Arab viewers tune into TV series

High-quality dubbing and translation give Middle East audience intriguing glimpse into poverty alleviation, Deng Zhangyu reports.

When Ma Ning introduced Minning Town — a hit Chinese series telling the story of poverty alleviation — to Arab television stations last year, they showed, initially, little interest.

The series is now airing in many Arab nations like Egypt and Sudan, gaining a rising popularity after being well dubbed and translated. It also got an Arabic title which means "a road to happiness" in English.

"The dubbing helps a lot and enables it to be better accepted by Arab audiences," says Ma, manager of Wisdom House International Culture Communication Group that is in charge of the dubbing and distribution of Minning Town in the Arab world.

Minning Town vividly narrates the shifting nature of life and the fortunes of people who once lived in a poor mountainous area in Yinchuan, Ningxia Hui autonomous region, where sandstorms, water shortages and poor transportation seemed to trap them in the 1990s. After relocation to a more inhabitable village near the Yellow River, people experienced great changes and embraced a better life in the Gobi Desert.

Characters in the Chinese drama employ the dialects used in Ningxia rather than standard Mandarin, which is regarded as one of its attractions to Chinese audiences. The Arabic version chose Syrian Arabic, a dialect widely spoken in the Gulf, to dub the series.

Ma says they did a lot of research and surveys before finally choosing to dub it in Syrian Arabic to "close the distance with Arab audiences".