The Interpreter (2016) [-]
Apr 09 2025
The Interpreter is a Chinese romance drama running 42 45-minute episodes.
The setting is Shanghai's IAI (International Academy of Interpretation?) where Cheng Jiayang (Huang Xuan) is the young hotshot Chinese-French interpreter who is very demanding of his students. In the new trainee class is aspiring interpreter Qiao Fei (Yang Mi) who already had a bad run-in with Jiayang a couple years ago in Switzerland.
He already thinks she's not cut out to be an interpreter so he's especially hard on her but she perseveres and slowly a romance develops. But it turns out she used to date Jiayang's older brother Goa Jiaming (Gao Weiguang) and left Jiaming without saying goodbye and taking $100k (though that's a misunderstanding that is not cleared until halfway through the series). In any case that means Jiayang's mom is against Qiao Fei having anything to do with her sons.
On the good side the leads make a good looking couple (though in the Switzerland scenes Jiayang has an awful haircut) and Qiao Fei's roommate, small time actress Wu Jiayi (Li Xirui/Sierra Lee), is also quite attractive and has her own romantic subplot.
Unfortunately the series has lots of annoyances. Naturally a lot of translating into French which is obviously dubbed because it's out of sync with the mouth movements and the voices are different people. Several times they go to Switzerland but that must have been filmed at one time since Jiayang has a different haircut and actually kind of looks different so it's funny when he's in Shanghai looking great in one scene then travels to Switzerland and looks like his old self in the next scene.
There is a lot of skipping ahead and then barely referencing what was omitted. For example Jiayi meets a famous actor who gives her a ride in his van and then a couple of episodes later they're breaking up with no appearances in between. Or when another character gets married and a few episodes later we get back to them and her husband is abusing her and apparently it's been going on for a while. The main plot also sometimes seems to skip things.
As for the main characters they're both too secretive, especially Qiao Fei. In order to spare the other's feeling they'll both lie. This always backfires leading to people thinking one or the other is doing bad things or they are discovered in the lie. But apparently they don't learn and keep lying to each other. And the whole Qiao Fei breaks up with Jiayang to spare him in case she dies in a 50/50 brain surgery yet the breakup is also quite cruel to him.
So I did watch the whole thing and there are whole episodes and parts of episodes which are quite good. But this is really not a well produced series and has lots of flaws and lacks polish. If not for Yang Mi and Li Xirui I wouldn't have watched it all the way. Would not recommend watching this series.
The setting is Shanghai's IAI (International Academy of Interpretation?) where Cheng Jiayang (Huang Xuan) is the young hotshot Chinese-French interpreter who is very demanding of his students. In the new trainee class is aspiring interpreter Qiao Fei (Yang Mi) who already had a bad run-in with Jiayang a couple years ago in Switzerland.
He already thinks she's not cut out to be an interpreter so he's especially hard on her but she perseveres and slowly a romance develops. But it turns out she used to date Jiayang's older brother Goa Jiaming (Gao Weiguang) and left Jiaming without saying goodbye and taking $100k (though that's a misunderstanding that is not cleared until halfway through the series). In any case that means Jiayang's mom is against Qiao Fei having anything to do with her sons.
On the good side the leads make a good looking couple (though in the Switzerland scenes Jiayang has an awful haircut) and Qiao Fei's roommate, small time actress Wu Jiayi (Li Xirui/Sierra Lee), is also quite attractive and has her own romantic subplot.
Unfortunately the series has lots of annoyances. Naturally a lot of translating into French which is obviously dubbed because it's out of sync with the mouth movements and the voices are different people. Several times they go to Switzerland but that must have been filmed at one time since Jiayang has a different haircut and actually kind of looks different so it's funny when he's in Shanghai looking great in one scene then travels to Switzerland and looks like his old self in the next scene.
There is a lot of skipping ahead and then barely referencing what was omitted. For example Jiayi meets a famous actor who gives her a ride in his van and then a couple of episodes later they're breaking up with no appearances in between. Or when another character gets married and a few episodes later we get back to them and her husband is abusing her and apparently it's been going on for a while. The main plot also sometimes seems to skip things.
As for the main characters they're both too secretive, especially Qiao Fei. In order to spare the other's feeling they'll both lie. This always backfires leading to people thinking one or the other is doing bad things or they are discovered in the lie. But apparently they don't learn and keep lying to each other. And the whole Qiao Fei breaks up with Jiayang to spare him in case she dies in a 50/50 brain surgery yet the breakup is also quite cruel to him.
So I did watch the whole thing and there are whole episodes and parts of episodes which are quite good. But this is really not a well produced series and has lots of flaws and lacks polish. If not for Yang Mi and Li Xirui I wouldn't have watched it all the way. Would not recommend watching this series.