Frozen’s “Let It Go” in Chinese Dialects

I was a little late to the party, but I finally saw Disney’s Frozen recently, and was very impressed. Later I did a bit of searching for different language versions of the movie’s hit song, “Let It Go,” and aside from discovering an impressive 25 language mashup version of the song, I also made another interesting find: Chinese dialect (/fangyan/topolect) versions of the song!

Of the videos included below, only the English, Mandarin, and Cantonese audio versions are official Disney productions. The others are fan creations, and as such, vary widely in quality. Some are translations of the original, while others are spoofs (恶搞) or partial spoofs. I’ve got them roughly in order of quality below (the worst at the bottom), so don’t say I didn’t warn you! (Links go to Chinese video sites (with ads); embedded videos are Disney’s official audio versions with fan-added subtitles from YouTube.)

I’m no expert on any of these dialects/fangyan, so if anyone has any corrections to make, please leave a comment.

[Side note: it was kind of weird adding “-ese” or “-nese” to some of those place names, so I used a hyphen to make it clearer which places the dialects/fangan came from.]
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John Pasden

John is a Shanghai-based linguist and entrepreneur, founder of AllSet Learning.

Comments

  1. Awesome work. Great finds! I loved that song and that film.

  2. Benjamin C. Says: March 2, 2014 at 10:24 pm

    I notice you left out the official Taiwan (Mandarin) cut of the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v35dWC64yng

    I don’t like it quite as much as the mainland dub, but the different lyrics do match up with the original’s lip movement better.

  3. Benjamin C. Says: March 2, 2014 at 10:35 pm

    Oh also the Dalianese version hotlink incorrectly goes to the Sichuanese version. This comment doesn’t need approval.

  4. In the second to last paragraph, the pinyin should be “fangyan” not “fangan”. ; )

  5. nihaotheheckareyou Says: March 8, 2014 at 12:37 am

    shanghai version, so DIY.

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