Get a language coach, wo chiu chiu ni...

[khaosworks]

If you think my Mandarin is bad, with each passing episode Joss Whedon's use of Mandarin in Firefly gets on my nerves more and more. I've almost completely given up trying to figure out what the actors are trying to say, it's pronounced so badly it's incomprehensible.

In general, Firefly's growing on me, except for Cry-Me-A-River. Shut up, River. At least she didn't say anything this episode.

Comments

[camwyn]

Wasn't planning on watching it anyway, but thanks for the warning.

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, is it the kind of bad that can be explained by 500 years of linguistic drift, or is it the kind of bad that suggests the writers translated all the lines into Mandarin using Babelfish?

-R

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

I find it extremely difficult to believe that 500 years of linguistic drift would produce such profound changes in Mandarin that render it completely atonal, but show no changes in English, for one. The other reason it's hard to buy that is that English has been kind of locked in place with the exception of accental differences since Shakespeare's time (Asimov's theory is that it's because we don't want to lose Shakespeare), but more likely than not in modern times record keeping and education have become better so continuity of language is better. I'd daresay most languages today will change little over the next 500 years (with the exception of new slang, which is vocabulary change, really) because of that.

So what they're speaking is just bad Mandarin by any standards. How they can even communicate without tones in a tonal language is beyond me.

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

Ah, ok, so it's not so much the writers fault as the actors...

-R

[almeda.livejournal.com]

Well, getting Watsonian on its ass, perhaps the widening of the language's use to all kinds of people not raised with tonal languages caused an atonal patois to emerge?

That said, I think the actors probably need to be better coached, yes. :->

As someone who doesn't speak it, even a little (monolect, here - classic American), I found even the pasted-on fake use they have to be a wonderful sensawunda thing - these folks are Not Us, and come from a world with different history from ours, because look, in times of stress, they fall back into cussing (I'm assuming) in this language, which means they use it often enough as a trade tongue or whatnot to be reflexive-fluent. Good idea, bad execution, perhaps.

And I waver between being impressed and glad that they don't subtitle it, to wishing to God they would so I could get the joke. :->

[khaosworks.livejournal.com]

That's the thing. If they wanted to be futuristic, they could have developed a synthetic language and produced the same results - Klingon, or Thieves' Cant, or whatever. Whedon obviously has a specific reason for choosing Chinese. It'd be fine if I couldn't understand it at all, but to have them butcher a language you actually know and can make out half the time (even when they murder it), is not just annoying, but it's distracting and actually jolts me out of a suspension of disbelief. In a SF/fantasy series, that's not good.

Some fans have also commented they would like to know what's being said - and no, they don't limit it to cussing. In the latest episode, Kaylee says something to Mal I can't make out and Mal snaps back, that it's none of her business. Book asks Simon if he has an encyclopedia and Simon says, "Dang rang", i.e. "Of course." Wash when rejecting Saffron's advances cries out something which I'm kind of guessing has to do with his marital status. In "The Train Job", Jayne tells Simon something and punctuates it with a "dong ma?" i.e. "You understand?"

If they got it right, it'd actually increase my fun, since I'd feel like I'm in on a joke few people understand - like Alan Moore's incredible use of Chinese in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 1 or when they actually use proper speakers of Chinese in movies like "Year of the Dragon". A counter example would be when Goldfinger's "Korean" guards in "Goldfinger" were actually speaking Cantonese - that kind of spoils it. I'd rather they not use it at all than get it right. Maybe that's how Klingon speakers feel when they see Picard, et al butcher it in the TV show.

That was supposed to be Mandarin!?

[(Anonymous)]

I. Had. No. Idea.

Thought it was just adlibbed gibberish, whose meaning you were supposed to glork from context.

Already there are two silver linings if Firefly ever gets cancelled--the Mandarin use and the theme song. Not good.

If there isn't some improvement soon, Joss Whedon should start including Mandarin subtitles whenever 'Mandarin' is spoken on the show.