Audiovisual Translation and Queer Media in China: From Thai Soap Operas to Thai Boys’ Love Series

Abstract

China’s cultural imperatives of spreading soft power through the commercialized media sector and depoliticized cultural exports have in turn led to the ubiquity of domestic and foreign queer media including Thai soap operas featuring queer characters as well as Thai and Chinese BL (short for boys’ love) audiovisual productions. However, due to China’s ban on queer media and the Chinese public’s low exposure to queerness, linguistic and extralinguistic shifts are inevitable. This chapter demonstrates the erasure of queer identities and platinization of queer relationships in Thai soap operas officially dubbed and aired on Chinese TV and the dilution of camp talk—the speech style ascribed to queer identities—in those fansubbed and circulated online. Thai BL productions, on the other hand, are distributed exclusively online and fansubbed by Tianfu Taiju and Xifan, two of the biggest Chinese subtitling groups specializing in Thai drama, among others. Although these fansubbing groups are under constant threat from state clampdown themselves, they adhere steadfastly to the party line when nationalism is concerned as evidenced in the case of a quarrel between Chinese and Thai netizens in April 2020 unintentionally instigated by a Thai BL actor.