Chinese TV sparks love of language in Vietnam's youth

HANOI - Wearing pajamas and lying on her bed at her home in Vietnam's capital Hanoi, 19-year-old Nguyen Nhu Van wasn't planning to sleep anytime soon on Wednesday, despite it being midnight.

Instead, her eyes glued to the laptop screen, she repeatedly pressed the F5 key. Van was waiting for the new episode of the ongoing Chinese drama Princess Agents to be uploaded on a local website with Vietnamese subtitles.

"I can't wait until tomorrow to watch it. My eagerness is killing me right now," Van said.

Van is among thousands of Vietnamese youngsters making a habit of updating any newly-released Chinese dramas at midnight. Series such as Journey of Flowers or Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms have ended, but now more are on the way to serve audiences this summer.

Thanks to the large number of translating teams nationwide, any new episode will be packed with Vietnamese subs within an hour of the original Chinese one being released.

In the meantime, translator Tan Thi Ngoc Anh was urgently finishing her part to send to the subtitle specialists in her team.

"We normally divide each episode into three parts, each translator is responsible for some 15 minutes," the translator said, explaining that partial posts save waiting time.

Anh's team, with 15 members, completes tasks from translating, setting subtitles and working with websites to upload the subbed video and fixing errors if they occur.

As it is a multistage process. Team members can't miss their deadlines, or the whole process will be ruined, since the episode won't be released on time.

Anh said: "Jumping out of bed every midnight is not a joke at all. I sometimes feel it is overwhelming, but thinking of so many youngsters stuck to their screens waiting for our subbed films, I slap my face to better concentrate on the translation."

Besides Chinese films, Anh's teams also do subtitles for English, Japanese and Korean works. However, the Chinese segment is the largest one, attracting a lot of youngsters watching online.

Topics about love, youth and modern life are great hits with the audiences, according to Anh.

And there has also been a spark in interest in Chinese language courses.

Teacher Nghiem Thuy Trang, 30, has just opened her second Chinese Communication Center due to increasing demand of Vietnamese people wanting to learn Chinese.

She said her new facility welcomes about 30 new students per month.

"Young people born in the late 1990s and early 2000s come to us because they are fond of Chinese dramas and movies. They want to see the films without waiting for the subtitles and dream one day they can talk to their Chinese idols," Trang said.

Xinhua