Students' shot at Fame is murder in the first degree

China's Central Academy of Drama has such notable alumni as Gong Li and Zhang Ziyi. New York's High School of Performing Arts, now known as Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music &Art and Performing Arts, can point to Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Jennifer Aniston. It's only natural that students at the former school should play Class of 1984 of the latter in the musical Fame. If ever there was a vehicle for performing art students to hone their singing, dancing and acting skills, this movie-turned-stage musical is it.

I've been asked by talent agencies in Beijing: "We have a bunch of teenage boys or girls. We want to launch a musical for them. Can you recommend one?"

Let me see. The Sound of Music has eight kids, including the oldest daughter's boyfriend. But they are disparate in age and subordinate in action. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers has room for 14 youngsters, but it's a bit too American. I thought of others, too, but most musicals tend to concentrate on a handful of starring roles.

But not Fame. It calls for an ensemble cast, with a dozen characters each given a big number. Thematically, Chinese students can also relate better to their American counterparts than to cowboys.

The just-finished production at the Experimental Theater of the Central Academy of Drama was like opening a Beijing outlet of United States-themed restaurant chain. But there's a hitch: food needs no translation; musicals do, just like a KFC menu or advertising slogan.

Now imagine the slogan "We do chicken right" put into Chinese. It becomes "wo men zuo ji shi dui de", which means "It's alright we become prostitutes". To be blunt, Fame has this level of translation. I seriously doubt the translators used a software program and looked up every word in a dictionary. For example, Americans address their teachers as "Mr" or "Miss". Unfortunately the dictionary sanctioned translation of "Miss" is "Xiao Jie", which now is mostly for women of ill repute. Besides, with a cast full of people the same age, it took me a while to figure out who was the teacher and who was the student since both were called "Miss". Why can't they simply call their teachers "Teacher" as they do in China?

Some of the lyrics were totally unsingable because the words were out of whack with the tunes. It is not an exaggeration to call it the murder of the Chinese language - and a distortion of English, too.

There were haphazard attempts at localization but the result was less than ideal. You have to plan in advance and know exactly what level of localization fits a certain production. It varies by the program and the audience. Last year's touring production of Mama Mia! hit the bull's eye because the translated titles ingeniously conveyed its joie de vivre rather than mechanically following each word in the original text.

The youthful cast did a competent job, but it was obvious a typical Chinese audience cannot digest too much unfamiliar music at a single sitting. The set and lighting infused energy into the show without overpowering it. Especially worth noting was the live band, a rarity for a Chinese production. Hopefully it chips a piece from the traditional inertia of China's stage performances, which is pre-recorded music and lip-synching.