Thanks to my new baby Aidan, I have been watching quite a bit of Peppa Pig recently. I have been watching on Netflix with Chinese dialogue and English subtitles for my wife (who can’t speak a word of Chinese).
I’m actually really impressed with the quality of the voice over in the Chinese version. The acting is great, the scripts are great, and the translation is good.
I think it’s a bit under-translated in several places, possibly because of the limitation of having to match the screen. There are issues like songs suddenly being sung in English for no reason (the voice over artist didn’t want to re-record the songs I suspect). Also in one episode Peppa starts to speak French. In the English version she speaks French with a strong English accent “Jai Ma Peele Peppa Pig”. In the Chinese version, I was hoping they would do French with a strong Chinese accent, but instead they just used the same sound as the original English, so we totally changed voice actor mid-scene.
All those three issues are not actually the translator’s fault. They are to do with the process as a whole not working. That’s a common problem and I’ve heard Netflix is particularly bad for that.
However it’s a great show and useful educational resource!