Spain is a very popular country in China. Good proof of this are the 647,801 Chinese tourists who visited our country in 2024. Which represents an increase of 66.7% compared to 2023, according to data published by The reason.
That euphoria for Spain also has its reflection in the increase in the interest of the Chinese to learn Spanish. One of the most obvious tests of that enthusiasm we have found in the most unexpected place: Notease Cloud Music, a streaming music platform similar to Spotify in which the number of Chinese translations of the lyrics of the reggaeton songs in Spanish have been fired.
Spanish in Chinese classrooms. Spanish is living an unprecedented boom in China. According to the report “El Español: A Living Language” of 2024 prepared by the Cervantes Institute, there are currently about 54,283 active Spanish students in the teaching centers of the Asian country.
Of these, approximately 8,874 are learning Spanish at primary, secondary and professional training levels, while 34,823 are learning it at the university. The most striking thing is that 10,586 are learning it in academies and by other media and that is where the use of other alternative learning channels of the language such as the lyrics of the songs comes into play.
Songs to learn Spanish. According to a study prepared by the Department of Translation and Language Sciences of the Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona, Latin music, and especially reggaeton, has become a powerful tool for teaching and learning Spanish in China. The lyrics of the reggaeton songs are bringing students closer to colloquial and cultural expressions of the Spanish -speaking world that have no representation in the academic field.
According to the study of which it has echoed Phys.orgnon -professional translators and users have shared in the Chinese application of Streaming of Netease Cloud Music Translations in Chinese of songs originally sung in Spanish. Some of those letters have achieved millions of visualizations, becoming referents for those who learn Spanish for free.
A letter from Bad Bunny translated into Chinese
China goes perreo. According to the data collected by the study of the Pompeu Fabra University, reggaeton songs are the most popular among Chinese students looking to learn Spanish in an alternative way, being the gender preferred by its catchy rhythm and colloquial language.
However, the translation of reggaeton letters raises unique challenges due to explicit content and the presence of colloquial expressions without direct equivalents in Chinese. To save these cultural and linguistic differences, translators use strategies such as domestication, the use of euphemisms and the creative adaptation of phrases to go unnoticed to the censorship of algorithms in China.
In China nobody “leaves you planted”. Colloquial expressions that we usually use in Spanish, such as “left” or “fuck”, have no direct translation to the Chinese, so translators have lay new linguistic bridges using their own expressions with a similar meaning.
The researchers detected that, for example, to translate the expression “leave planted”, the Chinese translators used the Chinese expression “release pigeons (放鸽子). Traditionally, the pigeons have been considered messengers and, in the Chinese imaginary, release a dove that does not return is associated with a broken promise, approaching in a symbolic way the Chinese the meaning of the expression to the local public.
Sexual references, so common in Latin genres, have also had their creative translation, and have changed “fuck” or “do” the original letters for expressions such as “possess” or “exchange pleasure.” In addition, to avoid censorship, asterisks are interspersed between the Hanzi (Chinese characters) to mislead the censorship algorithms (性*感/火*辣) when words “uploads” or anglicisms such as hot, sexy o horny.
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Image | Commons Wikimedia (Francis), Unsplash
