Inconsistant Asian influence?
POSTED BY: cct
UPDATED: Thursday, August 28, 2003 16:54
VIEWED: 6172
PAGE 2 of 2
What's this? American and Canadian actors can't pronounce Chinese properly?
The movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was a movie received poorly by critics throughout China.
One of the chief complaints? The actors had sloppy pronounciation of Chinese.
Anybody seen Terminator 2? Sarah Connor can't pronounce Spanish worth a damn.
Back when I used to be a security officer at a ritzy condo in what is now Aventura, we had a lot of young wealthy Russian residents. (I didn't ask. You shouldn't either.) I asked them how to say various key phrases in Russian. You know, Good Morning, Good Evening, Good Night. That sort of stuff. I still remember the session.
Russian Resident: It's pronounced "Spakoyne Noche."
Me: "Spakoyne Noche?"
Russian Resident: No. "Spakoyne Noche."
Me: "Spakoyne Noche?"
Russian Resident: Yes, that's right.
Me: Cool. "Spakoyne Noche!"
Russian Resident: No. "Spakoyne Noche."
Me: I just said "Spakoyne Noche."
Russian Resident: No. You said, "Spakoyne Noche." It's pronounced "Spakoyne Noche."
Me: "Spakoyne Noche?"
Russian Resident: Yes, that's right.
As you can see, I have no idea what I did differently in the various utterances. There were nuances of pronounciation I wasn't even hearing, and was copying only by accident. To this day, I can't even hazard an accurate spelling of what I was trying to say.
I wouldn't expect much better from a movie version of Firefly. 'Parroting' is not as easy as it seems sometimes.
--Anthony
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
during european colonialism:
colonies were foundered in various parts - south america belongs to decendents of southern europe. north america - northern europe. Yet macdonalds is everywhere.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
yeah, no speaking roles by any Chinese. I don't know what's up there.
I do know that there is (or was) a coach onset trying to help the cast with their pronunciation, as evidenced from the gagreel. The coach even sounds like a native speaker, although I never got a look. I bet that info is available somewhere. The gagreel also shows multiple takes by the cast of the chinglish parts of the script. So, we know they practiced.
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
It looks like the actors struggled with the Chinese. It can't be easy. Did someone with a Master's degree and a cool business card say it's easy to speak perfect Chinese?
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Just one more random idea:
Many people have noticed similarities between Firefly and parts of various anime stories. Is it possible that the handling of the Asian influence in Firefly is another of these. For instance, Rurouni Kenshin is 'Japanese' and in 'Japan' and most of the background characters look Japanese, but the main characters and major plot characters do not.
XenArc
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
I don't think it's a matter of censorship . . . most of the expressions in Chinese that one might call bad language could be translated by folks in a clean interpretation that might be naughty but not obscene . . . an exception would be authentic bad language which when used in context is bad but these aren't that common in the series. The mispronunciations are not just the "naughty words" but occur even with common expressions.
I don't think it's laziness either. I suspect it's that the actors just didn't have the coaching on tones that they needed to accurately reproduce the sounds.
The inconsistency is probably due to taping without a "coach" on one day or misremembering how things were pronounced previously in other episodes . . . or even inconsitent spelling of phrases so that the actors don't even realize they're saying the same word at different times.
Brian David Phillips, PhD, CH [phillips@nccu.edu.tw]
MeiguoLangren Zai Taibei (An American Werewolf in Taipei)
Assoc. Prof., English Dept., NCCU Taipei, Taiwan (R.O.C.)
http://phillips.personal.nccu.edu.tw/index.html
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
It may not be "easy" to have perfect pronunciation in Mandarin Chinese but most comparative linguists agree that spoken conversational Mandarin (not written Chinese) is one of the easiest languages to pick up.
The grammar is simple and very flexible and once you get the hang of the tones it is easier to build fluency than most European languages.
Of course, the actors for Firefly are not learning the language, they are learning to parrot a few phrases.
If they have a coach, then either the work is sloppy or the production company just doesn't have the time to put into proper practice or retakes. The accuracy of the Chinese is probably not really very high up on the priorities in getting the show out.
I haven't seen the gagreel so I wasn't aware that there was a language coach on set . . . that makes me feel even worse about the Chinese pronunciation as any actor worth his salt with good model material should be able to reproduce the lines well enough . . . unless, as has been the case on MANY Hollywood films that uses Chinese, the coach is someone who isn't strong at pronunciation in the first place. The John Wayne film I mentioned earlier had language coaches for Wayne but the guy was a Hong Kong Chinese who actually didn't speak fluent Mandarin himself - just a few broken phrases with an incredibly thick Cantonese accent - and so Wayne - who is not the most natural dialect or accent actor in the first place - really didn't have much to work with anyway.
Heck, if you just give 'em the lines with tonal marks on the words and explain the way the tones shift from first (flat), second (rising), third (shifting from falling to rising), and fourth (falling) then the accuracy should be greatly improved - especially if the simple rules on pronunciation of Romanized Mandarin (each syllable is pronounced in specific ways with no variation as in English - so the "an" in words is always pronounced the same, with no long or short or modified pronunciations.
Some Hollywood films use folks with thick "American Chinese" accents and pass them off as native speakers . . . or they just use an Asian face and call it anything - in the original Canonball Run film (Burt Reynolds), Jackie Chan and Michael Hui are playing Japanese characters but in all of their bits where they are "speaking Japanese" they are actually speaking Cantonese. This sort of think is usually because the filmmakers neither care nor have the ability to tell the difference. Since Firefly has made such an effort to include the Chinese in the background of the world, I would hope that the language could be a bit more consistently expressed - or at least be intelligible.
Brian David Phillips, PhD, CH [phillips@nccu.edu.tw]
MeiguoLangren Zai Taibei (An American Werewolf in Taipei)
Assoc. Prof., English Dept., NCCU Taipei, Taiwan (R.O.C.)
http://phillips.personal.nccu.edu.tw/index.html
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME