A Study Of The Overseas Promotion Of Domestic TV Plays With A Case Study Of Empresses In The Palace

The costumed harem TV series Empresses in the Palace made its screen debut in 2011 in the Chinese Mainland. The play got great domestic popularity for its distinctive characters, personalized dialogues and the ancient Chinese imperial style, and the popularity spread to Hong Kong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia. Empresses in the Palace was later edited by an American producing team, and got on the American video-on-demand network Netflix in March,2015, but the audience’s feedback in the United States and Canada was not as good as expected.The overseas promotion of Chinese TV plays can be dated back to the 1980s. Due to cultural and linguistic similarities, the target markets of Chinese exported TV plays had been limited in Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asian regions. The American version of Empresses in the Palace did not attract a large audience in North America, and the reasons of which could be discussed in the following aspects:cultural differences between China and America, incompetent promoting methods, over re-editing, competition from TV plays made in Hong Kong and Korea, and the missed charm and edges through language coding, etc. Moreover, this thesis also discusses the coping strategies of translating the Chinese subtitles, since the cross-culture expressions, personalized dialogues, time features and subtitling regulations can be tough problems for the subtitle translators. Even though Empresses in the Palace did not gain great popularity in the American market, it is still a very meaningful tryout because it is the first domestic TV play to enter America’s mainstream media, it is the first step for Chinese TV industry to explore the English market, and it is also a positive effort for Chinese culture to be introduced to the English world.The history of the 21st century is a time for global cultural communication, and the Chinese government has been establishing a very favorable environment for the overseas promotion of TV series and film productions. As a kind of cultural communicating method, TV series and film productions do not simply bring out Chinese stories, but further they spread out Chinese culture and Chinese social values. Based on the case study of Empresses in the Palace’s American release, this thesis discusses the difficulties of domestic TV series’entering the American market, and also brings out some suggestions about TV plays’overseas promotion and subtitle translation for further reference.