Chinese Subtitle Operator for Miss Peony

We were very lucky to be involved in Miss Peony’s production when it toured Melbourne and Geelong recently.

It is a comedy by Belvoir Theatre Company in Sydney. The story is about a Chinese grandma passed away and came back to haunt her Australia Born Chinese granddaughter to take part in a Chinese pageant contest. The play explores the issue of what being Chinese mean to Australia Born Chinese and their grandparents.

I was sharing the tech room with the stage manager, the sound tech and light team tech, high up at the back facing the stage. I could see the stage clearly and hear the actors through the speaker. I could also hear the the stage manager and the tech team via my headset. 

The conversations had been translated into three languages: English, Mandarin and Cantonese. As the subtitle operator, my job was to click the line, or click the downward pointing arrow, when a line was spoken by the actors on the stage. And then the three languages will show up on the screen. The aim was to make the audiences laugh at the same time, whatever language they spoke. What an admirable effort by the production team to achieve such inclusivity!

I thought it was going to be easy. But now quite!

Immediately after the first show, Gaby, the actress that played the grandma marched up to tech room, and told me that the audience laughed before she spoke the Cantonese line, because I had pressed one of the lines too fast. It was the line spoken by her in Cantonese was “她又做吾到她的承诺，因为她太中意吃肯德基炸鸡” . I had a look at the English translation “She couldn’t, because she loved KFC fried chicken too much”. The English subtitle was obviously shorter than the Cantonese spoken line, as part of it has been incorporated into the previous line. So the English speaking audience who read the English subtitle would get to the punch line (second half) first before the Cantonese audience who listened to the actress. We discussed and decided that I would press the line after she had spoken part of the Cantonese line, so that the audiences of the two streams would laugh together after her Cantonese delivery. Problem solved!

The other thing I found was that after that after sitting through the same show 10 times, I became a bit complacent and failed to give it one hundred percent of my attention. When one of the actors skipped one line accidentally, I had to quickly find the right line.

On one occasion, I unplucked the speaker during a break, due to my Green Hat Perfectionist thinking, but forgot to pluck it back before the show restared, so I could not hear the actors.  I fumbled for the pluck for the speaker frantically while trying to guess which line the actors were speaking based on the what II could see through the glass. 

All in all, it is a wonderful experience I totally enjoyed! I have even received a script booklet signed by all the actors. Well done and thank you, Belvoir!

https://geelongartscentre.org.au/whats-on/all-events/miss-peony/