國立臺灣師範大學

碩士論文

Master’s Thesis

Graduate Institute of Translation and Interpretation

National Taiwan Normal University

變裝皇后的言談及魯保羅變裝皇后秀中文字幕的分析

What it Means to Talk Like a (Chinese) : An Analysis of Chinese

Translations of RuPaul’s

指導教授：李根芳博士

Advisor: Dr. Ken-Fang Lee

研究生：裴杰明

Jeremy Peck

中華民國一零九年二月

February 2020

摘要

許多備受邊緣化的族群，都有屬於自己獨特的語言表達方式，可用來營造社群意識

和歸屬感。變裝皇后此一族群，於近幾年走入主流文化，隨著變裝皇后所帶來的影響力日

益增長，變裝皇后的語言也越來越大眾化。變裝的語言—特別是在魯保羅變裝皇后秀所出

現的語言—在美國同性戀社群，可說是相對的普遍，並成為一些同性戀者建立身份，與構

築或加強圈內社群的一種方式。在本文中，我希望透過研究魯保羅變裝皇后秀，當中所出

現的變裝語言所帶來的影響，以及對身份形塑和建構社群的重要性，並且分析中文字幕該

如何修正而不失原意。

關鍵字：變裝，變裝皇后，魯保羅，同性戀，翻譯

Abstract

Many marginalized groups have their own unique ways of speaking that they use to create a sense of community and belonging. One such group that has been launched into the mainstream in recent years is drag queens. As drag grows in influence and relevance, the language of drag also grows in ubiquity and familiarity. The language of drag, especially in the

American community, and particularly that which can be heard on RuPaul’s Drag Race, has become a means by which some gay people establish an identity and build or strengthen community. In this thesis, I examine the ways that drag language functions in Drag Race, how it is important to identity formation and community-building, and finally, how it is translated into

Chinese.

Keywords: drag, drag queens, RuPaul, LGBTQ, translation

Table of Contents

I. Introduction ………………………………………………………………………1

i. Background Information

ii. Research Purpose

iii. Research Questions

II. Literature Review and Methodology ……………………………………………22

III. Discussion ……………………………………………………………………….32

i. Camp

ii. Sisterhood

iii. Reading

iv. Pop Culture

IV. Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………70

Works Cited ……………………………………………………………………………..73

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my thesis advisor, Ken-Fang Lee, for her encouragement and truly invaluable advice. I never thought that I would find so much value in studying RuPaul’s Drag

Race, but Professor Lee so enthusiastic about the idea from the very start that I felt confident enough to devote so much time to the topic. Each time I met with Professor Lee, she made me feel like my ideas were valid and thought-provoking. She guided me at times when I had no conviction and felt like I was just writing a thesis-length tangent about drag queens. Not only is she a voice for so many underrepresented people through her research, but she also helped me find my own voice in the vast field of translation studies, and for that, I am so incredibly grateful.

Professor Lee’s Translation and Gender course was an eye-opening moment during my graduate career; it was during that class that I learned that translation is not just a literary tool but a way to be a voice for the voiceless. It was then that I realized that I wanted to devote the rest of my graduate career to researching the academically underrepresented LGBTQ+ community.

I would also like to thank my thesis committee members, Dennis Chwen-Der Lin and

Kelly Hu for their advice in improving my thesis. Professor Lin provided me with ample materials and scholarship to help me fill in the holes in the history of drag scholarship.

Finally, I would like to thank my professors and classmates at the Graduate Institute of

Translation and Interpretation (GITI) at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) for their support and all the knowledge they have shared these past few years. I am also indebted to Liou

Jia-Song for his patience and diligence in helping me interpret the subtle differences in Chinese phrasing that I would not have been able to grasp on my own; his linguistic aptitude, as well as emotional support, were truly invaluable to the completion of this project. Chapter I

Introduction

i. Background Information

Many marginalized groups have their own unique ways of speaking that they use to create a sense of community and belonging. One such group that has been launched into the mainstream in recent years is drag queens. Due in part to the great success that RuPaul’s Drag

Race – an American reality competition series where the winner is crowned “America’s next drag superstar –” has enjoyed over its ten-plus seasons, drag has become increasingly popular in the United States and throughout the world. Not only is RuPaul’s Drag Race UK currently enjoying success during its first season, but a spinoff series in Thailand is wrapping up its second season, while franchises are in the works for Canada and Australia.1 Following the explosion of the Drag Race phenomenon, the language of (American) drag has also spread from the drag community to the gay community, and from there to mainstream heterosexual society. For proof, look to the ubiquity of Drag Race GIFs that are plastered all over the Internet. A search for “yas queen” or “shade” is likely to return a plethora of scenes taken straight from Drag Race. As

Caroline Are writes for Quartzy, “Drag Race has become a cultural juggernaut that is influencing our everyday language and internet behavior.” Drag Race alumnae have also started appearing all over the entertainment industry, from Willam and acting in A Star is Born with Lady Gaga, to and runway modeling for Marc Jacobs and Jean Paul

1 Brooks, Raillan. “A Viewer’s Guide to ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race.’” . 3 Oct. 2019.

1 Gaultier, to Shae Coulee, Miss Vanjie, and Mayhem Miller starring in pop music videos for major artists like Iggy Azalea.2

Drag Race as a television program has become a social phenomenon in itself. Beginning on the LGBT channel LogoTV, it became the most-watched show in the history of the network.

It eventually moved to VH1 and grew significantly from there. The ninth season averaged a total of nearly 1.2 million viewers per episode, more than double that of Season 8. RuPaul Charles won the Emmy for best host of a reality show in 2016 and 2017, and Time magazine recently named him as one of its 100 Most Influential People of the year 2018.3 Drag Race marks the first time that interactions among groups of drag queens have been documented to such a degree. Not even the 1991 documentary Paris is Burning – a pivotal work of gay cinema that showed the world the formerly underground world of black and Latinx ball culture in late 1980s New York

City – came close to Drag Race’s popularity and scope. Needless to say, Drag Race has grown into a worldwide phenomenon and drag as an art form and culture can no longer be ignored as a fringe underground movement.

The show usually features around a dozen queens each season, with each episode ending in a “lip sync for your life” where the two queens who were judged to have performed most poorly compete in a lip sync battle. RuPaul tells the queen who she judges as having lost the lip sync to “shantay away” and they are eliminated from the competition. The challenges run the gamut of what a might be expected to do, from clothing design and construction, joke writing and stand-up performance, script-writing and acting, and even songwriting and singing.

2 Are, Carolina. “How ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Changed the Way we Speak.” Quartzy. 2 Oct. 2019. 3 Wortham, Jenna. “Is ‘Rupaul’s Drag Race’ the Most Radical Show on TV?” The New York Times. 24 Jan. 2018.

2 Aside from one of these “main challenges,” each episode also includes a runway segment where a queen walks the mainstage to show off her, sometimes handmade, look. The queens are judged based on their performance in the main challenge and on the runway. This format had proven quite successful as it has remained the same throughout numerous seasons and the show continues to grow in popularity.

RuPaul is arguably the most successful queens of his era. Born to a poor family in 1960 in San Diego, RuPaul eventually moved with his sister to Atlanta in 1976. It was here that

RuPaul saw his first drag performance and he was immediately hooked. He began perfecting his drag aesthetic and started bands and made music videos. When he moved to Manhattan in the late 1980s, drag had become a New York cultural phenomenon. He was a fixture at downtown clubs as a dancer and eventually released the album “Supermodel of the World,” featuring the song “Supermodel (You Better Work).” The song was a hit; designers like Todd Oldham and

Isaac Mizrahi used it in their runway presentations during fashion week and it was nominated at the MTV Video Music Awards for best dance video. RuPaul was offered a regular modeling contract with MAC Cosmetics.4 Eventually, he would pitch Drag Race and take his success to new heights.

Even as Drag Race grows more and more commercially viable, many members of mainstream heterosexual society still ask: what is drag and what does it mean to be part of the drag community? Is it different from being ? In his essay, “The Aesthetic of Drag,”

Daniel Harris notes that “verisimilitude has never been the guiding aesthetic principle at work when dress up as bearded nuns on roller skates, topless baton twirlers with rhinestone

4 Ibid.

3 pasties, or whorish prom queens in fuck-me pumps and bee-hive hair-dos.”5 In short, drag is not about “” as one gender or another, but is its own form of expression. Harris describes one form of drag: “The aesthetic of drag has evolved according to an entirely different set of historical and political factors which have increasingly distorted its relation to women’s clothing, thus contributing to its high degree of stylization.” This is one form of drag where stereotypes of femininity and drag are knowingly exaggerated. Also, it is important to note that Harris’ 1995 essay is somewhat outdated; drag is not an art exclusive to gay men, as he implies, but is open to people of all gender or sexual identities. Drag is a difficult concept to define since just as there are drag queens who distort and poke fun at traditional ideas of femininity with skyscraper stilettos and mountainous breasts, there are drag queens who pride themselves in looking “fishy,” or like “real” women. Some queens may experiment with different forms of drag at different times. There are also drag kings who play with masculinity in ways similar to how drag queens interpret femininity, however, they have received less media and scholarly attention.

Like drag, “transgender” is another term that is difficult to define. Tre Wentling, et al, in the journal Teaching Sociology, make the important observation that “any discussion that attempts to define the terms beneath the transgender umbrella should first offer the caveat that putting labels on and creating boundaries is a politicized practice that can be a difficult, awkward, and exclusionary process.”6 While labels can be potentially harmful, discussing transgender terminology is also reifying and can be helpful to understanding the diversity of gender identities people may identify with. The main difference between being transgender and doing drag is that being transgender is unrelated to putting on an outfit. Debunking transgender

5 Harris, Daniel. “The Aesthetic of Drag.” Salmagundi, no. 108, 1995, p. 62. 6 Wentling, Tre, et al. “Teaching Transgender.” Teaching Sociology, vol. 36, no. 1, 2008, p. 50- 51.

4 myths for Vox, German Lopez notes that, “being trans isn’t a matter of dressing up in different clothes. It’s a permanent identity that follows people throughout their entire lives.” While drag queens and kings sometimes identify as transgender, doing drag and being transgender are very different. “For many trans people, picking out gender-affirming clothes is only one small part of the social transition — the act of as trans to family, friends, and society as a whole.

The other steps — from medical procedures to dealing with how society as a whole reacts — often play a much bigger role in a trans person’s life.”7 A transgender person experiences challenges not faced by cisgender people, mostly due to the fact that society is uneducated about and/or unwilling to accept people who identify outside the traditional gender binary. Being a cross-dresser or a drag queen or king does not mean identifying with a gender different from the one assigned to them at birth. “Some drag queens or kings may even be straight and cisgender — meaning they identify with the gender assigned to them at birth — and are only dressing up for entertainment. What cross-dressing means can vary a lot from individual to individual.”8 In short, while some drag kings or queens may identify as transgender, the two terms are in no way synonymous with one another.

RuPaul has faced controversy for the use of what some have perceived as anti-trans rhetoric. For instance, a recurring feature of the show where RuPaul appears on screen with a message for the queens used to be called “She-Mail,” inspired by “TyraMail” from America’s

Next Top Model. Many people, including members of the transgender community, called for an end to the use of the offensive word “” on the show. For RuPaul, “the controversy represented the antithesis of drag, which he sees as a subversive, countercultural reminder not to

7 Lopez, German. “Transgender People: 10 Common Myths.” Vox. 14 Nov. 2018. 8 Ibid.

5 take the world so seriously. But for members of the trans community, language isn’t a magic trick.” , who competed on the third season of Drag Race and came out as transgender after her season aired, wrote on Facebook that “‘shemale’ is an incredibly offensive word, and this whole business about if you can tell whether a woman is biological or not is getting kind of old.”9 The show eventually dropped the term “shemale,” but RuPaul has continued to be criticized by others, including former contestants, for his reluctance to allow transgender contestants on the show.10

Just as the terms drag, drag queen, and drag king are all difficult to define concisely, the concept of “drag language” is also multi-faceted and diverse. While a great deal of slang popular in America today, things like “realness,” “shade,” and “yas, queen,” can be traced back to drag, drag queens also appropriate from other minority cultures. Journalist Jenna Wortham notes,

“Much of the queens’ vernacular, body language and movements come from the drag world’s — especially white queens’ — interpretation of black femininity.” Thus, much of what drag queens say comes from a variety of cultures and sources. One such important source of drag language is the ball culture of 1980s . The ballroom was a place where and trans people of color could express themselves and find community. Competitors walk the runway competing in a variety of categories. Terms like “realness” that entered the mainstream through Drag Race started in the ballroom. Lasseindra Ninja, Mother of the Paris Chapter of the House of Ninja, explains some categories tied to “realness,” “You have butch queen up in drag realness,

9 Wortham, Jenna. “Is ‘Rupaul’s Drag Race’ the Most Radical Show on TV?” The New York Times. 24 Jan. 2018. 10 Framke, Caroline. “How RuPaul’s Comments on Trans Women Led to a Drag Race Revolt — and a Rare Apology.” Vox, 07 March, 2018. .

6 queen realness, school boy realness, thug realness, executive realness . . . Realness categories are about building confidence to the people who are walking this category. It’s the identity of ballroom. It’s also fun, playing.”11 Nowadays, “serving up” such and such “realness” can be frequently heard on Drag Race. For the purposes of this thesis, however, drag language will not be limited to specialized slang such as “realness” but will extend to include all the ways drag queens communicate with one another. “Camp,” “sisterhood,” “reading,” and pop culture are all aspects of drag culture that influence the language queens communicate with. Subsequent chapters will discuss how each of these factors affect drag language and why they are so important to analyzing a translation of such language.

11 Moore, Madison. “'To Be Able to Blend:' Does 'Realness' Still Belong in Ballroom?” Out. 07 April, 2017.

7 ii. Research Purpose

As drag grows in influence and relevance, the language of drag also grows in ubiquity and familiarity. The language of drag, especially in the American gay community, and particularly that which can be heard on Drag Race, has become a means by which some gay people establish an identity and build or strengthen community. It has even begun to bleed over into the mainstream, a phenomenon that can be attributed to Drag Race and its growing popularity. Take, for instance, the affirmational exclamation “yas,” used in expressions like “yas, queen,” that have exploded in popularity on the Internet as well as in mainstream slang. Lexi

Pandell, in an article for Wired, notes that the “[the use of ‘yas’] actually began with drag balls that date as far back as the 1890s.”12 The use of the term can be traced back so many years and yet it is not until now, coinciding with the explosion of Drag Race’s popularity, that the word has finally entered the mainstream lexicon.

Of course, other aspects of drag culture have been slowly appropriated by the mainstream since before Drag Race, as Pandell points out: “Drag’s position in pop culture changed in the

1990s. Vogueing—the stylized dance based on fashion shows and magazine poses—was the first trend to get snatched.”13 As drag language grows in popularity and spreads to the mainstream, how it is translated becomes increasingly important. In an analysis of how vogueing went from underground to mainstream, Constantine Chatzipapatheodoridis writes that, “by being popularized, initially with ’s extensively promoted music video of ‘Vogue’ (1990) and even with Livingston’s documentary [Paris is Burning], voguing and the ballroom lifestyle

12 Pandell, Lexi. “How Rupaul’s Drag Race Fueled Pop Culture’s Dominant Slang Engine.” Wired. March 22, 2018. 13 Ibid.

8 became epitomical for queer groups not only in America, but also internationally.”14 Thanks to

Madonna’s hugely popular song Vogue and Livingston’s documentary Paris is Burning, vogueing and ballroom culture have both been cemented as intrinsic parts of gay culture. Drag

Race is playing a similar role for today’s gay culture in the United States and abroad as subtitled streaming sites such as Netflix allow people all over the world to easily consume season upon season.

After all, Drag Race and its language, like much of American pop culture, are exported throughout the world. Drag, and queer culture in general, are connected in a fundamental way to pop culture. The concept of queerness, however, differs greatly across the globe. Queer theorist

Keith Harvey asks, “Is the definition of [gay of] universal validity or is it culturally- (and historically-) specific?”15 While American pop culture has become a commodity consumed globally, how much of it is translated and how much is left behind?

In this thesis, I hope to examine the ways that drag language functions in Drag Race, how it is important to identity formation and community-building, and finally, analyze how it is translated into Chinese. Through an examination of the Chinese subtitles of Drag Race as available on Netflix, I will argue how the subtitles often fail to capture the nuances of drag language, to the point where its distinctive functions, as community-building tool or cultural marker, are completely lost. I will also compare the Netflix subtitles to those written by the mainland Chinese Xiaomada Subtitle Group, as they are usually quite a bit more successful in their translation. As opposed to Netflix which is subtitled in traditional characters and is intended

14 Chatzipapatheodoridis, Constantine. “Strike a Pose, Forever: The Legacy of Vogue and its Re- contextualization in Contemporary Camp Performances,” European Journal of American Studies: 11-3, 2017. 15 Harvey, Keith. “Gay Community, Gay Identity and the Translated Text.” TTR: Traduction, Terminologie, Rédaction. Etudes sur le Texte et Ses Transformations, 2000, 13(1), p. 141.

9 for a Taiwanese audience, Xiaomada creates subtitles with simplified characters exclusively for

Drag Race for a mainland Chinese audience to watch on illegal streaming sites. However,

Xiaomada consistently shows a higher quality of translation as compared to Netflix which often fails completely to capture the sentiment and emotion behind the queens’ vernacular and particular communication styles, especially when humor is involved.

As for the fansubbing aspect of the subtitling group Xiaomada, Dingkun Wang from

Shanghai’s Jiao Tong University explains in his paper, “Fansubbing in China – With Reference to the Fansubbing Group YYeTs” that fansubbing is “’translation for fans by fans’ (Díaz Cintas and Sanchez 2006), in which fans ‘digitise, translate, add subtitles to and make available online unauthorised copies of TV series and films’ (Condry 2010: 194). Fansubbers, as self-motivated viewers seeking the experience of an ‘authentic text’ (Cubbison 2005), utilise their professional expertise and language skills to enhance audiovisual accessibility.” He goes on to explain that communities of fansubbers come together to help target audiences transgress Chinese governmental censorship to interact with international cultures.16 In this case, the fansub group,

Xiaomada, exists to provide the Chinese public access to Drag Race, a show that would otherwise be censored due to Chinese LGBTQ censorship laws. Fansubbing services like

Xiaomada are critical to self-identification among gay people in China as they extend “the public spaces available to gay people and [promote] the online visibility of homosexuality within mainstream society.”17 Taiwanese audiences have access to legal streaming services such as

Netflix, but mainland Chinese audiences must turn to illegal streaming sites and fansubbing

16 Wang, Dingkun. “Fansubbing in China – With Reference to the Fansubbing Group YYeTs,” The Journal of Specialized Translation, Issue 28, July 2017. 17 Cao, Jin and Lu, Xinlei. “A Preliminary Exploration of the Gay Movement in Mainland China: Legacy, Transition, Opportunity, and the New Media.” Signs, Vol. 39, No. 4, Summer 2014, p.844.

10 groups to consume forbidden content such as Drag Race. However, fansubbing groups such as

Xiaomada help foster a sense of gay community in China by cementing the presence of gay culture on the Internet. Although a fansubbing group, the Xiaomada subtitles are certainly not of a lesser quality, even though the language of Drag Race can be very difficult to translate.

There are a number of reasons why the language of American drag is so difficult to capture in another language, and I will argue that some aspects of it are impossible to render completely accurately without any sort of sacrifice on the basis of meaning or function, especially into a language as different from English as Chinese. As the Xiaomada subtitles show, however, meaning can be sacrificed for comprehension or function. For instance, if a queen

“reads,” or criticizes, another queen using culturally-specific or language-specific terms, then the specifics of the utterance can be forgone in favor of a creative Chinese equivalent that translates the essence rather than the specific reference that may seem arbitrary to a Chinese-speaking audience. Moreover, the fact that drag language and camp in general are so difficult to translate without a certain amount of creativity is a testament to the insulated nature of the language itself.

Drag language cannot be easily translated as it evolved to exist within one group and to promote group unity by excluding those from without the group.

11 iii. Research Questions

I will begin with a look at the connection between drag and camp. As drag is inherently connected to the camp aesthetic, so too is drag language. This connection lies at the heart of my first question: what is camp, how is it embodied in drag culture, and what are the problems encountered when attempting to translate it? As Susan Sontag reflects in her 1964 essay “Notes on Camp,” camp is a sensibility:

A sensibility (as distinct from an idea) is one of the hardest things to talk about; but there

are special reasons why Camp, in particular, has never been discussed. It is not a natural

mode of sensibility, if there be any such. Indeed, the essence of Camp is its love of the

unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration. And Camp is esoteric -- something of a private

code, a badge of identity even, among small urban cliques.18

Camp is the aesthetic basis of much of drag and queer culture. Camp does not take society at face value; it is deconstructionist in its tenacity to break it down and see it in its true artifice. Drag, a part of the camp aesthetic, sees past the pretense of socially created gender roles and plays with perceptions of gender to realize a more complete human experience. As it is

“esoteric,” to use Sontag’s term, it is not readily accessed by outsiders, and thus often proves difficult for a translator to recognize and translate.

Susan Sontag’s hallmark essay, “Notes on ‘Camp’” is fundamental to a modern understanding of what camp means. As Sontag states, camp is a sensibility, not an idea, and as such is as difficult to define as it is to analyze. Also, as her notes were published in 1964, many of the examples she gives of camp, such as “old Flash Gordon comics” and “Scopitone films” are now essentially cultural relics, but the sensibility she defines is still just as relevant today as it

18 Sontag, Susan. "Notes on 'Camp.'" Partisan Review. 31 (4).

12 was then. Since drag is heavily influenced by the sensibility of camp, it is still a valuable tool in the analysis of the language of drag.

Although pop culture has changed since the 1960s, the ideas Sontag put forward are still useful when viewing a contemporary queer culture. For instance, in her first “note” on camp,

Sontag begins generally: “Camp is a certain mode of aestheticism. It is one way of seeing the world as an aesthetic phenomenon. That way, the way of Camp, is not in terms of beauty, but in terms of the degree of artifice, of stylization.”19 This idea of artifice appears in five of Sontag’s notes. It is an extremely important concept to the art of drag because drag is a means of exposing the artifice inherent and often unnoticed in mainstream normalized society. Through clothing and other superficial and abstract means, people are able to construct an identity that is perceived by society as real rather than conceptual. Drag queens are also creating an identity through such means, but one that is more self-aware or critical of the constructed social context that such sub- cultures are forced to live within.

Another explanation Sontag offers of camp is as “a mode of seduction -- one which employs flamboyant mannerisms susceptible of a double interpretation; gestures full of duplicity, with a witty meaning for cognoscenti and another, more impersonal, for outsiders.”20 This idea of a “double interpretation,” one for insiders and one for outsiders, is also very important to our study of language used on Drag Race. Drag Race, is, after all, a program that is heavily edited to appeal to a wide audience. However, as this audience continues to grow, so do the amount of people who are “in the know” when it comes to esoteric drag speak. Not only does there exist now an imposed duality in the gay community in terms of people who do drag and

19 Sontag, Susan. "Notes on 'Camp.'" Partisan Review. 31 (4). 20 Ibid.

13 everyone else, but Drag Race itself has a culture full of inside jokes and important events that one can only know from watching the show. Thus, as drag and Drag Race become more mainstream, the definition of who is an outsider and who is not becomes blurred. Later on, I will examine how camp is embodied on Drag Race and the effect that drag culture’s movement to the mainstream has had on it.

Translators of various backgrounds may struggle when presented with queer language as the experiences of people in the queer community, in a fundamental way, are different than that of other communities. Like other marginalized groups, gay people are often threatened by members of mainstream society. However, gay people are unique in that they are usually born into heterosexual society and in some cases are more or less able to blend in. Chi Luu introduces the historical beginnings of camp talk in her article “The Unspeakable Linguistics of Camp:” there once existed an oppressed tribe of people,

“whose very existence was seen as so taboo . . . they had to invent their own language to

talk with each other, hidden in plain sight. This emerging secret code was not only how

they could find each other and show they belonged to the same subculture. It was also a

very necessary cloak of protection against public discovery from people who were

outside the group.”21

“Hidden in plain sight,” gay people invented a method of communication that served two purposes, subtle enough to keep them safe from being discovered, but distinct enough to create a community. Luu goes on to describe “” (or Parlary/Parlarie, from the Italian “to talk,”) a

21 Luu, Chi. “The Unspeakable Linguistics of Camp.” JSTOR Daily. 6 June 2018. .

14 language that can be traced back to at least the 19th century. The dialect was cobbled together from various linguistic sources by people in Britain to form a language that became mostly associated with gay men. Polari was crucial to the gay men (and some women) who used it to communicate while remaining undiscovered by the outside community. In fact, Luu observes that it is possible that the term “camp” itself came from Polari, perhaps from the Italian campare which means making something, such as art, stand out. It also has the meaning of to live or to survive, an issue that is an everyday reality for many members of the queer community. Luu notes that camp comes from the queer community, implying that it may have been born in part from Polari:

“you have a socially stigmatized subculture in hiding, at risk of public exposure and

abuse and, on the other, that same community’s fervent desire for theatrical, socially

confronting gender-bending self-expression. This is all bound together by a colorfully

snarky linguistic code that enabled secrecy but also a purely linguistic playfulness and

sharp wit, for example in rhyming words like ‘kiki,’ ‘peer queer,’ and ‘.’”22

As such, the linguistic nature of Polari as teasing yet subversive may have played a role in the creation of the camp aesthetic itself which also emphasizes subversion and playful banter.

Although the Polari language is now obsolete, many terms made their way into the mainstream vernacular; in the same way, drag language from Drag Race has journeyed into today’s mainstream lexicon.

Translating camp, then, is a challenge because of its nature as a “private code.” Also, camp can be found not only when certain code language is uttered, but also in a speaker’s tone or speaking style. These factors can make it difficult to pinpoint occurrences of camp. In

22 Ibid.

15 “Translating Camp Talk: Gay Identities and Cultural Transfer,” Keith Harvey notes that in order to translate camp accurately, one must be aware of its “evaluation,” that is, what function it is serving. He separates these functions into distinct micro and macro dimensions. The micro function is usually easier to grasp: it is, namely, how the character or speaker is using that specific style of speaking to accomplish some immediate goal. The macro function, however, is where the challenge lies for the translator. The macro involves circumstances beyond the immediate story or context, such as culture and society. Harvey writes that while the macro function might be apparent to a translator, “recognition of the macro-functional dimension of camp will depend on a cluster of factors that go beyond close attention to the source text and involve cultural and even autobiographical issues for the translator.”23 That is, a number of factors, including the identity of the translator themselves, can be crucial for a translator attempting a successful translation of camp talk. In my research, I hope to use this analysis of camp to look at the problems one might face when presented with the challenging task of translating the camp talk prominent in Drag Race.

One of these problems is also one of the most important macro functions present in Drag

Race, that is, how the show is organized at its core to foster community. This leads me to my next question: if all these features of language are on some level functioning to strengthen community, then are they translated in a way that successfully conveys this information? In other words, is the theme of sisterhood transmitted across languages? In order to evaluate whether or not the Chinese subtitles are successful, one must first understand the macro functions of the culture and language of Drag Race. The very format of Drag Race emphasizes its community-

23 Harvey, Keith. “Translating Camp Talk: Gay Identities and Cultural Transfer.” The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Lawrence Venuti. New York: Routledge, 2000, 344-345.

16 building and identity-forming nature. In his paper “Speaking Like a Queen in RuPaul’s Drag

Race: Towards a Speech Code of American Drag Queens,” Nathaniel Simmons cites anthropologist R. Hogan as stating that survival is promoted by the quality of the group, not by the success or accomplishments of individuals.24 Not only is the ultimate goal of the show (to become “America’s Next Drag Superstar” and take home $100,000) shared among the contestants, but many of the challenges are team challenges where teams are judged as a whole and individuals are judged by their ability to work in a group. Simmons goes on to write that the show “features individuals who, although competing, are working towards a common goal and maintain a sense of shared identity as illustrated throughout the show by comments such as ‘we are sisters’ or ‘this is like a drag sorority.’”25 The fact that the contestants remain friends well after the show ends, often working and traveling together, is a testament to the bonding power of the shared identity as experienced on the show. For instance, season 7 contestants and Katya Zamolodchikova co-host an incredibly successful web series and were even given their own talk show on Viceland.26 The pair have also written a book together, entitled Trixie and

Katya’s Guide to Womanhood. And it is not only contestants who benefit from Drag Race community building; by watching Drag Race, viewers also bond over their shared experience of the show. Drag Race has become a common topic for many in the gay community, bridging socioeconomic and other divides to bring the community together.

24 Simmons, Nathaniel. “Speaking Like a Queen in RuPaul’s Drag Race: Towards a Speech Code of American Drag Queens.” Sexuality & Culture, Volume 18, 2014, 632. 25 Ibid, 633. 26 Sim, Bernardo. “RuPaul’s Drag Race: 11 Queens With the Most Successful Careers After the Show.” ScreenRant. 08 June, 2019. .

17 Once the macro-functions of establishing community and history is clear, then an analysis of some of the key aspects of drag language is necessary. One such important aspect is known as “reading.” My third question asks: how is reading used to convey the idea of sisterhood and how successfully are these ideas translated? Although reading is an important part of the fabric or “universe of discourse” that connects drag queens to drag/queer culture, the fact that it serves this role can seem counterintuitive. A term widely associated with Paris is Burning, the landmark 1990 documentary chronicling the ball culture of New York City at the time,

“reading” is the act of insulting, usually in a clever or humorous way, another person’s physical appearance or other characteristics. While it might seem like reading would cause discord in the community, it usually serves the exact opposite role. Harvey refers to reading as “ambivalent solidarity.” He writes that it is “in fact part of an elaborate game used to hone the tools of queer verbal self-defence and to reassert, albeit paradoxically, a communal belonging.”27 Reading perhaps stems from a need for the highly marginalized gay community to “hone” its ability to defend itself against the outside world, but it has also become a means by which the community strengthens itself internally. As long as reading is not considered excessively cruel, it is not usually taken seriously and is instead considered a positive display of wit and sisterhood. The word “reading” is in itself an example of how language creates community. To an outsider,

“reading” in this context is incomprehensible as in most contexts it means something else entirely. Communities can use specialized terms that are incomprehensible to outsiders to create a stronger sense of belonging within the group.

27 Harvey, Keith. “Translating Camp Talk: Gay Identities and Cultural Transfer.” The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Lawrence Venuti. New York: Routledge, 2000, 350.

18 Many examples of reading can be found in the “Library is Open” challenges, inspired by

Paris is Burning, on almost every season of Drag Race. During the challenge, the contestants take turns reading one another while the queen judged to have given the best reads wins. Like every community, drag has its own customs and traditions. The reading challenge is itself an important tradition featured on Drag Race. If viewed through a Durkheimian lens, the challenge is the Drag Race community’s version of every society’s need for a sense of continuity with the past. With constant references to Paris is Burning, which is seen as a sort of sacred text for drag, as well as references to the past reading challenges that occur on every season, the reading challenge serves as a tradition or ritual that binds the community together. Barbara A. Misztal notes that, “At the core of the Durkheimian tradition, thus, is the insistence on the importance of a sense of collective identity, seen as being reinforced through links to the past.”28 The collective drag identity is reinforced during Drag Race through links to Paris is Burning as well as reading challenges from previous seasons. Misztal writes that, according to Durkheim, “the degree of group solidarity, created through remembering together, depends on the mythical properties of the group’s memories, especially their ability to vitalize energy and arouse emotions.”29 Before every reading challenge, RuPaul leads the contestants in a call and repeat when she asks, “in the great tradition of Paris is Burning, reading is what?” and the contestants cheer “fundamental!”

This is a direct invocation of Paris is Burning and has become something of a rousing cheer that any Drag Race competitor, or fan, would be expected to know. RuPaul acknowledges that this aspect of Drag Race is taken directly from Paris is Burning and uses this history to create a vein of continuity that runs throughout each season of the show.

28 Misztal, Barbara A. “Durkheim on Collective Memory.” Journal of Classical Sociology, Volume 3 (2), 2003, p. 124. 29 Ibid, p. 125.

19 There are plenty of examples of reading in every one of the many seasons of the show to analyze, and many interesting translations as seen in the subtitles. An analysis of some of these examples of reading, as well as of the Chinese subtitles as provided by Netflix, is revealing of the ways that reading functions within a group dynamic and how the meaning is conveyed, or lost, in Chinese. As the Netflix subtitles are often exceptionally misguided and sometimes completely inaccurate, examples of more efficacious translations by Xiaomada Subtitle Group provide an interesting contrast to the at times arbitrary translations offered by Netflix. The reason for the poor quality of translation by Netflix seems to be based on the translators’ lack of understanding of drag language and culture. Subsequent chapters will elaborate on why it is critical that translators have a background in the subject of drag in order to successfully convey the nuances of drag talk to another language.

While reading in and of itself can be difficult to translate, but when cultural references are added, it can prove even more of a challenge. As my fourth and final question, I consider: what role does pop culture serve in queer culture and is it possible to translate culturally specific pop references to other languages? Pop culture references are an important part of drag culture and language that are problematic when attempting to translate across language and culture. Take the following as an example. In season 8 of Drag Race, the contestant offers a read that is intrinsically tied to American pop culture. She reads fellow contestant :

Thorgy: Simple—I mean Derrick—I mean Britney. You know, you are pretty attractive. I'd hit that baby one more time. 智障，我是說德瑞克，我是說布蘭妮，妳很迷人，我可以再勾搭她一次。 (Idiot, I mean Derrick, I mean Britney, you’re very charming, I would get with her one more time.)

This read is a fairly multi-faceted one. Thorgy pokes fun at a number of things Derrick has been criticized for over the course of the season, namely that she is “simple” and that the

20 only drag she is capable of is her Britney Spears impersonation. She adds a remark that she thinks Derrick is attractive to soften the blow of the previous insults, with a reference to Britney

Spears’ song “…Baby One More Time.”

Britney Spears is an icon in the American gay community, and a familiarity with such icons is an important part of being a drag queen. Thorgy’s reference to her music triggers a shared sentiment of belonging and community, a sense that this is a joke specifically made for the drag or gay community. As it is so closely tied to American pop culture, though, the read from start to finish would serve as a challenge for a translator, seeing as they would not only need to pick up on the Britney Spears reference, but also translate it in a way that would trigger the target audience to think of the same reference. Netflix offers the following translation, 「智

障，我是說德瑞克，我是說布蘭妮，妳很迷人，我可以再勾搭她一次。」 (Idiot, I mean

Derrick, I mean Britney, you’re very charming, I would get with her one more time.) The

Chinese is confusing, especially with the subject switch from 妳(you) to 她 (her) in the last clause. Without a note, however, this reference probably cannot be translated smoothly. Since

American drag culture is tied to closely to American pop culture, though, it is important that these references be translated, or at least something else added in their place.

The following chapters will elaborate on the aforementioned themes, including camp, sisterhood, cultural references, and reading. Using a sociological lens, I will look at the cultural and social importance of these different aspects of drag language and analyze how successfully these ideas are transferred across languages.

21 Chapter II

Literature Review and Methodology

Scholarly research on the topic of drag language, especially as it relates to the field of translation, is quite limited. Professor Carl Schotmiller provides a summary of all scholarship written in English, as of 2018, that focuses specifically on Drag Race and concludes that it

“includes 52 total works: 2 published anthologies on RuPaul’s Drag Race (that contain a combined total of 28 chapters), 4 chapters on Drag Race featured in non-Drag Race specific anthologies, 15 articles, 4 Theses, and 1 dissertation.” He also notes that Drag Race scholarship focuses mostly on four areas,

One area provides in-depth analyses of the reality television show episodes in terms of

intertextual referencing. A second area studies the show primarily through linguistic

analysis, in order to understand how contestants use language to construct shared

identities and/or to challenge dominant norms. A third area investigates Drag Race’s

relationship to larger systems of consumerism, neoliberalism, and capitalism. By far the

largest area of study investigates the show in terms of issues of representation—a focus

that makes complete sense given how the series showcases the lives and cultures of gay,

queer, and trans people, whose perspectives and experiences are often not featured on

mainstream television.30

An example of a piece of scholarship that Schotmiller would classify as part of the second area, linguistic analysis, is Matthew Goldmark’s “National Drag: The Language of

30 Schottmiller, Carl. “A Drag Primer: Situating RuPaul’s Drag Race Within Academic Drag Studies.” PCA Conference, 29 March, 2018, Indianapolis, Indiana.

22 Inclusion in RuPaul’s Drag Race.” In this paper, Goldmark shows how within the gay community as represented on Drag Race, members of different economic, racial, and geopolitical groups all face unique struggles that their white and/or affluent counterparts may not. He suggests that the unequal language of inclusion used on Drag Race serves as a clue to this inequality. He analyzes, for example, the use of the drag term “work,” or “put in the effort required” in phrases such as “you better work:” “The language of Drag Race points to ambivalence at the heart of the program’s official ideology; for instance, to “work” in drag parlance is also an appraisal of attitude, success, and power that may not translate into financial capital. Such words weave alternative histories of queer community into the competition and illuminate the unequal promises of gay integration.” He goes on to claim that this use of language in Drag Race traces a troubled history of social inequality within the gay community.

He takes two contestants from the first season of Drag Race, BeBe Zahara Benet and Nina

Flowers, the former Cameroonian and the latter Puerto Rican, as evidence that Drag Race claims

“a fantasy of an inclusive United States that puts up no barriers to those willing to work for their place in the nation” but never actually acknowledges the relationship linking language and cultural capital, nor does it acknowledge the colonial contours associated with Puerto Rican citizenship. He shows how English proficiency is an unstated requirement for success on the show and that the language of Drag Race thus illustrates how unequal access to cultural, economic, and linguistic capital is an issue that hinders Drag Race’s professed tale of gay integration and social mobility. 31

31 Goldmark, Matthew. “National Drag: The Language of Inclusion in RuPaul’s Drag Race.” GLQ: A Journal of and Gay Studies. Duke University Press, 2015.

23 One scholar who has focused specifically on the language used on Drag Race is

Nathaniel Simmons. Simmons uses “Speech Codes Theory” (SCT) as a theoretical framework in his paper “Speaking Like a Queen in RuPaul’s Drag Race: Towards a Speech Code of American

Drag Queens” to examine what it means to “speak like a drag queen.” Simmons notes that SCT is based on six propositions,

“(a) within any distinct culture, distinct speech codes exist; (b) multiple speech

codes are deployed within any speech community; (c) distinct cultural psychology,

sociology, and rhetoric are implied within speech codes; (d) speaking significance is

based off ways in which interlocutors create meanings of communicative acts; (e) the act

of speaking a speech code indicates the terms, rules, and premises of a speech code; (f)

intelligibility, prudence, and morality of communicative conduct may be predicted,

explained, or controlled by the artful uses of shared speech codes.”32

Simmons used this framework to discover that there is indeed a distinct speech code among drag queens and that it serves a number of purposes. While watching Season 4 of Drag

Race, Simmons noted each time a queen used a term he was unfamiliar with. After he accumulated a number of these terms, he went back and looked at the context that these drag- specific terms were used in. He identified a number of common themes that were important in conversation, some of those being to “be humble, resist negativity, don’t complain, and exude professionalism.” Simmons asserts that these are the qualities that a drag queen must convey in order to “uphold drag family values, thus fulfilling the code of love, respect, and dignity that comes with the performance of drag.”33 Simmons believes that by upholding these values, or

32 Simmons, Nathaniel. “Speaking Like a Queen in RuPaul’s Drag Race: Towards a Speech Code of American Drag Queens.” Sexuality & Culture, Volume 18, 2014, p. 634. 33 Ibid, p. 645.

24 “code of sisterhood,” queens can succeed within the world of drag. Not only are they able to fit in better with the group, but they also feel more confident in their own skills and appearance.

As for scholarship specifically focused on Drag Race and translation, Professor Iván

Villanueva Jordán of the Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas has conducted research on

Spanish subtitles of Drag Race. One such paper, entitled, “‘You better werk.’ Camp

Representations of RuPaul’s Drag Race in Spanish Subtitles,” analyzes microtextual features of camp and how these features have been translated into the Spanish subtitles as found on Netflix and produced by a Facebook group, “RuPaul’s Drag Race Venezuela.” Jordán counts the number of times that camp appears over the course of two episodes of Drag Race and breaks down why each use can be classified as camp. The following is his breakdown of the 590 instances of camp:

“Of these segments, 43% draw on feminization based on the use of different grammatical

categories, via gender declension or words related to femininity being used to refer to male

participants. 22% were ingenious discursive creations which, in principle, contained sexual

meanings or implications. On the other hand, word play made up for 7% of instances. The

use of semiotic elements, references to gay culture in particular, also made up 7%. The use of

interjections related to the drag community made up 6% of examples.”34

Notably, he found that the majority of camp usages were based either in gender subversion or sexual wordplay. He also analyzed these usages to see exactly how each example was translated into Spanish:

34 Jordán, Iván Alejandro Villanueva. “You Better Werk. Rasgos del Camp Talk en la subtitulación al Español de RuPaul’s Drag Race.” Meta, January 2015, p. 174.

25 “79% (466) of the Netflix subtitles maintained camp elements; as for RPDR Venezuela,

82% (483) of the subtitles maintained the camp talk . . . Literal translation was the most

common method for the Netflix subtitles, making up 62% of the translations. As for RPDR

Venezuela, this technique only accounted for 27%. In the version subtitled by fans, the most

frequent translation method was calque (31%) . . . as for Netflix, this technique accounted for

4% of translations.”3536

Judging on the numbers alone, it would appear that the fan sub group, RPDR Venezuela, was slightly more successful at maintaining instances of camp in the Spanish translation. More significantly, Netflix used a literal translation in 62% of cases, while RPDR Venezuela only used this technique in 27% of the cases. Compared to the Chinese subtitles offered by Netflix and the subtitles by the fan sub group Xiaomada, a similar trend can be observed where Netflix often employs a literal translation technique while Xiaomada uses a more creative method.

To continue tracing the history of scholarship in this field, scholarship related more generally to queerness is more abundant than specifically Drag Race research, as most studies of drag language in translation specifically are only recently coming into existence. Scholars in the field of translation have done valuable research that help paint a fuller picture of the relationship between translation, gender, and sexuality. For instance, Gideon Toury, pioneer of the descriptive school of translation studies, analyzed the ways in which early Hebrew translations of

Shakespeare’s sonnets were influenced by the translator’s social and religious background and context. In his book Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond, Toury writes that in an early

20th century translation of Shakespeare’s sonnets into Hebrew, translator Jacob Schwartz

35 Ibid, p. 175. 36 (Above quotations are my own translation from the original Spanish.)

26 translated all of Shakespeare’s Sonnets to a Young Man (nos.1-126) as addressing a beloved woman, rather than the titular young man. Toury writes, “feminizing the masculine sonnets was an observant Jew’s way of establishing a compromise between his admiration of Shakespeare and his sonnets, reflected in a strong desire – innovative in itself – to introduce them to the

Hebrew reader, and the demands of the rigid cultural model laid down by the receptor culture.”37

In other words, the receptor culture, observant Ashkenazi Jews, were perceived as unable to tolerate such allusion to same-sex love, and thus Schwartz changed the meaning of the source material to be acceptable to that culture at the time. Queerness in translation can thus be greatly affected by the level of acceptance and understanding in the receptor culture.

An important scholar in the field of translation and queer studies is Keith Harvey. He writes specifically about the translation of camp talk in his article “Translating Camp Talk: Gay

Identities and Cultural Transfer.” In the article, Harvey discusses how camp is associated with a range of homosexual identities in French and English fiction. He also points out how that while

“the formal aspects of camp might appear constant, the functions camp performs in its diverse contexts are far from uniform.”38 That is, as in drag talk, while there are certain defining characteristics of camp, it can serve multiple purposes within a community. He discusses a number of macro-functional dimensions of camp, recognition of which depends on factors such as homosexual identity and community in the target culture and the of the translator him or herself. Through focusing on the questions of gay identities, community, and writing in the source and target cultures, Harvey is able to link these “pressures” with the

37 Toury, Gideon. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1995, p. 116-118. 38 Harvey, Keith. “Translating Camp Talk: Gay Identities and Cultural Transfer.” The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Lawrence Venuti. New York: Routledge, 2000, p. 344.

27 translated textual product.39 As mentioned in the introduction, I will use Harvey’s analysis of

“ambivalent solidarity” in my discussion of how “reading” functions in Drag Race as a social tool.

Another of Harvey’s significant articles on this topic is “Gay Community, Gay Identity and the Translated Text.” In the article, Harvey argues that gay community and gay identity are inseparable from one another; in other words, defining each term individually is secondary to the discussion of how the two ideas work together. The conception of gay identity and community not only emerges from “textual encodings” but also fuels such encodings. As Harvey writes,

“‘gay writing’ is, perhaps above all else, a literary genre that explores the parameters of gay experience in order to validate an identity position and create an interactional space for the formulation of gay voices.”40 As in queer literature, so too do the language and concepts conveyed on Drag Race shape gay community and identity.

While there has been some research done on drag queens, the topic of drag kings has been largely underrepresented. While I will focus on drag queens, it is important to note that the art of drag is not exclusive to gay men. In fact, queerness in general has problematically been perceived as if gay men are somehow the gatekeepers of what it means to be queer in the first place. In a study entitled, “The Trouble with ‘Queerness’: Drag and the Making of Two

Cultures,” Katie R. Horowitz writes, “I wish to highlight the paradoxically heteronormative stance underwriting the presumption that and gay men (or bisexuals, asexuals, , etc.) should have anything in common culturally, politically, or otherwise. To put it more strongly, I wish to pursue the counterargument that there are many distinct, frictional, and

39 Ibid, p. 345. 40 Harvey, Keith. “Gay Community, Gay Identity and the Translated Text.” TTR: Traduction, Terminologie, Rédaction. Etudes sur le Texte et Ses Transformations, 2000, 13(1), p. 140.

28 even oppositional cultural practices that constitute the various identity categories subsumed under (and often eclipsed by) the queer banner.”41 Using the term queer to encapsulate a large spectrum of vastly different people is ultimately to surrender to heteronormative ideas and gender roles.

Horowitz goes on to describe her findings while researching the lives and performances of drag queens and drag kings. One of her insights was that drag shows, regardless of the performers’ perceived genders, are highly political acts: “I’d wager that watching and doing drag are tactics far better suited to the project of negotiating, claiming, and articulating an individual or collective queer identity than, say, campaigning for queerfriendly candidates and legislation.”42 In a world where the gay community has been built and is culturally thriving, drag functions to help cement these newfound identities by fighting for equal rights. Horowitz’s research is significant to this thesis because it is crucial to recognize that drag is not an art exclusive to gay men or transgender women, and that while queer theory is often conflated with the ideas and identities of gay men, it is a diverse topic. As RuPaul’s Drag Race has yet to feature a drag king, this thesis will focus on drag queens. However, drag, as well as queer theory in general, should not be limited to one specific group. As Horowitz explains “We might accept or even admire an argument that defines queerness as a product of certain phenomenal intra- actions involving gay men, knowing that it does not negate or supplant a definition issuing from lesbian-encompassing phenomena.”43 When I use the term “queer” or even “gay” here, while I

41 Horowitz, Katie R. “The Trouble with ‘Queerness’: Drag and the Making of Two Cultures.” Signs, vol. 38, no. 2, 2013, p. 304. 42 Ibid, p. 306. 43 Ibid, p. 324.

29 am referring to a definition queerness as it is relevant to drag queens, I hope that it does not exclude the possibility of other interpretations of queerness.

I have focused my research primarily on Season 11 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, as it is to date one of the newest seasons of Drag Race; although I have also included some useful examples from other seasons. As episodes of Season 11 were released weekly on the streaming website Netflix, the show is available to a large audience. I watched Season 11 and noted common themes in how the queens spoke and how the Chinese subtitles attempted a translation.

For many examples, I also use subtitles from a Chinese fansubbing group, Xiaomada (小馬達字

幕組), for comparison. Their translations are usually more vibrant and successful than those created by Netflix, but unfortunately only a few episodes using Xiaomada translations can be found online. For my examples, I will include the original English, the Chinese text from the subtitles, and a back-translation into English of the Chinese subtitles. My goal in doing so is not only to highlight the difficulties in faithfully translating English-speaking drag queens into

Chinese, but also to analyze cultural context to figure out where exactly the difficulties lie and if the subtitles might be improved.

Sylvia Jaki defines effective interlingual subtitles as: “(1) a semantically adequate rendering of the original dialogue, (2) synchronous appearance with the dialogue, (3) sufficient reading time for the recipient (cf. Díaz Cintas and Remael 2007: 9), (4) unobtrusiveness ‘because they make you feel you are understanding the original as your hear it’ (Morgan 2001: 164), and

(5) adherence to the author’s intentions ‘in a style as close as possible to the original’ (Morgan

2001:164).”44 For my research purposes, I will focus mainly on the first requirement, “a

44 Jaki, Sylvia. “Sie Haben Feuchte Nüsse – The Translation of Verbal Humour in German Subtitles of US American Sitcoms.” Crossing Languages to Play with Words: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, edited by Sebastian Knospe et al., 1st ed., De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston, 2016, p. 358

30 semantically adequate rendering of the original dialogue,” as I am mainly concerned with the translation of the English source language into the Chinese target language. However, the third and fourth requirements are applicable to certain translations when notes are used to explain specific cultural references as these notes could potentially be too long to be read by the viewer in their allotted time. For the most part, however, I will not focus on any visual or technical aspects of the subtitles other than the translated words themselves.

31 Chapter III

Discussion

i. Camp

Occurrences of camp are very difficult to pinpoint and even harder to define and analyze.

In its nebulousness as a concept, camp is challenging to grasp and very challenging to translate into another language and culture. However, Drag Race is an ideal place to look for examples of camp; drag queens are about as close to a physical embodiment of the camp sensibility as currently exists. Thus, through examples taken from Drag Race we can attempt to answer the initial research question: what is camp, how is it embodied in drag culture, and what are the problems encountered when attempting to translate it? Once an utterance is identified as camp, the Chinese translation can offer insight into how camp functions in its native language and the difficulties of translating it across language and culture.

Defining something as camp is a difficult task in itself. Of course, Sontag valiantly attempts a definition in her essay “Notes on Camp,” an invaluable resource for beginning to understand what camp is. However, camp is constantly changing; many years have passed since

Sontag wrote her essay. As Constance Grady writes in an article for Vox, “since Sontag wrote her notes in 1964, camp has gotten even more difficult to talk about. In 1964, camp was a curiosity, but in 2019, it’s one of the dominant sensibilities of the era. It’s everywhere, and its ubiquity seems to render it curiously invisible.” Camp has only grown more important and ubiquitous since Sontag’s landmark essay, but it is still as difficult, if not even more difficult, to define.

Grady goes on to attempt to explain camp with the example of the camp aesthetic developed by fashion giant Gucci, an aesthetic that seems obvious to perceive yet so hard to describe in words.

She writes, “Gucci’s aesthetic is one of flamboyance that reaches the edge of intentional

32 vulgarity. People outside of the fashion world may balk at it, but the point of Gucci isn’t to be pretty or flattering or in good taste. It’s to do the opposite, willfully, and make it fashion.” 45 In short, Gucci paradoxically designs clothes that do not appeal to traditional conceptions of fashion, and yet become the definition of what fashion is.

Grady’s explanation of Gucci’s contradictory camp is useful in clarifying how camp is an inseparable part of drag. Drag, more so than even camp, exists outside of the mainstream culture, and often has a goal of exposing the artifice of social constructions, such as gender, that lie at the heart of conventional society. This very concept of exposing artifice through extravagance and hyperbole is camp. As Grady noted, “intentional vulgarity” is a means by which camp is achieved since vulgarity by definition is something that disturbs the mainstream conscience.

Some vulgarity or shock--not pure vulgarity that serves no purpose--is necessary to create a camp aesthetic. Examples from Drag Race and their Chinese translations are helpful in understanding this aesthetic.

Take, for instance, Season 11 queen Plastique Tiara’s self-introduction and accompanying Chinese translation from Netflix:

Plastique Tiara: I like to describe my drag as the three P’s: polished, persistent, and pussy. 我的變裝風格可以用三個詞形容：閃耀，一致和陰柔。 (My drag style can be described with three words: glittering, consistent, and feminine.)

This statement is an example of camp as well as two of Nathaniel Simmons’ drag queen codes: “be fishy” and “be humble.” 46 Plastique is describing her positive qualities as a drag queen, namely that she is polished and persistent. In order to stay humble while adding a touch

45 Grady, Constance. “Camp, the theme of this year’s Met Gala, is almost impossible to define. Here’s our best effort.” Vox, 3 May 2019. . 46 Simmons, Nathaniel. “Speaking Like a Queen in RuPaul’s Drag Race: Towards a Speech Code of American Drag Queens.” Sexuality & Culture, Volume 18, 2014, p. 636-638.

33 of campy humor, she leaves “pussy” for last. With the use of this word, she emphasizes that she is “fishy,” which means she looks like a biological woman. In ending the statement with the word “pussy,” she creates a comic effect that disguises from the fact that she is bragging about what she excels at. As for her use of camp, it lies in the listing of words beginning with “P” and the word “pussy.” Plastique is sincerely listing her positive qualities but throws in a small wrench in the form of an expletive for added humor. It is also a word that typically is used in reference to a woman and is even campier when seen this way through the lens of gender- bending. As Sontag writes, “Camp is art that proposes itself seriously, but cannot be taken altogether seriously because it is ‘too much.’”47 Plastique herself laughs after this last utterance, letting the audience know that she is “in on the joke.”

Looking at the Chinese translation, there are a number of factors that might explain why it is so different from the original English. Of course, it would be difficult to translate the “three

P’s” into Chinese using a similar method of alliteration. However, there appears to be an issue of misunderstanding in terms of the first two P’s, polished and persistent. When a drag queen says she is polished, she is not referring to the shine of her jewels, but rather stating that she is a seasoned queen with a well-executed look. A term such as 精良 (excellent) is a closer fit. Also, as for the translation into 一致 (consistent) for “persistent,” perhaps this was a simple misunderstanding since the words sound quite similar in English.

Other problems aside, the main issue here lies in the translation of the word “pussy.”

There are a number of reasons why the translator may have chosen to use the term 陰柔

(feminine) instead of a more relevant or explicit term. First, profanity is less often used so casually on Chinese-language programs and in daily life in general. Drag queens sometimes use

47 Sontag, Susan. "Notes on 'Camp.'" Partisan Review. 31 (4).

34 profanities like “bitch” multiple times a sentence. It is possible that the subtitler felt that this specific use of a profane term did not sound natural in Chinese. It is also possible that the subtitler was burdened with the task of refraining from using obscenities, which is possible since the numerous usages of “bitch” are often translated as 女人 (women) or just ignored outright.

(Although a direct translation of “bitch,” 婊子, does make an appearance in the subtitles at some points.) The subtitler may also have felt that 陰柔 was the best translation of the idea that

Plastique was trying to convey with the word “pussy,” since she did mean to convey that she looks like a biological woman.

Regardless of the reason, it is clear that there are a number of obstacles to the translator attempting to convey camp in Chinese. One must first understand enough about drag and the speech patterns of queens to even just recognize the appearance of camp. A translator without any background in this field would be unlikely to perceive each and every occurrence of camp as it appears in the source language. To use Keith Harvey’s term, the “macro-functional dimensions of camp” are not readily apparent to the average person. Some of these macro-functional dimensions might be what Simmons described as part of his “drag queen codes,”48 that

Plastique’s words, whether consciously or unconsciously, serve to cement her position as a respected member in the drag queen community. As Harvey notes, “the sexual identity of the translator and his or her relation to a gay subcultural group, its identities, codes and political project”49 affect how readily the translator may see these macro-functional dimensions. If a

48 Simmons, Nathaniel. “Speaking Like a Queen in RuPaul’s Drag Race: Towards a Speech Code of American Drag Queens.” Sexuality & Culture, Volume 18, 2014, p. 636-638. 49 Harvey, Keith. “Translating Camp Talk: Gay Identities and Cultural Transfer.” The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Lawrence Venuti. New York: Routledge, 2000, p. 345

35 translator is completely removed from these communities, then they would have to commit to engage in enough research to begin to understand the language and the contexts it is used in.

Another Chinese translation of the same sentence by the mainland Chinese Xiaomada

Subtitle Group is helpful at looking at the effect of a translator’s identity on the translated text.

Xiaomada (小马达字幕组) only seems to exist on the Internet in the form of a Weibo page, but they have consistently quality translations of exclusively the Drag Race series into Chinese.

Their translations only appear on free video-streaming sites. Based on the content of their translations, it is clear that their translators are either part of a gay community or otherwise very educated about gay culture. When transcribing the Xiaomada subtitles, I will maintain the original simplified characters, but for Netflix I use traditional characters. The following is the translation Xiaomada offers for Plastique’s introduction:

Plastique Tiara: I like to describe my drag as the three P’s: polished, persistent, and pussy. 我喜欢将我的变装风格简称为 “3P,” 抛光精致、漂亮持久、批甜人美。 (I like to call my drag style 3P, polished and exquisite, pretty and enduring, and pussy-sweet beauty.)

This translation is markedly different from the one offered by Netflix. Here, it is very clear that the translator understands camp and recognizes how Plastique uses it. The first main difference is that the translator chooses to keep the “three P’s” idea but alters it slightly to “3P,” which is slang for a threesome in Chinese. Already, the target audience is aware that Plastique is not being serious but is taking on a camp affectation. Impressively, the translator also managed to create 3 phrases that do indeed begin with a “P” sound that even mostly retain the original

English meaning. The exception is that the original “persistent” is still not translated exactly, however it does not influence the rendering of camp affection since it adds a layer of humor in implying endurance in bed with the term 持久 (enduring.) Where this translation triumphs particularly over the Netflix one, apart from the notable feat of preserving the “three P’s” play on

36 words, is the translation of the word “pussy.” Whereas the sterile Netflix translation seems to shy away from the word, even outright ignoring it, the Xiaomada translation embraces it. It is funny, irreverent, and most importantly, campy. The translation is effective and even graceful in the way it successfully maintains almost all the important elements of the original utterance while sounding natural in Chinese. There are other examples where the Netflix translation is not quite up to par.

For example, arguably one of the campiest contestants of Season 11 is Silky Nutmeg

Ganache. Silky has an oversized personality and an exaggerated and witty sense of humor. At one point, RuPaul tells Silky that the other girls were complaining that she dominates every situation that she is in. The conversation, and Netflix translation, is as follows:

RuPaul: Well, they’re saying that you dominate all the conversations and they can’t get a word in edgewise, and you suck the air out of the room. 她們說你主導了每次的對話，她們一句話都插不上，妳也搶走了所有人 的風采。 (They say you dominate every conversation and they cannot get a word in edgewise, and that you keep them from being able to express themselves.)

Silky: (Feigns sucking on straw) I’m sorry I was given a big straw to suck. 抱歉，我就是天賦異稟。 (Sorry, I’m just naturally gifted.)

RuPaul: Tell me, how big is that straw? 有多天賦異稟？ (How gifted?)

Silky: (Slaps thighs) Real big, Ru. 跟大腿一樣粗。 (Thick like my thighs.)

There are many factors at play that make this conversation a difficult one to translate.

Double entendres and wordplay of course are hard to translate as they are usually specific to the source language; creativity is required if one wants to come up with an alternative in the target language that keeps the humorous or clever effect. Wordplay is notoriously difficult to translate

37 since it is usually so deeply embedded in the source language or culture that finding an equivalent in the target language can be difficult or even impossible without finding a very creative solution. In this example, Silky’s wordplay carries multiple possible meanings and, as such, is very difficult to translate.

Another of Sontag’s notes on camp is relevant to understanding Silky’s particular sensibilities. She writes “the Camp sensibility is one that is alive to a double sense in which some things can be taken. But this is not the familiar split-level construction of a literal meaning, on the one hand, and a symbolic meaning, on the other. It is the difference, rather, between the thing as meaning something, anything, and the thing as pure artifice.”50 I interpret this note as describing the fine line that camp treads, that is, in the area between meaning and nonsense.

While Silky’s comments mean “something, anything,” they also very nearly do not make sense and are almost in the territory of “pure artifice.”

Ostensibly, Silky’s statement that she was given a “big straw to suck” is referring to her big personality. It is easy and natural for her to dominate the conversation since her personality is built that way. However, any comment centered around the words “big” and “suck” is likely to be interpreted in a room full of drag queens in a sexual manner, and Silky is not unaware of this reality. With the addition of Silky’s “sucking” hand gesture, the comment is met with laughs from the other queens as well as hysterical laughter from RuPaul herself. In this context though, a sexual interpretation of the comment does not make sense since she is talking about her loud personality. It is unclear who has a “big straw” or why that is relevant. Silky approaches the realm of “pure artifice,” but it is still very funny because of how quickly she comes up with that response and the double entendre she adds to it.

50 Sontag, Susan. "Notes on 'Camp.'" Partisan Review. 31 (4).

38 Another layer of meaning is added when Ru asks how big the straw is and Silky slaps her thigh and states, “real big, Ru.” By gesturing to her body, Silky adds another element to the joke.

Her body often the butt of her jokes and Silky does not miss this chance to apply the word “big” to her thighs, resulting in more raucous laughter from RuPaul. The size of her body and the size of the straw from the beginning of the joke are not actually related and, based on literal meaning alone, does not make sense. However, the joke is still effective because she continuously adds new layers of meaning and, perhaps, relates the size of her body to the size of her personality, and thus, the size of the straw.

The main problem with the Chinese translation here is the failure to add some of the key words that express Silky’s campy sensibilities. The important words here are “big” and “suck.”

RuPaul sets up the joke when she talks about “sucking the air out of the room,” which is of course an idiom particular to English. The Chinese subtitles thus work better in terms of intelligibility than a direct translation would, but Chinese-speaking audiences might be confused as to why Silky makes a sucking gesture and why RuPaul erupts in laughter. At the very least, the translator should realize that a joke is being made and translate accordingly. Of course, it would be difficult or impossible to smoothly translate all the layers of Silky’s joke. In this case, it could be beneficial to add a note in addition to the subtitles explaining the nature of her joke.

Since camp humor depends so much on context and wordplay, it is sometimes necessary to add extra information in the form of a note if the entire message is to be communicated across languages.

The following is how Xiaomada translates the same scene:

RuPaul: Well, they’re saying that you dominate all the conversations and they can’t get a word in edgewise, and you suck the air out of the room. 她们说妳独占话语权，她们插不上嘴，还说你搞得大家喘不过气。

39 (They say you monopolize the power of discourse, that they can’t get a word in edgewise, and that you make it so nobody can breathe.)

Silky: (Feigns sucking on straw) I’m sorry I was given a big straw to suck. 抱歉哦，老娘的大棒噎你们喘不过气。 (Sorry that this old lady’s big stick is choking you all and you can’t breathe.)

RuPaul: Tell me, how big is that straw? 有多大？ (How big?)

Silky: (Slaps thighs) Real big, Ru. 這么大吧。 (This big.)

Here, the translator avoids some of the issues that are present in the Netflix subtitles. In the Netflix version, the viewer would be confused as to why Silky makes a sucking motion and why RuPaul and the other queens laugh. The Xiaomada translator preserves the double entendre but changes the focus from a straw to a big stick so that the joke is comprehensible in Chinese.

Once again, the meaning is altered, but the feeling and personality conveyed by Silky is preserved very faithfully. Although the Netflix subtitles do communicate the gist and basic meaning of Silky’s comments, the sterile delivery strips away any personality or camp sensibility. Xiaomada also alters the original content slightly with the addition of 老娘 (old lady), a humorous, gender-bending self-reference that would resonate with gay viewers.

Although in the original Silky simply refers to herself as “I,” this addition in the Chinese subtitles is not too excessive as it simply exaggerates the camp personality that Silky does indeed express through her comments in this scene.

40 ii. Sisterhood

While camp is an aesthetic sensibility that affects much of the queens’ humor and style, there is another major concept that is consistently present when queens interact with one another.

The ubiquitous model of “sisterhood” is often held up as an integral part of what it means to be a respected drag queen. A queen who “throws others under the bus” to get to the top is often seen as unworthy of high status. Rather a top queen should get by on her own talent while also lifting her sisters up. These ideals permeate conversations among queens and as such are extremely important factors in the queens’ communication style. Unlike camp, the sensibility of sisterhood is usually revealed in ways that are less specific to the English language or American culture, and thus poses less of a challenge for the translator.

While camp is an important aesthetic component of the drag sensibility, the idea of sisterhood is critically significant to the ethos of the drag community. Although Drag Race is structured as a competition, the sisterhood that drag is rooted in courses through the veins of the show itself. RuPaul often states on the show that “as gay people, we get to choose our family,” and this idea of kinship is crucial in governing how drag queens interact on the show. Before

Drag Race, the American ball culture of the 20th century was foundational in the development of modern drag culture. Gender theorist Judith Butler discusses the ball culture as portrayed in

Paris is Burning. She writes that participants in the balls “‘mother’ one another, ‘house’ one another, ‘rear’ one another, and the resignification of the family through these terms is not a vain or useless imitation but the social and discursive building of community, a community that binds, cares, and teaches, that shelter and enables.”51 Gay and transgendered people are a unique

51 Butler, Judith. “Gender is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion.” Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives. Ed. Anne McClintock, et al. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997, p. 392.

41 minority group because, for the most part, they are not born into gay families. Throughout history, many gay or transgendered people have been abandoned by their biological families and forced to survive on their own. As Butler notes, the ball participants used heteronormative family terms to build a community, one that would not have existed for them otherwise. These families and communities are just as real as any others, and as such play a large role in the way their members interact with one another.

It is still common for drag queens to “adopt” inexperienced queens as daughters and to create drag families. In a 2004 ethnographical study of drag queens, Steven Hopkins defined drag families as “larger kinship units that offer a support nexus for female impersonators and present opportunities for strong interpersonal relationships to be forged.”52 Hopkins interviewed drag queens working at a club in Virginia and detailed the numerous impediments that people face when becoming drag queens. One major obstacle is that once one participates in drag, they become more visibly “gay,” and thus susceptible to discrimination, harassment, and even violence. A new drag queen might then feel safer joining the larger community of a drag family.

New queens might also face difficulties financing the expensive art of drag. In a drag family, not only can a queen feel physically safer, but she might also receive support financially. Drag families provide queens with a stronger sense of community and family, something that many queer people unfortunately lack. In fact, these relationships themselves “are often cited as one of the benefits of doing drag.”53 It is the sense of family and sisterhood that draws some people to drag in the first place. Thus, sisterhood is not just a side effect of doing drag, but an inextricable part of drag itself. This spirit of sisterhood, and sometimes motherhood, is carried into Drag

52 Hopkins, Steven. “‘Let the Drag Race Begin’: The Rewards of Becoming a Queen.” Journal of Homosexuality 46.3-4 (2004), p. 145. 53 Ibid, p. 146-147.

42 Race, where it is a part of the ethical fabric that governs the way that queens interact and speak with one another.

On Drag Race, the influence of sisterhood is often manifested during heated verbal conflicts. When a queen feels wronged in some way, she usually airs her misgivings in front of the entire “family,” and several queens will usually join in and attempt to resolve the issue.

Maintaining good relationships among “sisters” is absolutely critical. The following is an example of a confrontation between Season 11 queens Silky and Ariel Versace. Ariel had previously mentioned that she thought Silky’s personality was overwhelming and keeping her from having a chance to shine. Here, Silky confronts Ariel about her comments, and overhears and gets involved:

Silky: The way it came off was just like I’m a loud, obnoxious person, and I’m not gonna allow my team to speak. 話傳到這邊就是我既吵鬧又討人厭，我還不讓我的隊員說話。 (The way I heard it, I’m loud and obnoxious, and I don’t let my team speak.） Ariel: You do have a big personality, and you know that. And I’m saying I was curious to see how that was going to mix in a teamwork environment. That’s…that’s it. 妳卻是很愛發表意見，妳自己知道的。我只是說我很好奇這樣的個性要怎麼 跟團隊融合，就這樣。 (You do love to express your opinion, you know that. I was just curious to see how that kind of personality will mix with teamwork, that’s it.) Yvie: That’s the Tee. Thank you for speaking up, Ariel. The rest of y’all need to step your pussies up. 艾莉兒，這才是真話，謝謝妳出面澄清。妳們其他人也要有種一點。 (Ariel, now that’s the truth, thank you for stepping up and clearing that up. The rest of you need to have some guts.) Plastique: No, but I think we all agreed. 但我們全部是這樣想的。 (But we all agreed.) Yvie: Whether or not you agreed…if you agreed then fucking speak up about it. If you have the balls to tell Ru, then tell Silky to her goddamn face. 無論妳同不同意…同意的話就他媽的說出來。如果有種跟魯告狀那就當著絲 滑的面說給她聽呀。 (Whether or not you agreed…if you agreed then fucking say something. If you had the guts to tell Ru, then say it to Silky’s face.)

43 Ariel is quick to tell Silky that her comments were not meant to be negative but that she was just making a neutral observation. Of course, originally, Ariel actually was criticizing Silky, but instead of admitting that she engaged in negativity against another queen, she skews her previous comments into a neutral observation. A roundabout apology better than no apology at all, Yvie applauds Ariel because she thinks Ariel is the only one of the many queens who criticized Silky to step up and admit it. To Yvie, breaking the “code of sisterhood” by talking behind Silky’s back is a highly reprehensible offense. She expresses how serious of a crime it is by using a number of expletives to emphasize her speech. Nathaniel Simmons notes that

“sisterhood ways of drag queens are culturally distinct from non-drag queens,” and “some drag queens may depart from family traditions and act in culturally inappropriate ways.”54 Yvie believes that the other queens acted so poorly that it was “culturally inappropriate” and offensive to her culture as a drag queen.

It is important that the gravity of her critique is conveyed in the Chinese translation so that the importance of sisterhood is accurately communicated. In this case, the translation works quite well to accurately express the severity of the situation. Unlike camp, the sisterhood sensibility does not rely on subtlety of language to be communicated and is thus much easier to express in Chinese. Still, some of the passion of Yvie’s comments is lost since colorful exclamations like “step your pussies up” and “if you have the balls” are both translated the same way as 有種 or “have guts.” It is especially interesting that these two English phrases have the same meaning but make use of both the feminine and the masculine, “step your pussies up” and

“if you have the balls.” The code of sisterhood lives outside of the realm of gender or drag and is

54 Simmons, Nathaniel. “Speaking Like a Queen in RuPaul’s Drag Race: Towards a Speech Code of American Drag Queens.” Sexuality & Culture, Volume 18, 2014, p. 643.

44 simply a part of being a decent human being. While it may be difficult to tell a sister the truth,

Yvie emphasizes how important it is by using two different expressions to the say the same thing. Using both “pussies” and “balls” to express these ideas is part of a distinctly queer speech code, and thus is especially difficult to capture in Chinese translation.

A comparison to the Xiaomada subtitles shows that the two translations are quite different:

Silky: The way it came off was just like I’m a loud, obnoxious person, and I’m not gonna allow my team to speak. 当时鲁姐说的话就好像我是一个又吵闹又惹人讨厌的人但我也没让我的团队 为我讲话。 (What Sister Ru said made it sound like I’m a loud and obnoxious person but I also don’t let my team speak for me.

Ariel: You do have a big personality, and you know that. And I’m saying I was curious to see how that was going to mix in a teamwork environment. That’s…that’s it. 你自己也知道自己什么逼样。我就是说我很好奇你将怎么融入到你的团队， 就这么点事。 (You know you’re fucking like that. I’m just saying I was curious about how you would meld with your team, that’s it.)

Yvie: That’s the Tee. Thank you for speaking up, Ariel. The rest of y’all need to step your pussies up. 就这么回事，谢谢你的坦诚，爱丽儿。你们队剩下的人还真得跟人好好学学 呢。 (That’s what’s happening, thank you for your sincerity, Ariel. The rest of your team should learn from you.)

Plastique: No, but I think we all agreed. 不必了，但是我们都很同意艾莉儿的话呢。 (No need, but we all agree with Ariel.)

Yvie: Whether or not you agreed…if you agreed then fucking speak up about it. If you have the balls to tell Ru, then tell Silky to her goddamn face. 你同意不同意，你同意人家的话，那你张嘴啊，你张嘴上贴封条了咋的。 (Whether or not you agree…If you agree, then say something, why would you keep your mouths shut?)

45 This translation departs dramatically from the original English and the Netflix translation.

Here, the subtitler grasps the gravity of the situation, but places the focus on the wrong people.

There are also a number of errors that show a lack of comprehension. The same energy and vivacity that serves the Xiaomada translations in other places backfire here to confuse the viewer. In the original situation as portrayed on the show, Silky is portrayed as the victim and

Ariel is the aggressor who threatened to disturb the balance of sisterhood by critiquing Silky behind her back. Ariel recognizes this transgression and attempts to fix it through her apology.

However, the translator overstates Ariel’s irreverence and gives her a swear “you know you’re fucking like that” when a swear did not exist in her original comments. After all, she would not swear at Silky when what she is trying to do is fix a broken bond of sisterhood. Thus, liveliness and strong personality might work well at other times, but here Ariel’s conciliatory tone does not come through in the translation because of the strong language employed. The fragile “politics” of the situation are reversed in the translation.

On the other hand, like in the Netflix translation, Yvie’s comments are not emphasized enough. Her original English comments are filled with expletives and colorful language, but the

Chinese translation is devoid of any obscenity or particularly strong wording. Yvie is playing the mediator and calling out what she thinks of as a betrayal of Silky’s trust, something she considers to be a serious transgression against the wellbeing of the community. It is confusing that Ariel, not Yvie, is using expletives when Ariel is acknowledging her offense while Yvie is passionately denouncing those who would betray the code of sisterhood. Also, a mistranslation of Silky’s utterance (“I’m not gonna allow my team to speak”) as well as a lack of consistency in transliterating the two appearances of Ariel’s name in Chinese (愛麗兒/艾莉兒) demonstrate that this passage was not translated with the attention and care that previous examples showed.

46 It is important to note that subtitles are of course a conversion from the spoken to the written mode. As such, certain elements specific to verbal speech may be sacrificed to allow the written subtitle to fit on the screen. As Sylvia Jaki notes, some elements of speech that pertain only to features of orality, like “discourse particles, repetition and swear words” are sometimes abridged when technical factors require omissions.55 These exclusions are tolerable when the omitted utterance is not particularly relevant to the meaning of the phrase as a whole. However, swear words and other features of spoken language can have a drastic impact on tone and significance, and a translator should be able to evaluate which “features of orality” can be omitted and which are important to retain. In this case, where Yvie’s swear words play a role in establishing her character as well as certain drag ideals and standards, they should be carried into the translation so their function is not lost.

The following is another example of how the virtue of sisterhood is admired on Drag

Race. After getting into a heated argument with Yvie, Miss Vanjie decides to apologize to her:

Vanjie: I wanted to apologize to you for the way I behaved in Untucked because you know I love you, and it was just, like, a bad moment for the both of us and we’re like family. Sisters are gonna fight, and, like, I don’t take it…like, I still love you, and I don’t see you any different. 我想為我在《幕後直擊！》中的行為跟妳道歉因為妳知道我愛妳，只是那時 我們倆都不太好受，我們就像家人，姊妹本來就會吵架，我依然愛妳，你對 我來說也沒有改變。 (I want to apologize for my behavior in Untucked because you know I love you. We were both unpleasant then, we are family, sisters are going to fight, I still love you. To me you haven’t changed at all.) Yvie: Thank you for apologizing. I’m sorry, too, ‘cause I mean, it really isn’t cute to be acting like that, and so, I apologize for snapping off at you like that. 謝謝妳道歉，我也很抱歉，因為弄成那樣真的一點都不可愛，我也為自己那 樣向妳發火道歉。

55 Jaki, Sylvia. “Sie Haben Feuchte Nüsse – The Translation of Verbal Humour in German Subtitles of US American Sitcoms.” Crossing Languages to Play with Words: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, edited by Sebastian Knospe et al., 1st ed., De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston, 2016, p. 359.

47 (Thank you for you apology, I’m sorry, too. Getting like that is not cute at all, I’m sorry for getting angry at you.) Vanjie: I love you. 我愛妳。 (I love you.) Yvie: I love you, too. 我也愛妳。 (I love you, too.) Yvie (confessional): Miss Vanjie is turning out to be, like, one of the most genuine people I’ve met. I think her heart is in the right place and she doesn’t just see me as, like, someone who is trying to take her down. 結果凡吉小姐是我遇過最真的人之一，她的心態也很正確，她不只是把我看 成一個想打敗她的人。 (So, Miss Vanjie is one of the most genuine people I’ve met. Her mentality is in the right place, she doesn’t just see me as someone she has to beat.)

In this scene, Miss Vanjie emphasizes the importance of sisterhood and family. Even though they had gotten into a very intense fight, Miss Vanjie realizes that her behavior was “not cute” since it broke the code of drag sisterhood. It is interesting to note that Vanjie refers to this code when she refers to Yvie as her sister and “like family.” She even ends her apology with an

“I love you,” which can be seen as the ultimate expression of familial affection. This apology wins great praise from Yvie who refers to her as genuine and that her “heart is in the right place.”

Before this moment, Yvie had been particularly critical of her fellow queens, with high expectations for how they should act and treat one another. Here, Yvie acknowledges that although they are competing, Vanjie still treats her as a sister and is thus worthy of high praise.

This scene is linguistically quite different than others we have looked at mainly because it is so sincere. Whereas much of the banter and camp humor is loaded with irony and double entendres, Vanjie’s apology is earnest and devoid of such bells and whistles. The conversation is happening on one level only and is thus much easier to translate. The Netflix translation here is thus quite accurate and contains all the important ideas as seen in the direct translation of the words “family,” “sisters,” and “love.” This is a rare example of an important conversation that

48 Netflix translates quite successfully. Unfortunately, the Xiaomada version of this episode is not available yet, so I am unable to compare their version here.

The sincerity expressed by queens during touching heart-to-heart moments or scathing critiques and fights actually serves to make their comments more readily translatable. The transparency of their sisterly bonds is proof of how strong those bonds really are. Even with queens that are constantly butting heads, like Ariel and Silky or Yvie and Vanjie, for the most part they always resolve their issues, like in any other family. These bonds are so blatantly expressed that they are almost impossible to miss in translation. Thus, sisterhood stands in strong contrast to the other aspects of drag language, such as reading, that are filled with irony and layers upon layers of meaning.

49 iii. Reading

As mentioned in the introduction, the complex art of “reading” is an inseparable part of drag culture. It is so important that nearly every season of Drag Race has included a “Library is

Open” challenge (as inspired by the film Paris is Burning.) In this challenge, each contestant is given a pair of “reading” glasses in turn and given the opportunity to “read,” or make fun of, one another. The winning contestant is not the one with the nastiest criticisms but the one with the wittiest reads. For a read to land and get laughs, it has to be both funny and true. If it is judged to be simply cruel and not funny, then it will not elicit laughs and can potentially cause the target queen to feel embarrassed or angry. When this happens, it breaks the “code of sisterhood” that bonds the queens together and is received as an offense.

If reading can so easily disrupt the “code of sisterhood,” then why is it a featured part of every season of Drag Race? Reading, in many ways, is an indispensable part of the camp aesthetic. To once again borrow from Sontag’s Notes on Camp, she writes “Homosexuals have pinned their integration into society on promoting the aesthetic sense. Camp is a solvent of morality. It neutralizes moral indignation, sponsors playfulness.”56 Queerness is considered beyond the realm of “normal society” because it lies outside the arbitrary binaries that have been constructed to create inequality. Camp is a means of acknowledging these binaries and breaking them down. Reading goes a step further by mocking these categories while developing the sharp wit that many in queer communities use as a defense against those on the outside. Keith Harvey notes that “camp’s critical mechanisms are specifically developed to mock, dodge and deconstruct the multiple binarisms in our society that stem from the postulation of the categories

56 Sontag, Susan. "Notes on 'Camp.'" Partisan Review. 31 (4).

50 natural/unnatural.” 57 Camp recognizes the existence of socially fabricated binaries and works to dismantle them. Reading can be seen as honing verbal attack skills with the purpose of defending oneself against the rigid constructs of mainstream society.

Harvey refers to reading as ambivalent solidarity and employs the “pragmatic theory of politeness” to explain this aspect of camp talk. According to politeness theory, speakers have both negative and positive “face-wants.” Negative face-wants are based on a speaker’s desire not to be restricted in their freedom of action while positive face-wants are based on wanting to be appreciated and approved of. Camp talk and ambivalent solidarity, however, are less respectful of face-wants. A heavy dose of irony, or camp, is required to keep these comments from being too offensive.

An interesting example of how these subtleties play out in translation can be found in

French writer Renaud Camus’s Tricks. The narrator meets an acquaintance at a gay cruising ground and the man comments:

Tiens, Renaud, mais vous vous dévergondez! Qu’est-ce que vous faites là?

Direct translation: [Hey, Renaud, but you are getting into bad ways! What are you doing

here?]

Harvey interprets the comment as a clear threat to the addressee’s positive face-wants; he is judging his behavior appearing at the cruising ground. This comment is loaded with irony since the speaker is obviously at the cruising ground himself. Thus, neither really believe that what they are doing is wrong but are mocking the moral code of the dominant culture by feigning to attack one another.

57 Harvey, Keith. “Translating Camp Talk: Gay Identities and Cultural Transfer.” The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Lawrence Venuti. New York: Routledge, 2000, p. 352.

51 Richard Howard’s English translation of the same line is as follows, “Hey, Renaud, you whore! What are you doing here?” The English “you whore” sounds more natural than a direct translation from French: “you are getting into bad ways.” Harvey notes that some of the irony is lost in this English translation since the speaker is losing his feigned moral high ground by using the vulgar term “whore.” The French “se dévergonder” is associated with formal registers, thus giving the speaker a claim to a superior moral stance. The speaker mocks the establishment by pretending to be a part of it himself and insulting his acquaintance. However, no offense is taken as the heavy irony shows the addressee that he means no harm to him in particular. The issue with the English translation lies in the complicated matter of irony and feigned moral superiority.

Such subtleties are hard to grasp, let alone translate to another language.58

More examples of reading in translation can be seen in the “Library is Open” challenges on Drag Race. This challenge gives the queens an opportunity to flaunt their reading prowess.

The fact that it is such a “fundamental” challenge is made clear since RuPaul and the queens echo Paris is Burning each season during this challenge when Ru asks, “Reading is what?” and the queens respond, “Fundamental!” The following is an example of reading during the “Library is Open” challenge from Season 11 of Drag Race in which Plastique Tiara reads her fellow contestant Silky Nutmeg Ganache:

Plastique: Silky’s drag transformation is incredible. She goes from a busted looking man into just busted looking. 絲滑的變裝技術超強的。她從一個醜胖男成了醜胖女。 (Silky’s drag skills are amazing. She goes from a fat ugly man to a fat ugly woman.)

58 Ibid, p. 350-351.

52 To borrow again from politeness theory, Plastique begins the read seemingly respectful of Silky’s positive face-wants. She appears to compliment Silky by calling her drag transformation “incredible.” Thus, Plastique, like the acquaintance in Tricks, feigns moral superiority. The punchline, that the transformation is indeed incredible, just incredibly bad, comes out loaded with irony. The read is less offensive than if Plastique had just called Silky ugly.

While “busted” is a slang term that means “ugly,” the read is not meant to be purely offensive. However, the Netflix Chinese translation has mixed results in carrying the essence of the read across languages. The translation starts of well as it establishes Plastique’s feigned sense of moral superiority at the beginning. However, Plastique just wanted to criticize Silky’s looks and probably make-up skills. The Chinese subtitles take the read and add another level of denunciation by criticizing Silky’s body twice. The translation changes the carefully balanced nature of the read and takes it to a crueler, body-shaming place. In situations like reading where precision of language is so important, it is in the best interest of subtitlers not to stray too far from the original in terms of creating content or else risk adding or losing layers of meaning. In this particular situation, a direct translation would have worked well to maintain the integrity of the read.

Reads do not only occur under the constructed environment of a “Library is Open” challenge. They also occur naturally in all kinds of interactions. The following is an example of a read by Vanjie directed at fellow queen Ra’Jah after her earring falls off, as translated by Netflix:

Vanjie: Why your earring coming off? You weren’t doing the electric slide. You just took two steps, Mary. 妳的耳環怎麼掉了？妳剛跳的又不是電動滑步不過跳了兩拍而已，真是的。 (How did your earring fall off? You did not dance the electric slide, you only did two steps of it. Seriously.)

53 In this scene, Ra’Jah takes a few steps to greet the other queens and both her earrings fall off one after the other. Vanjie reads Ra’Jah’s lack of professionalism while adding significant elements of irony and humor by referencing the electric slide and calling her “Mary.” Mary is a name that is often used to refer specifically to a gay man and is an example of the gender inversion that is a typical element of camp. Here, Vanjie uses the word “Mary” as a sort of punctuation mark that lends her read a sense of good-natured humor to show the audience that she means no harm.

Apart from the obvious mistranslation of Vanjie’s sarcastic electric slide comment, there is another error here in the Chinese subtitles in that there is no attempt made to translate “Mary.”

The tone of 真是的 (seriously) is similar to what Vanjie conveyed with the word “Mary,” but it lacks the humorous element that is essential to camp and reading as it is a very neutral phrase. It does nothing to signal Vanjie’s gay identity in the way that her use of Mary might. For a translator to accurately translate something so culturally subtle ultimately relies on the translator themselves either being a part of the sub-cultural group and understanding its associated language or else doing quite a bit of research. As Keith Harvey recognizes, a successful translation of the “macro-functional dimension of camp,” or how camp talk functions socially, might even depend on the “sexual identity of the translator and his or her relation to a gay subcultural group.”59

In another essay, Harvey notes an occasion in which a similar use of the name “Mary” is translated somewhat successfully into French from the play Angels in America, A Gay Fantasia on National Themes; Part One: Millennium Approaches by Tony Kushner. In the play, a

59 Harvey, Keith. “Translating Camp Talk: Gay Identities and Cultural Transfer.” The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Lawrence Venuti. New York: Routledge, 2000, p. 345.

54 character jokingly refers to another gay male character as Mary: “That’s not purple, Mary, that colour up there is . . . mauve.” Harvey notes that not only does “Mary” provide “the springboard from which the emphatic appearance of ‘mauve’ gains its comic energy” but it also reinforces the character’s “identity as a gay man as well as his communal attachment.” In the French translation, “Mary” is rendered as “Josiane,” a name which in French would invoke stereotypical ideas of a possibly older, loud-mouthed working-class woman. The humor is thus conveyed across languages, but, as Harvey notes, does not set off resonances for a gay reader of the target text. He concludes, “there is still camp in the target text as a result of the gender inversion that is operated through ‘Josiane’; but it is a camp that is established by straight, dominant-cultural means.”60 Similarly, the Chinese translation of Vanjie’s “Mary” into just 真是的 (seriously) carries a small amount of the humor of the original but fails in terms of provoking any sort of resonance for a specifically gay audience. The difficulty of translating reads and camp talk lies in the subtle, culturally specific ways that gay culture is invoked through language.

As might be expected, Xiaomada offers a more colorful translation of Vanjie’s same earring remark:

Vanjie: Why your earring coming off? You weren’t doing the electric slide. You just took two steps, Mary. 大姐你不能好好整一下你那耳环吗？又没让你灌肠也没啥难度，两分钟就能 解决的事儿，秀芬，看把你给懒的。 (Sis, can you fix your earring? Nobody’s asking you to clean your butt out with an enema, it’s not that hard. You can fix it in two minutes, Xiu-Fen, don’t be lazy.)

This translation differs greatly from both the Netflix version and the original English. It is a marked improvement over the Netflix translation because instead of attempting to translate something as culturally specific as the electric slide, the translator opts to rework the comment

60 Harvey, Keith. “Gay Community, Gay Identity and the Translated Text.” Idéologie et traduction, Volume 13, Numéro 1, 1er semestre, 2000, p. 158.

55 completely, preserving the original tone by sacrificing meaning. The electric slide as a dance is irrelevant to the spirit of Vanjie’s read and only serves to provide humor. Humor is critical to the success of a read since without humor, a read can become pure ridicule. The translator here injects a particularly gay humor into the Chinese translation through the addition of the “enema” comment. Although it functions very differently as a joke than the original “electric slide,”

“enema” adds the gay sensibility that Vanjie conjures up in her original comment with “Mary.”

Here, the translator chooses to use 秀芬, a common Chinese female name, instead of “Mary.”

While 秀芬 regrettably does not express the same gay sensibilities that “Mary” would, it adds another humorous element to the read by choosing a random female name. There are also strong notes of Northeastern Mandarin in many Xiaomada translations, as exemplified here by phrases like 看把你給懶的. This dialect, notable for its informal tone, is full of character and favored by many comedians in mainland China. Xiaomada is quite successful in their use of the

Northeastern dialect here because it is a fairly equitable interpretation of Vanjie’s irreverent and boisterous speaking style. For all the innovation exhibited by Xiaomada, their translation, although quite different in meaning from the source utterance, is much preferable to the Netflix version. The Netflix version lacks any and all qualities that a successful read should have. It is a failed attempt at a direct translation, while the Xiaomada version is an effective example of a translation that is significantly altered, but still serves a similar purpose in Chinese as it does in

English.

Directly after Vanjie’s comment, another queen, Shuga Cain, also reads Ra’Jah when her second earring follows the first and falls off:

Shuga: Both of them, girl. Both earrings. This is national television, honey. Just staple that shit to your ear, girl.

56 兩個都掉了，兩邊耳環都掉了。這節目在全國播映，親愛的。耳環怎麼沒戴 好？ (They both fell off, both earrings fell off. This program is broadcast to the whole country, dear. How are your earrings not on right?)

Similarly to Vanjie, Shuga also injects humor into her read with amusing imagery in the form of stapling an earring right onto the earlobe. However, Shuga adds the extra element of critiquing Ra’Jah for a perceived lack of professionalism. To use Nathaniel Simmons’ term,

“exuding professionalism” is a constant theme in drag queen communication and an integral part of what makes a “top” drag queen.61 For Shuga, it is inconceivable that Ra’Jah would be so unprofessional as to lose her earrings on national television in front of such a large audience. She emphasizes the importance of exuding professionalism when she implies that stapling the earrings to the skin is a better alternative to losing them and appearing unprofessional. Her comment invokes an almost visceral reaction in the audience and is quite effective at emphasizing the importance of exuding professionalism.

In the Netflix Chinese translation, this emphasis is completely lost since Shuga’s staple comment is significantly diluted to become the docile 耳環怎麼沒戴好 (How are your earrings not on right?) It is a shame that the staple element is lost here because it could be easily included. In this case, the humor element is not contingent upon a knowledge gay culture, and as such, should be easier to translate directly into Chinese. The subtitles should not shy away too much from using coarse language since it is a common aspect of drag queen communication.

Shuga’s emphasis on “exuding professionalism,” an important part of drag culture, would also be

61Simmons, Nathaniel. “Speaking Like a Queen in RuPaul’s Drag Race: Towards a Speech Code of American Drag Queens.” Sexuality & Culture, Volume 18, 2014, p. 640.

57 conveyed better if the comment were translated more directly into Chinese with stronger language.

An example of a translation with slightly stronger language comes from the Xiaomada translation of Shuga’s read, which is as follows:

Shuga: Both of them, girl. Both earrings. This is national television, honey. Just staple that shit to your ear, girl. 又掉一个，俩都掉了。这可是中央电视台啊，宝贝，把你那破玩意儿给我整 稳当儿的。 (Another one, both fell off. This is CCTV, baby, fix that busted thing up.)

This translation reads especially well for a mainland Chinese audience, as it references the Chinese state broadcasting network, CCTV. Like the original usage of “national television,” a translation to CCTV lends gravitas to Drag Race and serves to cement Shuga’s emphasis on

“professionalism.” Similarly to the Netflix translation, however, the humor is mostly lost.

Without the irony that Shuga originally establishes with “staple that shit to your ear, girl,” the read loses its “comic energy” and becomes more of a straightforward admonishment. In drag culture, a rebuke without humor is usually seen as a threat to the “code of sisterhood” and is grounds for an intervention, as in Vanjie’s sisterly apology to Yvie. Thus, it is critical that a translation of a read does not come across as purely a reprimand or an insult but as “stylized cattiness,”62 to borrow Harvey’s term. “Stylized” is important because, like camp, the core of a read is based in irony. The irony serves as a cushion that allows a queen to make a pointed verbal attack without offending a fellow queen and transgressing the “code of sisterhood.”

In episode 2 of season 11 of Drag Race, the queens are tasked with recreating “drag versions” of famous movies. One group recreates the blockbuster superhero movie Black

62 Harvey, Keith. “Translating Camp Talk: Gay Identities and Cultural Transfer.” The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Lawrence Venuti. New York: Routledge, 2000, p. 350.

58 Panther as the retitled, “Why it Gotta be Black, Panther?” The premise of the remake is that the

“Purple Panther,” played by , has to win a reading challenge against her half- sister, Panther, as portrayed by Ra’Jah O’Hara, to defend the crown of “Dragkanda.”

Since these reads are in the context of a movie scene, they are removed from the “reality” setting that Drag Race usually takes place in. As such, certain social factors, like politeness, can be ignored since the queens are reading from a script. Translating a read in this context should be easier as there is no social context that needs to be considered. The following is the exchange of reads along with Chinese subtitles from Netflix:

Chicago: Purple Panther, you’re so ugly your family had to tie a pork chop around your neck for the dog to play with you. 紫豹，妳超醜，妳家人得在妳脖子上綁豬排狗狗才願意跟妳玩。 (Purple Panther, you’re so ugly, your family had to tie a pork chop to your neck so the dog would play with you.)

Purple: Ho, is you a squirrel? Because your cheeks are full of nuts. 妳是隻松鼠嗎？因為妳嘴中塞滿了堅果耶。 (Are you a squirrel? Because your mouth is full of nuts (tree nuts.))

Chicago’s read is fairly straightforward, and the subtitles reflect this with an accurate translation. The more complicated read is Purple Panther’s, as it includes name-calling and wordplay. The word “ho” is quite important to this read, since it establishes the context that

Purple is reading Chicago for a perceived sexual promiscuity. In the subtitles, the word is completely ignored and left out of the translation all together. On its own, this would not be a particularly glaring omission, but the translation of the rest of the read lacks context and as such is quite confusing. In English, the word “nuts” can be clearly understood to be talking about genitalia and is made even clearer since the read begins with a reference to Chicago being a

“ho.” In the Chinese, 堅果 (nuts) is not as clearly related to genitals. Thus, in Chinese translation, this utterance only serves as a read in the way that Purple is literally calling Chicago

59 a squirrel, which is not particularly insulting or clever on its own. Even in this fairly straightforward passage, the subtitler seems unaware that this is a read and subsequently translates it quite unsatisfactorily into a literal rendering of the original English into Chinese. The

Xiaomada translation is similar in terms of being a literal translation, but the subtitler in this case seems to at least understand that they are processing a read:

Chicago: Purple Panther, you’re so ugly your family had to tie a pork chop around your neck for the dog to play with you. 紫豹，你真丑。丑到你的家人都要把一块猪排挂在你脖子上才会有狗子和你 玩耍。 (Purple Panther, you are so ugly. So ugly that your family has to tie a pork chop to your neck so that the dog will play with you.)

Purple: Ho, is you a squirrel? Because your cheeks are full of nuts. 婊砸你是松鼠吗？因为你的脸榛素丑到爆。 (Bitch, are you a squirrel? Because your face is so crazy ugly.)

Like in the Netflix translation, the Xiaomada subtitles are quite accurate in presenting the meaning and spirit of Chicago’s read about Purple Panther being so ugly the dog will not even play with her. Also similar to the Netflix translation, Purple’s read loses its meaning as an attack on Chicago’s promiscuity and instead becomes a criticism of her looking like a squirrel.

However, there are a few aspects that make Xiaomada’s translation much more successful than

Netflix’s. First, Xiaomada attempts to retain “ho” from the original English. By rendering it as

“bitch,” although it serves to emphasize that the statement is a read, it loses the spirit of the original read which was to denounce Chicago for her perceived promiscuity. Retaining the meaning of “ho” would be preferable, but at least including a profanity in the form of “bitch” is better than choosing to omit it completely, as the Netflix translation does. Also, Xiaomada again shows a willingness to experiment with different Chinese dialects, this time by suggesting

Taiwanese-Mandarin with the phrase 因为你的脸榛素丑到爆. By replacing the retroflex ‘sh’ of

是 with the alveolar consonant ‘s’ in 素, Purple Panther mimics a Taiwanese accent. Taiwanese

60 accents are usually thought of as “cuter” than accents of China. Here, it serves to accentuate

Purple Panther’s coquettishness and highlight the playful nature of the read.

While the Xiaomada subtitles also do not convey the point of the read–that Chicago always has “nuts” in her mouth–they at least manage to express that Purple’s statement is a read.

Netflix simply translates the read literally, which creates something of a non-sequitur in the

Chinese since it is unclear what Chicago having tree nuts in her mouth is supposed to mean.

Xiaomada, on the other hand, adds in extra clarification by emphasizing, “because your face is so crazy ugly.” Here, the viewer at least knows that the statement is a read, while a Netflix viewer might be more unsure. While a literal translation might work for some reads, like the “you are so ugly the dog will not even play with you,” reads such as the “squirrel” one that contain wordplay and double-entendres are more complicated. While it is not absolutely critical that the wordplay be translated faithfully, since an exact translation of wordplay often does not even exist, it is important that the translator at least understands that what is being uttered is, in fact, a read.

Once this basic knowledge has been established, a translator would be more likely to at least produce something resembling a read in the target language.

61 iv. Pop Culture

Drag over the years has been highly influenced by pop culture, especially American female divas of song and stage. Emulation of these over-the-top representations of femininity has proven to be a deep well of inspiration for drag queens. It is thus no coincidence that episode 3 of the eleventh season of Drag Race is entitled “Diva Worship.” This episode sees the queens divided into two groups and presented with the challenge of creating and starring in a television program in the style of televangelism. Instead of worshipping a traditional deity, however, the queens are to choose a pop diva to revere. The idea behind the challenge is to test the queens’ knowledge and understanding of important cultural figures in the gay community. One group chooses Britney Spears, a diva commonly “worshipped” in the gay community. acts as the host of the program, and details how “donations” to the “It’s Britney Bitch Network” will be used:

Nina: Ladies and gentlemen, we have set up the Leave Britney Alone Foundation. Your offerings today will help supply Frappuccino’s, frothy and delicious. Also, car seats and safety belts. 各位觀眾，我們成立了別為難布蘭妮基金會。您今日的捐獻將用來提供泡沫 多多又美味的星冰樂，車椅與安全帶。 (Ladies and gentlemen, we have set up the Don’t Make Things Difficult for Britney Foundation. Your donations today will supply frothy and delicious Frappuccino’s, car seats, and safety belts.)

In just a few seconds, Nina mentions a number of specific cultural references related to Britney Spears. For instance, the “Leave Britney Alone Foundation” is a reference to an iconic viral video “Leave Britney Alone” by gay American Internet celebrity, Chris Crocker.

In the video, Crocker tearfully defends Spears’ widely panned comeback performance at the

MTV Video Music Awards in 2007. “Frappuccino’s” are a reference to Spears’ beverage of choice while the “car seats and safety belts” refer to infamous paparazzi photos of Spears

62 driving while holding her children on her lap. These references are all quite specific and relatively obscure, especially to those who do not follow pop culture. In the gay community, and especially drag culture, understanding these references is more commonplace. Drag places great emphasis on a thorough grasp of pop culture since many queens include imitations of pop cultural icons in their acts. Nina’s use of these specific references to Spears’ past would be considered commendable as it conveys that she has a strong understanding of the “cult of

Britney.” That is, she shows that she is connected to those in the gay community who value

Spears and her career. In the competition that is Drag Race, being able to connect in this way with the gay community is usually rewarded with praise from RuPaul and other judges. Pop culture references is one way that contestants on Drag Race can express this crucial connection to the gay and drag communities.

In the above Netflix translation, the Chinese subtitles more or less convey the essential meaning of Nina’s remarks. However, as in the original utterance, without background knowledge, the Chinese-speaking viewer is unable to make a connection between the words and

Nina’s intended meaning. An American viewer of Drag Race seems to be expected to understand the required cultural contexts, as the show offers no other explanation. For a viewer of a different cultural background, watching with Chinese subtitles, some more explanation is most likely necessary if the translation is to successfully express the complete significance of

Nina’s comments to an international audience. A note could be useful here to explain the background behind Nina’s references.

The general tone of Nina’s comments is one of jest and poking fun at Spears’ tumultuous past. Not unlike reading, by playfully mocking Spears, Nina is actually expressing love and respect for the cultural icon, not contempt or criticism. As a read from one queen to another is

63 meant to be ironic and from a place of “sisterhood,” Nina’s comments are meant to show respect for Spears while cementing her status as an icon to the gay community. Without the appropriate cultural background, these subtleties are completely lost. In the following translation of the same passage as processed by Xiaomada, the translator includes a number of notes to explain the significance of Nina’s allusions:

Nina: Ladies and gentlemen, we have set up the Leave Britney Alone Foundation. Your offerings today will help supply Frappuccino’s, frothy and delicious. Also, car seats and safety belts. 我们已经成立了让懒妮静静基金会 （网红小哥 Chris Crocker 的恶搞视频， 哭诉要大家理解 Britney。）您今日的捐赠能都帮助我们供应星冰乐泡 沫丰 满 风味十足 （Britney 经常喝的饮料。）同时，还有车里的位子和安全带 （Britney 被拍到抱着孩子开车。）

(We set up the Give Britney Peace Foundation (Internet celebrity Chris Crocker’s spoof video, tearfully demanding others understand Britney.) Your donations today will help us supply Frappuccino’s, frothy and delicious (the drink Britney often consumes.) Also, car seats and safety belts. (Britney was snapped holding her kids while driving.))

The main difference between these two translations is that the Xiaomada translation includes a note for every single reference made. The references are concise and do not contain unnecessary information. As such, they give the viewer the most basic information required to begin to comprehend Nina’s references and some of the background behind them. For such references, it is important that the translator recognizes their significance as well as function.

Without appropriate explanation, such references are utterly lost in translation. While these references to Britney Spears are relatively easy to explain using a short note, other cultural references can be significantly more complex.

The veneration of female celebrity icons, like Britney Spears, is an important aspect of pop culture that is significant to drag queens and the queer community alike. These powerful women serve as a model of the femininity that drag queens attempt to replicate and analyze. One

64 of the most important of these icons historically is . Garland, perhaps most famous for her portrayal of Dorothy in The , has been virtually deified by the American gay community. As Robert Leleux notes in his opinion piece for the New York Times, the common denominator of Garland, along with virtually every other gay idol, such as Maria Callas and

Edith Piaf, is the ability to transcend reality.63 Garland, along with other female idols, are sources of transcendency and pseudo-divinity for many members of the queer community. Leleux writes,

“The tale might be apocryphal, but there’s good reason some people still believe that Garland’s death brought on the Stonewall uprising, which began the day after her funeral.”64 While it may never be known whether or not Garland’s death really did directly lead to the revolutionary, drag queen-led Stonewall rebellion, the influence that she and similar icons have had on the queer and drag communities cannot be understated.

In one episode of Season 8 of Drag Race, the challenge for the episode is to design drag inspired by The Wizard of Oz. RuPaul introduces the challenge with a question:

RuPaul: My queens, are you a friend of Dorothy’s, or just plain ? 美眉們，妳們是桃樂絲的朋友嗎？或只是壞女巫？ (Girls, are you Dorothy’s friend? Or just a bad witch?)

The phrase “friend of Dorothy’s” is a reference to gay people in the past using it as code word meaning “gay.” Since it was dangerous to potentially out oneself to someone less than sympathetic to the cause, asking “are you a friend of Dorothy’s” was a way to confirm the person was safe to come out to. As for “or just plain wicked,” this is a reference to the character the

Wicked Witch of the West and also possibly the Broadway play Wicked, which features the

63 Leleux, Robert. “Judy Garland, Gay Idol Then and '' Now.” The New York Times, 5 Apr. 2012, . 64 Ibid.

65 aforementioned witch from The Wizard of Oz. A look at the Netflix Chinese translation shows that this reference, full of symbolism, humor, and history, is very difficult to translate. The reference to Judy Garland and the Polari-reminiscent code is probably lost in translation, although the only thing that gets completely omitted outright is the Wicked Witch reference. The viewer reading the

Chinese subtitles, is probably excluded from the “insider” nature of the comment, just as a heterosexual viewer or viewer less versed in gay culture might be. Similarly, later on in the same episode, RuPaul makes the same reference to “friends of Dorothy” when she makes a remark to her fellow judges:

RuPaul: Just between us friends of Dorothy… 現在就剩我們幾個討論… (Now it’s left to the few of us to discuss…)

This time, the Netflix subtitler chooses to use a more meaning-based translation and to ignore the reference entirely. Unfortunately, if a meaning-based translation is used, then Drag

Race loses part of its rich subtext based in gay and drag history. The show then is less able to convey one of its main goals, that of strengthening and legitimizing the drag community and identity. In order to accomplish a successful translation of Drag Race, it is critical that a translator be versed in certain aspects of drag/queer culture. A knowledgeable translator would be less likely to omit important cultural references like in the example above.

These references to Dorothy and Judy Garland are important as they are an expression of gay identity. It is not just cultural references that are lost in translation, but a united gay culture. In his article “Judy Garland’s American Drag,” Brian Currid analyzes Judy Garland’s role in gay culture. While Judy Garland was popular in mainstream culture, Currid notes that gay culture adopts mainstream culture in a way that is uniquely gay. He refers to this phenomenon as

“profoundly affirmative gay uses of mass culture.” Through this assumption of mainstream culture,

66 in this case of Judy Garland, “homosexuality becomes ‘expressible’ in the fan cult around Garland, takes on a substantiality which confirms and unites the fragmented life experience of ‘the gay man’ in a sub-vocabulary of stardom, that is, a subvocabulary of subjectivity itself.”65 Drag queens, like gay men in general, have “fragmented life experiences” since they come from all walks of life.

Thus, there is a sense of community in the “fan cult” as the diva becomes a center of gay culture and people unite over “diva worship.” The socio-cultural contexts implied when a drag queen references pop culture are thus sometimes rooted deeply in collective gay experience.

Yet another reference to Dorothy occurs in the “Diva Worship” episode of Season 11.

Queen Ra’Jah O’Hara wears red sequin boots on the runway and judge Ross Matthews cannot help but recall Dorothy’s famous red slippers. (While Ross Matthews himself is not a drag queen, as he is a member of the queer community and a judge on the show, it is still useful to consider his use of language.) The following is a side by side comparison of the Netflix and Xiaomada translations, in that order:

Ross: Now, those are what I call . . . there’s no place like homo. 這就是我所說的紅寶石鞋 . . . 沒有比同性戀更棒的了。 (Now, those are what I call ruby slippers…nothing beats gay!)

Ross: Now, those are what I call ruby slippers . . . there’s no place like homo. 这才是正儿八经的红宝石鞋嘛 [绿野仙踪里的鞋, 穿上之后鞋跟相扣就能去任 何地方] . . . 基 甜蜜的基。 (Now, these are some serious ruby slippers [shoes from the Wizard of Oz, when worn and tapped together, one can go anywhere] . . . homo sweet homo.)

An English-speaking audience would know that “ruby slippers” are in reference to

Dorothy’s famous footwear in The Wizard of Oz. In the Netflix translation, if the viewer has any

65 Currid, Brian. “Judy Garland's American Drag.” Amerikastudien / American Studies, vol. 46, no.1, 2001, p. 124.

67 background in American culture, they would most likely be able to recognize what “ruby slippers” are in reference to. However, the Xiaomada translation takes it a step further by adding a note clarifying that “ruby slippers” is indeed a reference to The Wizard of Oz. The Chinese 紅寶石鞋 can literally be translated to just “ruby shoes,” and thus potentially not immediately recognizable as Dorothy’s iconic slippers in the way that “ruby slippers” is. It is made more confusing based on the fact that Ra’Jah is wearing ruby shoes herself and thus the comment could be misconstrued to be referring to only her shoes. The addition of a note clarifying the reference is helpful. While the note explains the culture source of the utterance, it does not expound upon the significance of that source to a gay audience. In this case, it would be difficult to capture all the historic and cultural significances contained by the comment without adding a note that is gratuitously long and difficult to read.

As for the end of Ross’s utterance, “there’s no place like homo” is both a pun and a continued reference to Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy famously says, “there’s no place like home” and taps her ruby slippers together to be teleported home. The Netflix subtitles takes a literal approach to translating the pun and completely fails since the original purpose of the comment was not to state that being gay is great, but to reference Dorothy and Wizard of Oz. The

Xiaomada translation is significantly better since it captures the pun perfectly and comes close to transmitting the cultural reference. While “home sweet home” is not quite as successful at sparking the audience’s mental association to Dorothy as “there’s no place like home,” it comes close and is impressive considering that it manages to preserve the “homo” pun of the original.

Pop culture references are intricately bound to the culture they come from. From the examples of The Wizard of Oz and Dorothy references, it is clear that the audience’s knowledge, whether English- or Chinese-speaking, plays a large role in whether or not the reference completes

68 its intended purpose. A note explaining cultural references is a helpful tool to add information that is difficult to convey in a translation but looks awkward and is challenging to read and comprehend in the brief moments it appears on screen. Keeping notes as concise as possible while transmitting the most pertinent information is crucial to the successful translation of a cultural reference.

69 Chapter IV

Conclusion

Although a reality television program, RuPaul’s Drag Race is unlike most other programs of its ilk as it is actively creating and transmitting culture. Because the culture produced and spread through Drag Race is a multi-faceted and complex one, steeped in history and intricate social factors, the challenges a translator is faced with when tasked with bringing this culture into another language are numerous. A translator must thus be prepared to understand these complexities if they are to successfully convey American drag talk as it is portrayed on Drag Race to another language and its accompanying culture. Netflix should invest more resources in its translations of Drag Race if the Chinese subtitles are ever to surpass the level of a surface interpretation. Netflix can also look to fansubbing services such as Xiaomada for examples of ways to handle difficult translation in a creative way. This research has shown that Netflix has failed in comparison to Xiaomada in terms of creating accurate and engaging translations, but that both services can improve their Chinese renderings, especially in terms of fidelity to the original tone and meaning of the English source utterances.

Certain techniques employed by Xiaomada, things like the use of different Chinese dialects, wordplay, and cultural notes, prove to be quite successful in handling passages that are particularly difficult to interpret in Chinese. However, while in some instances it may be appropriate to alter the source meaning in order to preserve more important aspects of the source dialogue, such as camp, humor, or tone, at other times it is necessary to preserve meaning in the translation. It is up to the translator not only to be knowledgeable enough about the source material in order to make an educated decision, but to know that there are a number of tools available to manipulate the Chinese into reflecting the source text even at its most impenetrable.

70 Although the sexual identity of a translator is not necessarily a defining factor in the success or failure of a translation, understanding that sexual identity and its related social factors are of paramount importance is. If only a superficial layer of meaning is translated, then the target language-speaking viewer misses an opportunity to connect to drag culture and the gay community. Drag is inextricably tied to queerness, and to ignore this fact would be fatal to any attempt to translate it to another language and culture.

Camp, sisterhood, reading, and pop culture references are all important aspects of the language featured on Drag Race. Whether consciously or inadvertently, the queens on Drag

Race are constantly speaking in ways that evoke those four categories, especially camp. In an ideal Chinese subtitle, the translation should reflect these categories while also using language authentic to a Chinese drag milieu. Further research into how Chinese-speaking drag queens communicate and how that language can be used for translation would be very helpful in understanding exactly how current translations of Drag Race can be improved. Drag exists in many forms throughout the world, and, as such, drag languages also exist on a global scale. As the cultural and linguistic significance of drag becomes recognized, hopefully scholars around the world will choose to engage in research on this topic. Once research on the language of drag becomes more commonplace, translators tasked with the difficult job of interpreting drag will have access to tools that will assist them in interpreting the complexities of drag language more faithfully.

In Esther Newton’s pioneering 1972 ethnography on drag queens, Mother Camp: Female

Impersonators in America, she describes the differences drag queens observed about performing for a straight audience versus a gay audience: while tourist clubs have higher pay than gay clubs,

“working in gay clubs is sometimes seen as preferable because of the familiarity between

71 performers and audiences. In fact, . . . the problem with the straight audience is to overcome or minimize that [social] distance.”66 Drag queens face a similar problem when they are translated, but the social distance is magnified by linguistic and cultural differences between the source and target languages. It is clear that the work of the drag queen interpreter is multi-faceted and complex, but it is not unlike the work of a drag queen who must perform for a straight audience.

Both are interpreters of a sort, and both must make concessions in order to reach the target audience in a meaningful way. Learning when and how such concessions should be made is critical to the success of both these interpreters.

66 Newton, Esther. Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1979. 61

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