Turns out that the Chinese youtube-substitute Youku has all five seasons of the new series of Doctor Who. Even better, they have subtitles in Mandarin, which is super-interesting (to me and presumably a handful of other strange people). They’re pretty well done, but it still loses a bit in translation, unsurprisingly. The show’s name becomes 神秘博士 《shen2mi4 bo2shi4》, ‘Mysterious Doctor’. Interestingly, The Doctor becomes 博士, meaning Doctor in the academic sense rather than the medical sense. Mandarin also doesn’t have a definite article, which means that “I’m The Doctor!” becomes the rather less dramatic 我是博士 《wo3 shi4 bo2shi4》, effectively “I have a Ph.D!”. (The translation of ‘wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey’ is pretty smooth, though).

The fact that it has subtitles also means I can try to convince a friend of mine here to watch it with me… Though if anyone knows how to begin explaining the concept of Doctor Who to someone who has never even heard of it, let alone do so in Mandarin, let me know.