discussion keeps the world turning.
This is Roundtable.
You're tuned into Roundtable.
I'm Steve Hatherly.
And coming up next, as part of our national holiday specials, we're bringing you episodes from Ni How Are You.
It's a series of cross-cultural conversations exploring how people in China and the United States see, experience,
and understand each other.
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And now.
Zhang Junan has spent years translating some of China's biggest films,
but for once upon a time in the Middle East, this project pushed him further.
For him, the work is about more than finding the right words.
It is also about capturing feeling, turning a pun on a character's
name into a line that lands the same joke in English, or condensing a Chinese idiom about lantern-lit nights
and flowing wine into just four words that can still carry the rhythm of the original.
Even the film's English title, a striking departure from its Chinese original,
raises questions about how far a translator can, and should, go in reshaping a story for a new audience.
Once Upon a Time in the Middle East topped China's box office in recent months
and is also landing in North American screens.