How do Chinese people understand and talk about “sex” in real life?

British comedy-drama Sex Education
Retrieved from https://collider.com/sex-education-season-4-netflix/

Netflix’s comedy series Sex Education has become a huge hit around the world. It has also been heatedly discussed in China among many young people and can be perceived as epochal in Chinese market since there has never been a drama that boldly talks about sex specifically with a target audience of the younger generations. There is no surprising that the series contains many sex-related terms, same sex-related terms and private organs as its theme intends to provide youngsters with proper sex education. However, when subtitling into Chinese, there seem to be some problems regarding “sex” and its related terms. 

“Do you know what sex is?"

Sex Education Season 1

In the story, Jeans is Otis’ mother and a sex therapist. She is quite open-minded and tries to provide Otis with sexual knowledge from his childhood. The following dialogue is one of the examples happened when Otis was small and Jeans tried to offer some insights in sex to him. In the original play, Jeans directly uses the lines as “Do you know what sex is, Otis?” The subtitle group tries to remain true to the original text and therefore translates the text letter by letter into “你知道性爱是什么吗 欧蒂斯？”. 

Do Chinese people talk about “sex” just as western people do?

Faithful as it is, the subtitle fails to consider the real cultural circumstance and its concern in China. There are certain topics that are not openly and directly talked by many Chinese people, and sex is one of them. In effect, decades ago, the Chinese were more conservative, and people would change their faces once hearing “sex” in public. Today, though the overall atmosphere is more open probably under the influence of western cultures, “sex” is still a topic that people don’t normally talk about directly on stage in daily life. It has long been a taboo just like the word “death”. 

an example of Euphemism 
Retrieved from https://unravellingmag.com/articles/euphemisms/

Sex: euphemism in Chinese

Therefore, when Chinese people talk about sex, they are more likely to use euphemism to refer to the topic without straightforwardly naming it, which might confuse many foreign friends if you are not familiar with them. Here are some euphemism examples for sex used in Chinese. 

• 那个：literally means “that”, which contains no actual meaning. This is a very implicit yet frequently used expression for sex in Chinese. In this sense, it just like what Voldemort in Harry Potter is called by other people as “You-Know-Who”. 
• 和…睡觉：literally means “sleep with somebody”. It is more explicit than the first expression and can be easily guessed even if you are from a foreign culture. But since “sleep”(睡觉) is a very normal usage in both languages, the extended meaning is considered as much polite as an euphemism. There are also similar expressions in Chinese, such as “上床”(get in bed) .
• sex: aside from the aforementioned examples, Chinese people also use its English “sex” instead of Chinese to refer to it. It sounds weird, but the sex taboo seems to lose its flavor when Chinese people speak it in another language with a more open and liberal cultural background.

In this case, it might be more accurate for the subtitle groups to translate the original “sex” sentence by using the euphemism which fits more in the Chinese context. That’s especially welcomed when it comes to parents speaking to a child, which Chinese parents would avoid talking about directly in reality. On the other hand, Chinese audience may feel the blatant lines strange, or may over-react to a normal circumstance happened in western cultures.

Hope the tips of translation concerning cultural difference is helpful for you! 😄 

Posted by Cassie