Subject: [Ltru] Cantonese

From: Shawn Steele <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 May 2008 13:44:00 -0700

Sorry, I don't know more about Cantonese.  But recently when I suggested that Cantonese was interesting as text so Chinese text can't just be lumped into zh just because its text, the replies suggested that Cantonese isn't written, but rather readers rely on written Mandarin.

Today I bought 2 movies from Costco (sorry Karen, they were Fox, however they were Blu-Ray).  Both are aimed at the American market, and both have "Cantonese" subtitles.  (On the back it says English 5.1 DTS, English 5.1, Spanish 5.1 and French 5.1 for voice, and subtitled in English, Spanish, French, Cantonese & Korean.  (No Mandarin at all)

Can someone enlighten me please?  I assume the subtitles are text ;-)

- Shawn

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 9 May 2008 14:05:42 -0700

We subtitle in Cantonese. I have repeatedly mentioned this, but keep 
getting told by this list that written Cantonese doesn't exist or is used 
so infrequently that no one really needs to distinguish this from other 
Chinese languages. 

Written Cantonese is used in situations where it's useful to represent 
conversational language as opposed to more formal writing. One such place 
is in film/video subtitles.  I am somewhat surprised by the choice of 
languages on the disc you picked up, but localization decisions are 
specific to the product. There are some interesting scenarios. If we 
expect that a film will do well in Mexico, for example, we may choose to 
dub/subtitle in Mexican Spanish (specifically) as well as generic "Latin 
American Spanish" copy for the rest of Spanish-speaking Latin America.

Regards,

Karen Broome
Metadata Systems Designer
Sony Pictures Entertainment
310.244.4384

Shawn Steele <[email-masked]> 
Sent by: [email-masked]
05/09/2008 01:44 PM

To
Mark Davis <[email-masked]>, "Phillips, Addison" 
<[email-masked]>
cc
LTRU Working Group <[email-masked]>
Subject
[Ltru] Cantonese

Sorry, I don't know more about Cantonese.  But recently when I suggested 
that Cantonese was interesting as text so Chinese text can't just be 
lumped into zh just because its text, the replies suggested that Cantonese 
isn't written, but rather readers rely on written Mandarin.
 
Today I bought 2 movies from Costco (sorry Karen, they were Fox, however 
they were Blu-Ray).  Both are aimed at the American market, and both have 
"Cantonese" subtitles.  (On the back it says English 5.1 DTS, English 5.1, 
Spanish 5.1 and French 5.1 for voice, and subtitled in English, Spanish, 
French, Cantonese & Korean.  (No Mandarin at all)

- Shawn