In August 2006, the New York Times published a story about Chinese volunteers who were spending night after night creating Chinese subtitles for American TV series - CSI, Lost, and tons of relatively unknown shows you can find on Shooter.cn, the biggest Chinese subtitle portal.

That NYT piece was an adrenaline shot to the heart for Chinese fans of American TV and film. Since then, the underground subtitle creator groups have ballooned.

YTET (伊甸园), YYeTs(人人影视), FRM(风软) are today’s most active communities in China, who are able to release the Chinese subtitles for the latest episode of 24 or Prison Break in less than 2 hours once it’s finished screening back in the US — not to mention the Hollywood movies which always leave the volunteers days to make perfect translations for the films themselves, and even the directors’ commentaries.

Two months ago in Beijing’s Line 1 subway, I spotted some professionally-produced trailers with Chinese subtitles — not only the traditional subtitles for dialogues, but even with perfect special-effected subtitles for the logos of studios, film titles, and promotional slogans. Yeah, you can find how it looks in the above video clip - the Chinese trailer of The Readers.

If you thought this great subtitling job was done by China Film Group, the only distributor for foreign films in China, you’re dead wrong. They don’t even translate the trailers screened in theaters for Chinese audiences, so do they have any reason to do an extra job for subway commuters?

This afternoon, I happened upon the answer. The fancy Chinese trailers are all produced by YTET, which I mentioned above. In this Coming Soon sector of their online forum, you can find the complete list. Here’s a playlist on Youku, but not complete.

Now I figured out what the Beijing Subway Operation Company has done is simply wiping YTET’s opening screen. And China Film Group will never hire YTET for making Chinese trailers. It’s all about mianzi, isn’t it?