Escaping mistranslations: how we got our Chinese name

Hi, my name is Stan and I am an International Marketing and Student Recruitment Officer at Escape Studios. On the daily, you can see me on the road representing us on international education fairs and meeting our worldwide partners or working on our international strategy and marketing.

A big chunk of my role involves managing our Chinese social media accounts on platforms such as WeChat, RedNote or Bilibili. Indeed, the social media landscape in China is starkly different to what we’re used to here. Western platforms, such as Instagram or Facebook, are not widely used, and popular content is often focused on either utility, like tutorials, or conversely, is made to be silly and light-hearted, yet informative.

Most importantly, the Chinese audience appreciates localisation, that is adjusting the feel and voice of the brand to their local customs and trends. This became particularly apparent upon my recruitment tour in China in April 2026, where it quickly became clear that our name, “Escape Studios,” does not translate well into Mandarin.

Foreign brands in China often use a standardised Chinese name - something we did not have. In turn, third parties translated our name on our behalf, and did so badly. Ever heard of “Escaping Film School,” or “Running away from a workshop”!? These are real-life examples of how our name was misconstrued - a funny situation that then highlighted a real, serious gap in our China strategy. 

Upon my return, I started thinking about how to tackle this issue. With help of our Chinese MA Visual Effects Production (3D) alumna, Aihui Cui, we brainstormed names that help explain what we do to Mandarin-speaking audiences clearly, while standing close to our true brand identity. 

We are proud to share the Chinese name we have decided upon is: 

艺斯凯普游戏与动画学院 - yì sī kǎi pǔ yóu xì yǔ dòng huà xué yuàn

Breaking down the name into two parts: 

• 艺斯凯普 (yì sī kǎi pǔ) - try saying it out loud and you may notice it sounds like “Escape”! But that’s not the end. Other than being a phonetic transliteration of our English name, the first character used, 艺 (yì) means ‘art,’ immediately alluding to the fact that we are, indeed, an art school.  

• 游戏与动画学院 (yóu xì yǔ dòng huà xué yuàn) - instead of “Studios,” which proved difficult to translate literally, we decided to take a broader approach and translate this part of the name as “Games and Animation College.” This, in combination with the character 艺, neatly encompasses all the major disciplines we specialise in and is easier to understand.

In addition to the name translation, we are introducing two beautiful versions of our logo for China. The full-length version stacks our original logo with the full Mandarin name, combining our familiar Western branding with Chinese characters neatly sandwiched between “Escape Studios” and “London.” The shortened version, on the other hand, includes the iconic Escape “E,” juxtaposed with vertical 艺斯凯普, highlighting our witty transliteration ‘YI SI KAI PU’ as the true star of the name. 

We are very excited for this new chapter in our global journey. We look forward to welcoming more students from all around the world, with the help of initiatives just like this that help us bring Escape Studios closer to students everywhere. 

For more information, head to our China page, and make sure to follow us on Chinese social media:

• WeChat ID: @EscapeStudios2024 

• RedNote: Escape Studios 伦敦 

• Bilibili: Escape Studios 伦敦.