A little word about those Chinese celebrity “Reuters” photos...
File this one under petty beefs. I know I’m just a single C-drama fan raising my fist to make a cranky, trivial complaint into the void...but here I go!
Have you ever come across these posts and wondered, what is a “reuters”? Or maybe who is Reuters?
Credit: Screengrab from X.com
Well, I’m here to let you know definitively that no, the award-winning photojournalists at the venerable 173-year-old Reuters News Agency do not go around taking grainy behind-the-scenes photos and videos of your favourite Chinese celebrity during a film shoot. They’re too busy documenting global events, like the world in photos for 2024 or these harrowing scenes from the L.A. fires.
Reuters is also strictly a proper noun, so no, “reuters” is most definitely not a common noun either! You would never see it identified as anything other than the Canadian-owned international news agency in any English dictionary. (Yup, the former British news agency once headquartered on Fleet Street has been Canadian-owned since 2008.)
But tell all this to the celebrity fandoms and countless social media posters who use the word “reuters” like a common noun -- or actually attribute those shaky videos and photos to the news agency! The first time I saw it, I was so confused. Reuters took these photos? I thought for a hot second. But then I started seeing “reuters” all over C-drama social media posts. The context is typically leaked images and videos from film and TV sets.
I was a Reuters correspondent for almost 15 years, so I confess I found the misuse of the company name somewhat annoying --- perhaps unreasonably so? While baffling, I assumed it has something to do with how Reuters is translated in Chinese: lùtòu shè (路透社).
I was relieved and delighted when I stumbled across a Reddit discussion on the /CDrama subreddit that tangentially addressed this issue. The subreddit moderator, Lotus_swimmer, who posted the original discussion about the use of daipai (代拍) explained, “The reason why I brought Reuters up is because lots of internationals actually believe it's actually THE Reuters taking the photograph.”
As user northfeng explained: “Reuters (the news company) in China is called "路透社" but the first two words "路透" is used specifically for unofficial on-the-scene filming pics and is literally translated as "Street spoiler."...From the way I've seen it used, I don't think people even know why they are called "reuters" and the word just took [on a] life of its own in the international community.”
The user made a good point that international K-pop fans simply adopt Korean pop culture words like sasaeng, maknae, and aegyo, and wished global Chinese entertainment fans would do the same with Chinese terminology, such as defaulting to lùtòu instead of the awkward reuters/Reuters mistranslation.
Anyway, there you have it! Who knows, maybe one day, reuters as a common noun will be ubiquitous —- a little like how everyone uses Google as a verb…but I kind of hope not?
