Your Highness.

赐福：臣在。

(3) Chi Fu: Citizens, I bring you a proclamation from the Imperial City. The

Huns have invaded China!

赐福：乡亲们！我从京城带来皇上的谕令，匈奴侵犯中原！

(4) Chi Fu: The Fa Family.Mulan: No.

Fa Zhou: I am ready to serve the Emperor.

赐福：花家接旨。

木兰：不。

父亲：草民已准备为国效劳。

(5) Matchmaker: Fa Mulan

媒婆：花木兰


15/30196


(6) Yao: Ya Mi Ah To Fu Da.

阿尧：南无阿弥陀佛

(7) Emperor: My children, heaven smiles down upon the Middle Kingdom.

皇上：我的子民们，感谢老天爷照顾京城。(8) General Li: Forgive me your Majesty, but I believe my troops can stop him.

Emperor: I won’t take any chances, General. A single grain of rice can tip the

scale. One man may be the difference between victory and defeat.

李将军：恕臣直言，我的重兵能够阻挡单于。

皇上：我们不能够冒这个险，将军。小兵也会立大功。有时候不起眼

的人也是胜败关键。

(9) Fa Li: You must go after her. She could be killed!

Fa Zhou: If I reveal her, she will be.

Grandma Fa: Ancestors, hear our prayer: Watch over Mulan.母亲：你必须把她追回来，这可是欺君之罪啊！

父亲：万一暴露了，是要杀头的呀！

婆婆：列祖列宗，求求你们，保佑木兰吧！

The term ‘Your Majesty’ was and is used to address a king or queen in England. Its

use in example (1) colours the dialogue with Anglophonic culture. But in the Chinese

version, ‘启禀皇上’ (qi bing huang shang ) is used, immediately signifying ancient

China to witness a dialogue between the emperor and his subject. The translation

of ‘Yes, Your Highness’ into ‘臣在’ (chen zai) in example (2) reconstructs a similarsituation of conversation, as if it were taking place in feudal China’s imperial palace.

Here, the restoration of the authentic Chinese cultural context is based on diction.

The translation not only uses the language of ancient Chinese people, but also

chooses the language which is most appropriate to the very context of the situation.

‘陛下’ and ‘是的，陛下’ can be used to translate ‘Your Majesty’ and ‘Yes, Your

Highness’ respectively. Although they may be used by ancient people, they are

contextually improper. Another case in point is the choice of ‘乡亲们’ (folks) and

‘谕令’ (emperor’s order) to translate ‘citizens’ and ‘proclamation’ in example (3).

Today, ‘citizen’ is often translated into ‘公民’ and ‘proclamation’ into ‘布告’ or ‘声

明’. But these ‘modern’ translations will make audiences of the lm lose the senseof the time in which the story is set. However, the use of ‘乡亲们’ and ‘谕令’ not

only agrees with the ancient Chinese language, but also makes the utterance very

Chinese-specic.

The name of the character ‘Chi Fu’ in example (3) is meaningless to English

speakers, but its Chinese version ‘赐福’ has a meaning which is traditionally

favourable to Chinese people. ‘赐’ means ‘give’, ‘福’ means ‘blessing’ and the

whole expression ‘赐福’ means something like ‘May God bless you’ in Western


16/30197


culture. The phonetic mutation ‘Fa’ in example (4) is restored as the orthodox ‘Hua’

(花) in the translation and ‘I’ in the same example is not literally translated into

‘我’ but into ‘草民’ (cao min, humble person), which is quite in agreement with

the cultural context of the day. The minor character ‘Matchmaker’ in the lm is not

clear in terms of gender in English, because it means ‘someone who tries to arrange

relationships or marriages between people’,8 but is specied as ‘媒婆’ (mei po, a

female matchmaker) in example (5). In the lm, the matchmaker is a manly woman

who reminds us of a circus clown and the Disney formula of pursuing comic relief.

Yao’s seemingly meaningless formula for help ‘Ya Mi Ah To Fu Da’ in example

(6) is a phonetic mutation of the Buddhist formula ‘Nan Wu Ah Mi Tuo Fo’, perhaps

a Cantonese version of the formula. It is restored as the original formula ‘南无阿

弥陀佛’ in the Chinese version. The word ‘children’ in example (7) is not literally

translated into ‘孩子们’ but into ‘子民’ ( zi min, children and people), because

emperors tend to use the latter rather than the former to address their people in feudalChina. This kind of translation expands the scope of reference of ‘children’ and the

method may be labelled generalisation. The expression ‘A single grain of rice can tip

the scale’ in example (8) is translated into ‘小兵也会立大功’ (a common soldier can

also achieve great military merit), instead of the literal rendering ‘一粒稻米也能使

天平倾斜’. This is a kind of free translation which focuses on the deep meaning of

the source language and can make the verbal context more coherent. The ‘man’ in the

same example is translated into ‘不起眼的人’ in which ‘不起眼的’ (unimportant)

is a kind of semantic addition and seems to allude to Mulan. Free translation is also

used in translating ‘She could be killed’ and ‘hear our prayer: Watch over Mulan’ inexample (9), which are translated into ‘这可是欺君之罪啊’ and ‘求求你们，保佑

木兰吧’ respectively. A literal rendering of ‘She could be killed’ is ‘她可能被杀头’,

but ‘这可是欺君之罪啊’, which means ‘this is the crime of deceiving the emperor’,

is the more probable utterance in the very context that the lm has constructed.

Likewise, the literal rendering of ‘hear our prayer: Watch over Mulan’ into ‘听听我

们的祈祷：看护好木兰’ is not what Chinese people would utter on that occasion.

Instead, they would more probably say ‘求求你们，保佑木兰吧’ (Beg you, please

bless and protect Mulan).

Cultural reformulations

Cultural reformulation means modications of the source culture in the receiving

culture and re-modications of the modied culture when it is introduced back to the

source culture in a certain form, such as translation. It is generally achieved by means

of foreignising methods, such as adaptation (change of the original), amplication

(addition of episodes), innovation (creative rendering), modernisation (in which

modern language is used to replace traditional language), and so on. These methods


17/30198


are effectively employed in translating Mulan in terms of the portrayal of character

image, the arrangement of content, and the use of language.

In the lm, Mulan’s image is slightly changed from a gentle girl to a rebellious one.

Additions of a few stories make the lm quite different from the ballad in terms of

plot structure. What is special is the design of the victory celebrations. Mulan nally becomes a hero and even the emperor bows to her in tribute. This was absolutely

impossible in feudal China, where the emperor enjoyed the greatest power. No

matter how great one’s military merit, the emperor would not display such servitude

as to bow to anyone. Instead, the emperor would give someone invaluable gifts or a

high position. Also impossible is Mulan’s embrace of the emperor. There was a very

important rule in feudal China: ‘it is improper for men and women to touch each

other’s hand in passing objects’ (男女授受不亲) and it was a great disgrace for a manand a woman to embrace, let alone a woman and an emperor. So far as language use

is concerned, the lm is kind of hybridised in that both Chinese-specic expressionssuch as pinyin names and typical English expressions such as ‘sandwich’, ‘council’

and ‘Humpty Dumpty’ are combined to make the lm a hotchpotch of Chinese and

American cultures. When these things are translated into Chinese, modications take

place. Here is one example:

(10) Emperor: See to it that this woman is made a member of my council.

皇上：我封这个女子为当朝宰相。

In the ballad, the gift is the title of an imperial minister; in the lm, it changes into

a member of the council; and in the translation, it changes again into prime minister(宰相, zai xiang ). In translating names, additions are often employed. For example,Mushu, Cri-Kee and Khan are translated into ‘木须龙’ (mu xu dragon), ‘幸运蟋蟀’ (lucky cricket) and ‘汗血马’ (sweat blood horse) respectively. Mushu is a littledragon in the lm, so the translator uses ‘龙’ (dragon) to clarify its image; Cri-Keeoften brings luck to Mulan and ‘幸运’ (lucky) is added to the name to give audiencesthis message; Khan is a horse and, as the heroine’s horse, it must be special and

strong, and ‘汗血马’ is the most powerful horse in Chinese legends, which may bethe reason why the translator species the horse by that name. In the Chinese version

of the lm there is some kind of contemporary language. For example:

(11) Mushu: Urgent news from the general! What’s the matter, you’ve never seen

a ‘black and white’ before?

木须龙：将军府有令！怎么啦？你没见过“特殊快递”吗？

The euphemistic expression ‘black and white’ refers to some kind of handwritten

or printed material, and it is generally and literally translated into Chinese as ‘白纸黑字’ (white paper and black character). But here it is rendered into ‘特殊快递’ (te


18/30199


shu kuai di, special express), which is a contemporary term used in the express mail

service. Perhaps the translator chose this term to indicate that it is an urgent message.

Discussion and implicationsAs the ancient Chinese saying goes, ‘when tangerine grows to the south of the Huai

River, it is tangerine; when it grows to the north of the Huai River, it becomes trifoliate

orange’ (橘生淮南则为橘，生于淮北则为枳). It reveals a truth concerning genetic

mutations due to the change of geographical environments in transplanting plants.

It also applies to human cultural production, in which a cultural product undergoes

change due to a change in cultural environment.

The case of Mulan indicates that when The Mulan Ballad was transplanted

to America it was no longer what it was in the original culture, due to Disney’s

formulaic adaptation. The cultural transformation of the legend is to be found in two points: on the one hand, the addition of distinctive Chinese cultural traits leads to the

lm working against the authenticity and unity of historical facts concerning China.

On the other hand, the addition of Western elements into the ballad has resulted

in transculturation or cultural hybridity. But it is vital to consider the effects of

Disneyfying the Mulan legend: Disney’s Mulan was a worldwide box ofce success

which made the local and an unknown culture global, but the lm encountered

resistance in China with only a limited reception (Tang 2008), which highlights the

two faces of transculturation.

Intracultural and intercultural transfer

The ballad and intracultural transfer

Transfer is at the centre of current academic and intellectual discussions about

cultures which are no longer understood as isolated units, but as hybrid formations

involved in permanent exchange, themselves always strongly inuenced by other

cultures and, in turn, inuencing others (Feuchter et al. 2011). In cultural transfer

cultural repertoire is established. According to Itamar Even-Zohar (1997: 374),

cultural repertoire refers to ‘the aggregate of options utilized by a group of people,and by the individual members of the group, for the organization of life’. Every

society or social group has its own culture which has been gradually built through

the contributions of its members. However, not all cultural elements of a society

or a group, material or symbolic, will be selected to organise its social life at a

certain point or period in time. It will choose what is useful inside or beyond its own

culture, to ensure its proper functioning. What is important in the concept of cultural

repertoire is ‘option’. In a certain sense, cultural inheritance is selective. What is


19/30200


selected becomes part of the cultural repertoire of a society/group, and what is not

selected becomes dormant or even extinct.

Options from inside or outside a culture involve cultural contacts. Options inside

a culture sometimes manifest between the subcultures of a larger culture, which

may be viewed as a polysystem (Even-Zohar 1990) containing its own systems (i.e.

subcultures). Options outside a culture manifest between different cultures. Even-

Zohar introduced his model (see Table 3) on cultural contacts when he taught his

PhD students the course ‘Cultural Transfer’ in a 2008 spring seminar organised by

the Intercultural Studies Group of Universitat Rovira i Virgili, in Tarragona, Spain.

Table 3: Even-Zohar’s model on cultural contacts

Aspects of cultural contacts

Factors States Processes Dimensions

Agencies [agents]Trendsetters

Canonisers

Stationariness

←→

Mobility

CULTURE CONTACTS(Intercultural contacts)

(vs. Isolation/non-

contacts)

Groups

←→

Individuals[Contactism vs.

Evolution]

Repertoires/models

Products

INTERCULTURAL

INTERFERENCE

Transfer /

Translation

Transplantation

Cross-cultural relations

Co-existence of

repertoires

Transculturalism

Retention Changes

[Spontaneous←→

Planned]

Globalisation

Diffusion

Survival←→

Success

Innovation

Inventiveness/

creativity

Competition

Center Periphery

Non-official/weak

codification (?)

Official/High

codification

Centralisation Fragmentation

Heterogeneity←→

Homogeneity

Source: Itamar Even-Zohar’s 2008 ‘Culture Transfer’ course organised by the Intercultural Studies

Group of URV, Tarragona, Spain.


20/30


21/30202


way is evidence of cultural contact where the weak culture was assimilated into the

strong culture.

The hybridity of the ballad is also evident in other instances. The make-up which

Mulan and her sister use, involves two expressions ‘花黄’ (hua huang , yellow

ower powder) and ‘红妆’ (hong zhuang , rouge). Ordinary women – except for theemperor’s concubines – were not allowed to apply rouge, but could use yellow ower

powder during the Northern and Southern Dynasties. It became popular for ordinary

women to apply rouge during the Tang dynasty. This indicates that the ballad must

have been modied and polished by later writers. Literary historians hold that the

ballad was composed by the Xianbei of the Northern Wei, because ‘昨夜见军帖’

(last night I saw the draft posters) reects the habit of nomadic people, which is

to hunt during daytime and discuss important matters at night. But the Han people

were agrarians who discussed important matters during the day. Therefore, the ballad

was not written by them. It is generally believed that the transfer process of the ballad occurred as follows: it was rst composed in the Northern Wei, then spread

and transferred from the north to the south of China during the Liang and Chen

dynasties of the Southern Dynasties, when a monk named Zhijiang (智匠) rened

it and recorded it in the Musical records of old and new; a northern governor named

Yuanfu Wei (韦元甫) picked it up from ordinary folk during the Tang dynasty, but

it had already undergone many modications and the governor had it amended and

polished again; nally its present form was recorded in the Collection of music-

bureau poems compiled by Maoqian Guo.9

This lengthy process of disseminating the ballad explains the combination ofdifferent and sometimes contradictory linguistic and cultural elements from different

eras. It also indicates that a folk ballad may be years in the making. If the ballad is

viewed as a meme (Dawkins 1989), namely a cultural gene, then its dissemination

is a type of cultural transfer through time and space. In this sense, cultural transfer

also exists within a single culture. As Joseph Chan (2002) points out, the diversity

of the Chinese versions of the Mulan story suggests that transculturation can take

place across time, within a single culture. An interesting question is why the ballad

remained dormant and unnoticed for such a long time in China, only becoming widely

known after the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Cultural options

involve many factors, including ideology, norms, poetics, etc. In feudal China, lial piety, patriotism, obedience and bravery were appreciated and eulogised. Almost all

of these good qualities can be seen in Mulan, but one aspect of the ballad would have

prevented it from achieving any of its present status in the past. That is feminism,

or equality between men and women, which goes against mainstream feudal ethical

norms – ‘the three cardinal guides and the ve constant virtues’ (三纲五常). One of

these norms is that ‘the husband guides the wife’. The norm implies that a woman

should not surpass a man in any respects, including bravery and ability. These norms


22/30


23/30204


preference for Cantonese transliterations is the key participant of the cultural contact

(i.e. Mulan production), namely, the screenwriter Rita Hsiao, whose family name

‘Hsiao’ (萧) is a Cantonese transliteration based on the Wade-Giles romanisation

system which has made it common practice for Cantonese speakers to romanise their

names in Hong Kong and other parts of the world.

Disney’s Mulan came back to China through another outlet, following negotiations

between the company and the Chinese government. Disney’s release of Kundun, a

lm about the biography of the Dalai Lama, soured relations with China. Moreover,

with the import quota of Western lms set at only 20 per year (Tang 2008), Mulan’s

chances of being accepted were low. Finally, after a year’s delay, the Chinese

government allowed the lm limited Chinese release, but only after the Chinese

New Year, to ensure that local lms dominated the more lucrative holiday market.10

In terms of the cultural deformations and reformulations in both transfers, the rst

process of transfer is the production of Mulan, which relates to the deformations ofChinese culture as the source culture on both the linguistic and the cultural level.

The ‘Hua’ of Hua Mulan is modied as ‘Fa’, a Cantonese pronunciation, which

may be explained from two perspectives: on the one hand, some who participated

in the production of Mulan speak Cantonese, rather than Mandarin. On the other

hand, Disney has to consider Hong Kong residents and overseas Chinese who know

English but mostly speak Cantonese. This may explain why many names in Mulan

have been transliterated from Cantonese, rather than Mandarin, into English.

Another linguistic distortion is Mulan’s pseudonym. In the lm she is given

the name ‘Ping’ when she joins the army, and the whole name ‘Fa Ping’ (花瓶

)constitutes a pun in Chinese: ‘owerpot’ and ‘something supercial that serves little

purpose other than as eye candy or decoration’. It is self-evident that she uses her

father’s name when she joins the army, but the ballad does not tell us her father’s

name. According to Wei Xu (徐渭) of the Ming dynasty, her father’s name is ‘Hu’

(弧) not ‘Ping’.11 The use of Western vocabulary such as ‘sandwich’ and ‘Humpty

Dumpty’ makes the lm a hybrid one.

As far as Mulan’s character is concerned, it is slightly changed in the lm. She

is hardworking, lial, gentle, unselsh and brave in the ballad, but she becomes a

somewhat rebellious girl in the lm. This is evident from the matchmaking episode

at the start of the lm: she refuses to listen to the matchmaker’s advice to be a good bride to bring honour to her family. She is trained as a skilled soldier by Captain Li

Shang in the lm, and according to the Chinese legend she had been trained by her

father to practise martial arts, horse-riding and archery since she was a little child.

She is found to be a woman after she returns home in the ballad, but she reveals

her deception during the war in the lm. The episode where she and her comrades

disguise themselves as concubines to save the emperor is not found in the ballad.

However, this kind of plot design produces some humorous effect, which agrees with


24/30205


the aesthetic bias of Western audiences, including children and adults. After Mulan

becomes a great hero, all Chinese people, including the emperor, bow to her as an

unprecedented honour. Obviously, this is a reection of American individualism and

heroism.

The second process is the translation of the lm which involves both the restoration

and reformulation of Chinese culture merely on the linguistic level. This is achieved

by domesticating and foreignising translation methods respectively. Linguistically,

‘Fa’ is restored as ‘花’, ‘Ya Mi Ah To Fu Da’ as ‘南无阿弥陀佛’ and ‘moo goo gai

pan’ as ‘蘑菇鸡盆’. The invented name ‘Chien Po’ is reformulated as the orthodox

Chinese name ‘陈波’. Another invented name is ‘Chi Fu’ which roughly sounds

like ‘赐福’ (ci fu, May God bless you) or ‘欺负’ (qi fu, to bully). He is a bad egg

in the lm, so ‘欺负’ reects his character, yet the translator chose ‘赐福’ which is

more like a person’s name in Chinese culture. The translation of ‘matchmaker’ into

‘媒婆’ instead of ‘媒人’ is determined by the fact that matchmakers were alwaysfemale in feudal China, and the matchmaker in the lm is a manly woman. Such

semantic reformulation in translation may be regarded as a kind of deformation if

Mulan is seen as the source culture, which is a combined product of Chinese and

American cultures and ultimately part of Hollywood culture. It may be argued that

inventions and innovations originating from American and other cultures are the

very reason for the American AV industry dominating the world’s lm market. The

reformulation in translating Mulan is also concerned with the use of contemporary

Chinese expressions such as ‘特殊快递’, which achieves some humorous effect and

at the same time makes the lm linguistically inconsistent in style.

Disneyfication and the two faces of transculturation

• Disneycation, localisation and globalisation

Disney’s classical animations are not original stories, but simplistically revised

appropriations of fairy tales, legends and others’ ctions (Artz 2004). In manufacturing

these animations, heterogeneous foreign cultures are homogenised according to

the Disney formula, so as to expand the studio’s cultural repertoire. Mulan is no

exception. Given that before Disney’s exploits, the story of Mulan was unknown to

the West and other non-Chinese Asian countries (Chan 2002), the whole process ofDisney’s production is worth exploring.

Disneycation is a kind of localisation in which the products of other cultures are

Americanised according to American values, ideologies and expectations, in line

with Disney’s organisational imperatives and formulaic approaches. In the eld of

animation, America, as the most powerful country, is essentialised as Disney whose

inuence and power are sufcient for its lms to go global. In a sense, what is local is

American and what is American is global (Chan 2002). For Disney, the localisation


25/30206


of other cultures rests on freedom of choice, while for other cultures, globalisation

is a type of coercion (see Rogers 2006). Disney can freely appropriate the themes

of world classics to make lms, but other nation-states have to receive its products

because its reputation, resources, marketing know-how and access to distribution

infrastructure ensure maximum globalisation for its lms (see Chan 2002).

• The two faces of transculturation

Disneycation brings about localisation and globalisation of other cultures. In other

words, Disney’s lms help American and global audiences to get to know the treasures

of cultures which are not their own. This facilitates cross-cultural communication

and enhancement, and is a positive feature of the Disneycation process. However,

cultural deformations inevitably take place in the process, and these deformations

often affect the moral values and ideologies of the source culture. For example, the

reason why Mulan joins the army in the ballad is rst and foremost her lial piety,which is the supreme virtue of children in traditional Chinese culture. But the lm

implies that the reason is the love between father and daughter, as well as Mulan’s

quest for her true self (Chan 2002; Jing 2011). Another example is the function of

the matchmaker. In Chinese culture, parents arrange and determine the marriage of

their children and the matchmaker is nothing but an intermediary. But the lm seems

to imply that the matchmaker decides the marriage.

The image of Mushu, the dragon, is also problematic in the eyes of Chinese

audiences who think it is too small, just like a lizard (Tang 2008), instead of a huge,

scaly, serpent-like ying creature. The addition of animals to the lm was Roy

Disney’s suggestion (Chan 2002). In the ballad the only animal is a horse without a

name, as implied by ‘In the East Market she buys a spirited horse’ (Frankel 1976),

but it is given the name ‘Khan’ in Mulan. Yin Jing (2011) contends that the name

‘Khan’ came from non-Han northern ethnicities, so it is ridiculous for Mulan to name

her horse thus, because it is reserved only for the emperor. That is not necessarily the

case. ‘Khan’ may be understood in two ways: the name may allude to Shan Yu, the

‘emperor’ of the Huns. In Chinese culture, a person riding a horse implies that he/

she conquers the horse. Therefore, Mulan’s Khan implies that the heroine will defeat

Shan Yu sooner or later. More probable is the association of ‘Khan’ (汗) with the

Chinese term ‘汗血宝马’ (han xue bao ma), as discussed above, which refers to themost powerful horse in Chinese legend. The inspiration for bringing a cricket into

the lm may come from the onomatopoetic word ‘唧唧’ at the very beginning of

The Mulan Ballad – ‘Tsiek tsiek and again tsiek tsiek’ (Frankel 1976) – which may

refer to the sound produced by a person’s sighs, or by birds or insects in the Chinese

language.12 Obviously, the latter reminded the lmmakers of a cricket. The fact that

many households had dogs in feudal China must have made the lmmakers believe

the Fa family should also have a dog, which is given the name ‘Little Brother’.


26/30207


Disney’s cultural deformation of the ballad met with resistance in China. Mulan

had a ‘mild’ reception in mainland China in the rst year of distribution, with box

ofce revenues of less than US$2 million (Tang 2008). Further cultural resistance

came in respect of the domesticating translation methods employed by the translator.Some Chinese culture-specic words are used to full nostalgic expectations;

a large number of colloquial and slang expressions are used to bring the Chinese

version more in line with contemporary popular taste; some dialectic words and

several expressions from Taiwan Mandarin are used to conform to the linguistic

preference of the majority of young viewers; English rhetorical devices are often

replaced by Chinese ones to please the local audience (ibid.). Despite its negative

effects, Disneycation helps create new cultural repertoires. A recent version of

Mulan in Taiwan was strongly inuenced by Disney’s Mulan (Chan 2002), and thus

a new repertoire has been established around the legend (see Wang & Yeh 2005).Transculturation makes the local foreign and the foreign local, and it has become a

constant in cross-cultural communication in the era of globalisation. What is good

for one, when it comes to transculturation, may be bad for another, and vice versa.

Conclusion

The Mulan Ballad and Mulan indicate that intracultural and intercultural transfers

exist, and that cultural adaptations took place during both transfer processes. The

establishment of a cultural repertoire is dependent on intracultural and intercultural

adaptations, which include various kinds of domesticating and foreignising methods

such as additions, omissions, generalisations, specications, explicitations, and give

rise to cultural deformations and reformulations. Cultural survival or innovation, in

some sense, is sustained by intracultural and intercultural rewritings.

American AV culture, as an important part of American culture, has been

drawing on what is excellent in other cultures to advance American AV production

and dominate the world lm market. In the process of producing and translating

American AV products, cultural contacts take place, causing cultural deformationsand reformulations in the bidirectional cultural transfer. It is of great signicance to

study how American lmmakers make use of other cultures in producing lms, and

how American lms are received through subtitling/dubbing in the source culture

from which these lms obtained their inspiration in terms of plot. Moreover, it is

also vital to study how American lms are received in cultures other than the source

culture and to determine whether cultural deformations and reformulations take

place in their AVT products.


27/30208


Acknowledgement

Research for this article was funded by the National Planning Ofce of Philosophy and Social

Science, P.R. China (grant no. 12BYY023).

Notes

1 See http://www.cnki.net (accessed 23 June 2012).

2 The English version of the lm is available at http://www.sciscripts.com/cartoon/

mulan.txt and the Chinese version is by Tu Weizhong with both dubbed and subtitled versions

on the VCDs of the lm published by China Audiovisual Press and distributed by Thakral

Co., Ltd.

3 A detailed introduction of Mulan is available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulan

4 The domain of women of the period was conned to housework including cooking

and weaving, as evidenced by ‘Mu-lan weaves, facing the door’ (Frankel 1976).5 See http://baike.baidu.com/view/134316.htm.

6 See http://baike.baidu.com/view/28450.htm

7 See http://www.dhjbw.com

8 See http://dict.bing.com.cn/#matchmaker


10 For more details, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulan



References

Allers, R. and R. Minkoff. 1994. The Lion King . Walt Disney. 87 mins.

Artz, L. 2004. The righteousness of self-centred royals: the world according to Disney

animation. Critical Arts 18(1): 116–146.

Benton, S. 1995. Pocahontas as a traitor. Tribal College 6(4): 34–35.

Berland, D.I. 1982. Disney and Freud: Walt meets the id. Journal of Popular Culture 15(4):

93–104.

Chan, J. 2002. Disneyfying and globalizing a Chinese legend Hua Mulan: a study of

transculturation. In In search of boundaries: communication, nation-state and cultural

identities, ed. J. Chan and B. McIntyre, 225–248. Westport, CT: Ablex.Clark, I.L., E. Larson, C. Geronimi and W. Reitherman. 1959. Sleeping Beauty. Walt Disney.

75 mins.

Cook, B. and T. Bancroft. 1998. Mulan. Walt Disney. 88 mins.

Croce, P.J. 1990. A clean and separate space: Walt Disney in person and production. Journal

of Popular Culture 23(3): 91–103.

Dawkins, R. 1989. The selsh gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Di Giovanni, E. 2003. Cultural otherness and global communication in Walt Disney lms at

the turn of the century. The Translator 9(2): 207–223.


28/30


29/30210


Rogers, R. 2006. From cultural exchange to transculturation: a review and reconceptualization

of cultural appropriation. Communication Theory 16: 474–503.

Scott, R. 2010. Robin Hood . Imagine Entertainment. 148 mins.

Smoodin, E., ed. 1994. Disney discourse: producing the Magic Kingdom. New York:

Routledge.Tang, J. 2008. A cross-cultural perspective on production and reception of Disney’s Mulan

through its Chinese subtitles. European Journal of English Studies 12(2): 149–162.

The Chinese version of Mulan. http://www.dhjbw.com (accessed January 2012).

Tian, C. 2010. Etymological implications of domestication and foreignization: a Chinese

perspective. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 18(2): 79–93.

Wang, G. and E.Y. Yeh. 2005. Globalization and hybridization in cultural products: the cases

of Mulan and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. International Journal of Cultural

Studies 8(2): 175–193.

Wasko, J. 2001. Understanding Disney: the manufacture of fantasy. Williston, VT: Blackwell.

Wu, H. and J. Chan. 2007. Globalizing Chinese martial arts cinema: the global-local allianceand the production of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Media, Culture & Society

29(2): 195–217.

Zhang, R. 1999. Ode to Mulan: seeing the animated lm ‘ Mulan’. Chinese Sociology &

Anthropology 32(2): 30–32.

花木兰. http://baike.baidu.com/view/4025.htm (accessed January 2012)胡人. http://baike.baidu.com/view/134316.htm (accessed January 2012).唧唧. http://baike.baidu.com/view/873591.htm (accessed January 2012).柔然. http://baike.baidu.com/view/28450.htm (accessed January 2012).


30/30

Copyright of Critical Arts: A South-North Journal of Cultural & Media Studies is the property of Routledge and

its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's

express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

Disney Mulan

Documents

Transcript of Disney Mulan