Scofields on Chinese YouTubes

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Submitted by sami711.

Scofields on Chinese YouTubes

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What makes YouTube so popular? Probably, the copyrighted materials - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The South Park, and other latest TV shows from all around the world. Though the content makers have asked YouTube to remove them over and over, users keep uploading the unauthorized videos day after day.

But in China, the we-will-be-the-next-YouTube websites can do much more than their American precedent. As a Chinese Web 2.0 entrepreneur tole me, "the foreign executives must be very 'jealous' of the copyright situation in mainland China." Copyrighted videos online? Who cares.

It's such a good news for the websites, and doubtless, better for the mainland Internet users.

Nowadays, open a Chinese video sharing website, type the title of your favorite show, click on the search button, and in less than one second, a result page with every single episode of the show will come up on your screen. Take ouou.com as an example, you can watch the the episodes which was premiered in America yesterday - 24, Prison Break, and teenagers' favorite sci-fi show in this season, Heroes.

What's more, there is no downloading process which belongs to the BitTorrent/KaZaA age, no Ads bothering you from the beginning to the end, and the most important, there is no language gap and cultural crash any more. In mainland, fans with extraordinary translating skills started making Chinese subtitles once they got the videos from the Internet. After the Episode 1, Season 2 of Prison Break came out in August 2006, the first video with Chinese subtitle was finished and uploaded in less than 7 hours.

And for some shows which require in-depth knowledges of American culture, there are footnotes among the subtitle. Especially in the show Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip, footnotes help Chinese audience understand the jokes about Hollywood history and American politicians. How can Chinese fans spell the weird names correctly? The embed English subtitles for HDTV programs were recorded and sent to the translating group in mainland.

So, even the networks import some famous shows, no one will watch them. Because the official versions always contain many translating mistakes, the terribly dubbed episodes always drive the viewers crazy, and the die-hard young fans have seen them online before. Last year, CCTV, the biggest governmental network imported Despaired Housewives, and the rates were incredibly low.

I don't think it's a Only-In-China affair. On the YouTube's Most Viewed page, you can find some Japanese cartoon with English subtitles episodes from time to time. They are also the fans' masterpieces. I read an article about it on Fortunes magazine. But it said that if the official versions are bought by American networks, the translating groups will stop by themselves immediately.