Cantonese

Abstract: Cantonese has been the dominant spoken language of Hong Kong for over a century. This living language has been captured by video games pretty well. In the various virtual Hong Kong, it is not only that Cantonese can be heard, but also that the Cantonese dialogues there demonstrate the culture of the city, and the openness and vitality of the language. In the real-world video game industry, the ways that the publishers do the Chinese version of their video games turns out to be a miniature of how society deals with a key challenge that the language is facing nowadays.

Image source: OpenClipArt (1, 2, 3)

Voice acting started to be popular in video games in 1990s with the emergence of huge yet inexpensive data storage technologies such as CD-ROMs. It was also the time when Cantonese, which is used by 90% of the Hong Kong population for the last 150 years, started being heard in the various virtual Hong Kong.

Cantonese in Fear Effect (Eidos Interactive. PlayStation: 2000)

Cantonese in Bruce Lee: Quest of the Dragon (Universal Interactive. Xbox: 2002)

Cantonese in Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix (Activision. Microsoft Windows/Mac OSX/Xbox: 2002)

Cantonese in Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb (LucasArts. Microsoft Windows/Xbox/PlayStation 2/OS X: 2003)

Cantonese in Hitman: Contracts (Eidos Interactive. Microsoft Windows/PlayStation 2/Xbox: 2004, PlayStation 3/Xbox 360: 2013)

Cantonese in Jet Li: Rise to Honor (Sony Computer Entertainment America. PlayStation 2: 2004)

Cantonese in Stranglehold (Midway Games/Success. Microsoft Windows/PlayStation 3/Xbox 360: 2007)

Cantonese in Air Traffic Controller 3 Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport テクノブレイン ぼくは航空管制官3 香港カイタックエアポート (Technobrain. Microsoft Windows: 2009)

Cantonese in Kung Fu Rider (Sony Computer Entertainment. Sony: 2010)

Cantonese in Sleeping Dogs (Square Enix. Microsoft Windows/PlayStation 3/Xbox 360: 2012)

Cantonese commentary in GRID 2 (Codemasters. Microsoft Windows/PlayStation 3/Xbox 360: 2013, OS X: 2014)

Cantonese in combat ground of Resident Evil 6 (Capcom. Microsoft Windows/PlayStation 3/Xbox 360: 2013)

Cantonese in a cut-scene of Resident Evil 6 (Capcom. Microsoft Windows/PlayStation 3/Xbox 360: 2013)

Cantonese in 光輝歲月 (Lakoo. iOS/Android: since 2015)

Cantonese in 正牌龍虎門 (Gameone. iOS/Android: 2019)

When these virtual Hong Kong people travel to other countries, they even bring Cantonese with them.

Cantonese in the opening of Keisatsukan 2 (Konami, Arcade: 2001), starting at 0:25. In the game, a Hong Kong mafia group is going to Japan to join force with some local Japanese mafia group.

As I watch these video clips, I am amazed by not only their existence itself, but also that the dialogues have captured some key features of the language and the city using it. In the following, we are going to walk them through.

Cantonese through video games

Practical communication

Cantonese is a living language. It is used in Hong Kong for various practical purposes such as expressing facts and requesting actions.

"Three, two, one" countdown (三、二、一, pronounced as sam, yee, yat in English) in Kung Fu Rider (Sony Computer Entertainment. PlayStation 3: 2010)

"Three, two, one, start" countdown (三、二、一、開始) in GRID 2 (Codemasters. Microsoft Windows/PlayStation 3/Xbox 360: 2013, OSX: 2014)

The use of Yum Shing (飲勝), literally means "drink and win" -- the Cantonese equivalence of "Cheers!" in a wine toast, in Deus Ex

Local slang

Having been with the city for a long time, the language has recorded bits and pieces of Hong Kong history and culture in the form of local slang.

埋嚟睇埋嚟揀。
Translated as: Come look and choose.
This is a common phrase used by Hong Kong hawkers to attract pedestrians' attention.

埋嚟睇埋嚟揀 (Come look and choose) in North Point Night Market of Sleeping Dogs (Square Enix. Microsoft Windows/PlayStation 3/Xbox 360: 2012)

我食鹽多過你食米。 
Translated as: The amount of salt I have taken is more than the rice you have eaten.
This is used when a person wants to highlight his superior experience over other people, so as to persuade others to listen to him. Asians usually have rice in their meal, and for a long time in the past when fresh food was still a luxury, they usually have salt-preserved food as dishes. The older and more experienced you are, more rice and more importantly bitter salt you have taken than the younger and less experienced counterparts.

我食鹽多過你食米 (The amount of salt I have taken is more than the rice you have eaten) in a kitchen of Sleeping Dogs (Square Enix. Microsoft Windows/PlayStation 3/Xbox 360: 2012)

依家唔係事必要你講，除非你自己想講，但係你所講的野，可能會用紙同筆記低，之後成為呈堂證供。
Translated as: You are not oblige to say anything unless you wish to do so, but what you say may be put into writing and given in evidence.
This Hong Kong version of Miranda's warning has become well-versed by the people in the city as Cantonese dramas and movies repeat this phrase again and again. It also represents the awareness of Hong Kong citizens on their civic rights upon arrest.

 

依家唔係事必要你講，除非你自己想講，但係你所講的野，可能會用紙同筆記低，之後成為呈堂證供。(You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, but what you say may be put into writing and given in evidence.) in the opening cut scene of Sleeping Dogs (Square Enix. Microsoft Windows/PlayStation 3/Xbox 360: 2012)

Fusions with other languages

Having been exposed to English during the colonial period (1842-1997), Hong Kong Cantonese has loaned quite a few English words. Nowadays, Hong Kong people even use English words directly in their Cantonese conversations.

"揾埋嚟啲 job" (translated as "the work you find us") demonstrating the use of Cantonese and English in the same sentence in Hong Kong. From Kung Fu Rider (Sony Computer Entertainment. PlayStation 3: 2010)

Sometimes, it is the Cantonese phrases that are imported to other languages. A famous example is Gweilos (鬼佬), literally means "devil man", which is the Cantonese slang for Westerners. Historically, Chinese people considered people outside their country to be barbarians, and tried to curse or insult them by using derogatory terms such as "devil" so as to curse or insult them. Note that nowadays people use the term with no negative implications. Some Westerners even use the term to refer to themselves.

Gweilos (鬼佬) in Deus Ex (Eidos Interactive. Microsoft Windows/Mac OS/PlayStation 2: 2000)

Gweilos (鬼佬) in Hitman: Contracts (Eidos Interactive. Microsoft Windows/PlayStation 2/Xbox: 2004, PlayStation 3/Xbox 360: 2013)

New words

Hong Kong Cantonese has got not only new slangs and imported vocabularies, but also new words. The word "hea" (IPA: hε) is a representative example.

我地無時間俾你咁 hea 呀 We don't have time to let you be idle. From a kitchen supervisor in Sleeping Dogs (Sony Computer Entertainment. PlayStation 3: 2010)

The word "hea" describes a person who is relaxing by being idle. It can also be used as an adverb to describe the careless and indifferent manner of a person on doing something. The word first gained popularity around 1999 to early 2000's through a series of radio plays from the radio show "芝 see 菇bi". Later, an old Chinese character 迆 was given to this word. Recently the word even becomes sound bites of politicians and appears in news report.

A brief history of real-world Cantonese

Solid dominance in the colonial era

Although Cantonese dominates in Hong Kong nowadays, before 1842 it was indeed some other South China (a.k.a Yue) Chinese dialects that were more commonly used. After Britain set up a colony here in 1842, large numbers of merchants and workers came to the city from Canton (a.k.a Guangzhou) which was the center of the Cantonese dialect. Cantonese then gradually replaced these other Chinese dialects. Since then, immigrants need to learn Cantonese to join the Chinese-speaking community here. Cantonese is the mother tongue of all the newborns in the city.

Description in 80 Days (Inkle. iOS/Andorid: 2014, Microsoft Windows: 2015) on the use of Cantonese by people in Hong Kong and proximity area.

In 1932, China adopted Mandarin dialect from Northern China as the standard for the whole country. However, the dominance of Cantonese in Hong Kong remained solid, probably because of British's decision on maintaining a cultural gap between China and Hong Kong in order to facilitate her effective rules over the city. As a result, there were policies on Chinese languages even though Chinese was never an official language until 1974. The language used to teach Chinese was standardized to Cantonese. After 1949 Communist's takeover of mainland China, the official radio station RTHK was asked to do all Chinese broadcast in Cantonese.

The Hong Kong stage of Phantom Doctrine (CreativeForge Games. Microsoft Windows/PlayStation 4/Xbox One: 2018) indicating that Cantonese is the language to use in the city in the 1980s, the time the game is set in.

Cantonese is the mother tongue of 90% of Hong Kong population, far outnumbering English and Mandarin. As a result, I am disappointed to see that the only Chinese dialogues Shenmue II (Sega. Dreamcast: 2001, Xbox: 2002) is in Mandarin, even though it is justifiable if you treat the character as immigrants from China.

The only Chinese sentence in Shenmue II (Sega. Dreamcast: 2001, Xbox: 2002). Though set in Hong Kong, that only Chinese sentence is in Mandarin rather than Cantonese.

You may listen to Cantonese radio broadcast if you tune in the appropriate radio stations in Project Gotham Racing 2 (Microsoft Game Studios. Xbox: 2003) and Sleeping Dogs (Square Enix. Microsoft Windows/PlayStation 3/Xbox 360: 2012). In the latter, you may even find Cantonese sound tracks from the Hong Kong hip Hop group 24Herbs (see here for the list of songs). Cantopop (short for Cantonese pop music) or HK-pop (short for Hong Kong pop music) originated in the 1970s was once popular alongside other popular cultures such as TV dramas and movies, and had spread to Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore in the 1980s and 1990s. There are even a few Cantonese theme songs for video games.

Cantonese radio broadcast in Project Gotham Racing 2 (Microsoft Game Studios. Xbox: 2003)

Cantonese radio broadcast in Sleeping Dogs (Square Enix. Microsoft Windows/PlayStation 3/Xbox 360: 2012)

Cantonese broadcast in Resident Evil 6 (Capcom. Microsoft Windows/PlayStation 3/Xbox 360: 2013)

Challenges after the rise of Greater China

The dominance of Cantonese in the city nowadays is at risk. With the booming economy of the greater China since 1980s, it becomes a practical concern for Hong Kong people to learn Mandarin. Furthermore, with the handover of the city's sovereignty to China in 1997, there appears to be no need to maintain the cultural barrier that the colonial government created. RTHK has resumed Mandarin broadcast in 1997. The Education Bureau of Hong Kong even insist that schools shall use Mandarin to teach Chinese language in the long term, even though elite students using Mandarin to learn Chinese don't seem to do better than typical students learning with Cantonese.

One problem with embracing an additional Chinese dialect is the different phonetic transcriptions of foreign words. This is fundamentally due to the different pronunciations of quite a few Chinese characters in Cantonese and Mandarin. As the Chinese communities in Hong Kong and the rest of Greater China has been growing separately for a while, we have already got quite a number of foreign names transcribed differently by the Hong Kong community based on Cantonese and the greater China community based on Mandarin. In the soccer world, the name of the soccer player Lionel Andrés "Leo" Messi is translated to 美斯 in Cantonese and 梅西 in Mandarin. While the Cantonese transcription maps to Messi well even if pronounced in Mandarin, the Mandarin transcription maps to something else (mui sai) if pronounced in Cantonese.

Cantonese narration in Pro Evolution Soccer 2017 (Konami. Microsoft Windows/Xbox 360/Xbox One/PlayStation 3/PlayStation 4: 2016)

Mandarin narration in Pro Evolution Soccer 2017 (Konami. Microsoft Windows/Xbox 360/Xbox One/PlayStation 3/PlayStation 4: 2016)

The animation series Gundam, which also appears in quite a few video games, has the same issue. Its principle series of robots gundam (Japanese: ガンダム) is mapped to Chinese characters 高達 in Hong Kong where Cantonese is used, and 鋼彈 in Taiwan where Mandarin is way more popular. In this case, pronouncing the transcriptions with the other dialect can't get you to gundam.

Translating Gundam as 高達 in the Hong Kong Chinese version of SD Gundam G Generation Genesis (Bandai Namco Games. PlayStation 4/PlayStation Vita: 2016)

Translating Gundam as 鋼彈 in the Taiwan Chinese version of SD Gundam G Generation Genesis (Bandai Namco Games. PlayStation 4/PlayStation Vita: 2016)

To accommodate the two communities, some people including game publishers choose to maintain both sets of translations, as you can see from Konami and Bandai Namco Games above.

Some other people choose to unify the phonetic transcriptions.

One well-known unification is the robot cat comic and animation series Doraemon (Japanese: ドラえもん). When the series first appeared in different Chinese communities, the name of its characters were transcribed differently. After the death of its writer Fujiko F. Fujio (Japanese: 藤子・F・不二雄) in 1996, the Japanese copyright holder of the series, TV Asahi (株式会社テレビ朝日), initiated the unification so as to fulfill the last wish of Mr. Fujio. It has taken years before all media (comics, animation and video games) threw away all old transcriptions and used the new unified names which were based on Japanese pronunciation. During the transition period, people expressed their sorrow for having to abandon the old names that had been with them for a long time.

The webpage for the re-release of Doraemon Monopoly (Gameone. Microsoft Windows: 1998) in 2007. The Chinese title was changed from 叮噹大富翁 to 多啦A夢大富翁 in the re-release in line of Chinese official translation unification, while the character introduction kept using the old translations (e.g. 叮噹 for the robot cat Doraemon).

Doraemon Monopoly game play. It appears that no character names are mentioned throughout the game, saving its 2007 re-release from any code and voice change

Some other unification efforts choose to drop the transcriptions of one community for those in the other community. To the community with its transcriptions abandoned, this move can trigger not only sediments due to having to give up her long-established habit, but only criticisms on whether both communities are equally respected. In 2016, The Pokémon Company's unified the Chinese transcriptions of the characters to mainly the Mandarin communities use. It even aroused a protest in Hong Kong.

Pokémon Pichu (left) and Pikachu (center) in the traditional Chinese version of Pokémon Sun/Moon (The Pokémon Company. Nintendo 3DS: 2016). They are used named 皮丘 and 皮卡丘 rather than 比超 and 比卡超 that Hong Kong people are used to.

The protest on maintaining the Hong Kong version of Pokémon name transcriptions in 2016

Looking forward

Just now we have seen the enormous energy of Cantonese in Hong Kong. Besides performing typical living language functions such as reporting facts and commanding actions, the language also records the culture of people through local Cantonese slang. The openness and vitality of the language are well demonstrated through its fusion with foreign languages and its new words.

Just as its replacement of other Chinese dialects upon British colony establishment, Cantonese is in danger of fading out nowadays due to the increasing demand or pressure on unifying with the national official language Mandarin. There is obviously a need to have a common spoken language to facilitate communication. However, it shouldn't be an excuse for looking down or killing local languages which are recording and displaying regional dynamics. The risk has been a wake-up call for those who believes existing things stay forever for granted. If there is something we wish to preserve, we need to act.

References

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