Offense taken due to Chinese phrases?

POSTED BY: Forrestwolf
UPDATED: Wednesday, January 11, 2006 10:56
VIEWED: 21032
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LINGYULONG

Tuesday, January 3, 2006 10:50 AM

I am Chinese (I speak Mandarin fluently, although it is not my home dialect). I do not find the Chinese used in Firefly to be overly offensive, but I do find much of it to be poorly used. Like...there are certain phrases/curses that you only use in certain situations, but Firefly throws these phrases around regardless of the situation.

What I do find offensive about the Chinese in Firefly is that Chinese is often used for cursing, which makes Chinese seem like a less sophisticated/respectable language. Personally, I find English to be a much more offensive language. I'm a little hurt that Chinese (a language of elegant poetry) has been reduced to a language of lowlife cursing.

OOKAMIKAWAHARA

Friday, January 6, 2006 12:42 AM

LingYulong
Thank you for your post and also your feelings.
I understand where you are coming from. One hand yes it is kinda sad that Chinese is only used for cussing in the show. On the other hand it is a great way to get many American's (I can't speak for the European's here) to learn not only the culture, history, and language of China. When I was learning Japanese, my class had fun w/ the language (cussing / weird sentences etc) yet we also cared about the culture, history, and language. It has enriched my life and I hope that the usage of it in Serenity/Firefly will eventually enrich others as well. (Before go any further yes I am aware of the whole mess between Japan and her neighbors and yes I agree that they need to learn more from history and repent etc) Just wanted to get that out of the way. Yeah thats the unfortent thing to, is that many people don't understand the context of when a certain word or phrase should be used. Thus they take it out of context or translate it wrong. The funny thing is as you stated people might thing that it is a less sophisticated/ respected language. Anyone that thinks that is a fool!!! Having worked a little with the language during one of my East Asian Philosophy classes. Hitting the sounds just right w/ correct accent is one of the hardest parts. I still have not mastered all of the characters that the Japanese have borrowed from your language and is something I continue to work on. Sorry for the long post, but hope it helps and hang in there. This board is a way to correct the misconceptions that others have of the language, culture, and history. mata, Ookami yori

Surren welcome to a long shiny post here huh.
I ain't disaggren, I only wanted a drink!!!

ROLAND19

Friday, January 6, 2006 4:13 AM

I dragged (literally...okay, not really) a couple of my friends to see the BDM opening weekend. They both thought it was great, but that's beside the point.
One of my friends, Cuong, is Chinese (in case the name didn't give it away). When I asked him what he thought of the use of Chinese in the movie, he said he couldn't tell what the hell they were saying.
There's 2 reasons I can come up with for this: 1)The BDM didn't use as much Chinese as the show, and 2)On the Firefly DVD the cast and crew talked about how they had so much trouble learning to speak the phrases, and many times it was to the point of incoherence.

-------------------------------------------------
The hardest thing in this world is to live in it.

DEEPKEY

Wednesday, January 11, 2006 12:57 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by jabula:
Lurker here, and sorry, I know this is a late response but I felt like commenting

I speak Chinese, and truth be told. I've never found Firefly offensive. In fact, I'm often tickled pink by their inventive use of the Chinese language. Of course, half the time, I actually left wondering what they're actually saying in Chinese

I'll hush up now.

My wife's Chinese, Mandarin First Language, but can't understand the majority of what is said on the show.

I'm Anglo-Saxon and "Learning" Mandarin (Bad Mandarin) and understand about half of what is said, and I believe the phrases I encounter from PROC and Taiwan are considerably up a level from the harmless fun insults traded on Firefly.

Go on, call someone a Monkey's Bum:
"Houzhe de Pigou."

-Deepkey.

TYM

Wednesday, January 11, 2006 3:01 AM

Actually, I thought the reason the show used Chinese mostly for swearing/cursing was to give them freer rein to be more creative in the swearing and keep it real (in the sense that adults do tend to swear a lot, particularly in the kinds of high-stress situations that our crew finds themselves in). It's kinda how in Buffy Spike would get away with saying certain things because he used British slang rather than American English (though I can't remember any examples right now). In the same way, on {i]Firefly characters couldn't toss words like "shit" and "damn" around willy-nilly in English, but they could get around it using Chinese.

In the movie, I recall being tickled similarly by phrases like Mal's "What in the sphincter of hell are you playing at?" and Kaylee's "I ain't had nothin' twixt my nethers weren't run on batteries", because the wordplay allowed the characters to say things a little more, ah, creatively without resorting to typical swear words that might've been censored or otherwise edited.

CHRISTHECYNIC

Wednesday, January 11, 2006 3:13 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Tym:
Actually, I thought the reason the show used Chinese mostly for swearing/cursing was to give them freer rein to be more creative in the swearing and keep it real

No, Joss wanted to enforce the idea that Chinese and American cultures had meshed in the future. He then used that to give more freedom of profanity, but the reason was the meshing of cultures.

CHRISTHECYNIC

Wednesday, January 11, 2006 3:14 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Forrestwolf:
Keep in mind - she's yet to SEE the show (I'm hoping she might after she plays the game!).

Well I assume that in spite of the fact she isn't playing the game you'll get her to watch. You'll have to tell us what she thinks.

TYM

Wednesday, January 11, 2006 3:27 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by christhecynic:
Quote:
Originally posted by Tym:
Actually, I thought the reason the show used Chinese mostly for swearing/cursing was to give them freer rein to be more creative in the swearing and keep it real

No, Joss wanted to enforce the idea that Chinese and American cultures had meshed in the future. He then used that to give more freedom of profanity, but the reason was the meshing of cultures.

My bad, I wasn't clear. Of course, the reason was Joss's vision of the future, with the Alliance and all.

I was posting in response to Lingyulong's comment above about the Chinese phrases being used for cursing only. What I meant to say when I used the word "reason" was that a functional reason for peppering the dialogue with Chinese phrases mostly for cursing and less so for regular conversation and such, was that using Chinese allowed Joss to get around the difficulty of incorporating "adult" language on network TV. Other functional reasons include the fact that this was an English language TV show intended to air on an American TV network, so of course it couldn't be a bilingual program, and also that none of the actors were marvellously skilled at speaking Mandarin :)

But yes, above all, of course, the whole Chinese thing started with Joss' premise of how the Alliance came to be, without having an exposition fairy explain it all to us in the show itself.

DEEPKEY

Wednesday, January 11, 2006 10:56 AM

Message contains a short definition of a word found offensive in UK but not US.

Quote:
Originally posted by Tym:
Buffy Spike would get away with saying certain things because he used British slang rather than American English (though I can't remember any examples right now).

Second series of Buffy, Drucilla takes of a henchman's glasses and is about to torture him, Spike turns to Drucilla and says:
"He may be a Wanker, but he's the best one we've got"

"Wanker" litterally means a man who plays with himself ("too much"), and rather unfortunately I've seen someone on cast and crew of one of Weldon's series with it as a surname.

Generally it's taken to mean idiot as unless it's said by a woman, it's probably kettle calling a pot black.....

This has been used on prime time on BBC2, similar to Bart Simpson using the word "Fanny" which would never be used on a British TV show as it has a deep and personal meaning.

Fact: first use on American Television was Phil Collins on Miami Vice, Directors wanted to use colloqiual english for extra authenticity. He went through a veritable lexicon of expletives with the directors saying "You can't say that on TV" until they heard "That Blokes a Wanker", they hadn't heard of it, Phil Collins just said it meant "idiot" leaving out masturbation references and the rest is history.

-Deepkey.

"What, no, I don't believe it, that bloke's a W@nker...."
-Big Train.

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