The concept of translation: The Chinovelas in the Philippine context

• Main Author: Buban, Raquel Sison
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2005
• Subjects: Television soap operas—Taiwan—Translations into Filipino; Television plays, Chinese—Translations into Filipino; Meteor Garden (Television program); Language Interpretation and Translation
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty_research/12916
• Institution: De La Salle University

The invasion of Chinovelas threatens to end the era of Mexican telenovelas in Philippine TV viewing. Needless to say, it has continued to fever the imagination of the ever curious and wanting consumerist attitude of the Filipinos. Considering the case of the Meteor Garden, Chinovela, which is actually a Japanese storyline - Taiwanese adapted-English translated and Filipino dubbed, one can not help but surmise on the varied transformations and re-inventions of culture, which inter-cultural translations bring about. It is a translation within a translation, thus immortalises it. But does it also happen to culture? If so, what cultural representations does it bring about that so strongly strikes a chord in our being Filipinos? And since language and culture are both issues of translation, it is also necessary to study the dynamics of the Filipino language as it is used in teletranslation. This paper aims to study the concept of translation of the Meteor Garden from English, to transformations of culture via translation.