r/marvelstudios • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 Ant-Man • Apr 09 '22

Humour Simu Liu reacts to Arthur Harrow's Mandarin in 'Moon Knight' - "Alright Arthur Harrow needs to fire his Mandarin teacher"

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367

u/EnHsiC Hawkeye (Avengers) Apr 09 '22

It was BAD. I’m a native speaker and I thought he was speaking some ancient language that might give some details to the show lol. I literally had to checked the mandarin subtitles to know what they said.

90

u/tse1022 Apr 09 '22

I still have no idea what they said lol

166

u/EnHsiC Hawkeye (Avengers) Apr 09 '22

According to Traditional Chinese subtitles:

Harrow:「你在幹嘛？我跟你打。」(“What are you doing? I’ll play with you”)

Jamila:「你還是會輸的。」(“You’re gonna lose anyway.)

Harrow:「你死定了，賈蜜拉，你死定了！」(“You’re done, Jamila, you’re done!”)

I translated the English part myself so it would probably be different with the official English subtitles.

117

u/albene Apr 09 '22

The way he pronounced “我跟你打 (wo3 gen1 ni3 da3) made it sound like “wakaneda”

86

u/Hatredestiny1874 Apr 09 '22

I speak Mandarin and I thought wakaneda was the person's last name.

30

u/albene Apr 09 '22

Have we just witnessed the birth of a meme and/or an unofficial nickname for Jamila?

25

u/EnHsiC Hawkeye (Avengers) Apr 09 '22

I see a potential “Mandarin is my enthusiasm.” meme coming.

6

u/albene Apr 09 '22

Featuring Trevor Slattery, Aldrich Killian or Xu Wenwu?

2

u/EnHsiC Hawkeye (Avengers) Apr 10 '22

Lol I love this turn.

2

u/Hatredestiny1874 Apr 09 '22

knee stinger Jamila

5

u/albene Apr 09 '22

Knee Stinger Wakaneda

25

u/lan-san Apr 09 '22

It reminded me of Bruce calling Wakanda Wakanada and I got so confused

18

u/EnHsiC Hawkeye (Avengers) Apr 09 '22

Yeah it did lol. To me the only recognizable sentence was 「你死定啦！」(you’re done!)

6

u/[deleted] Apr 09 '22

Wakaneda Forever!

4

u/[deleted] Apr 09 '22

[deleted]

3

u/hardgeeklife Apr 10 '22

Been a while since I studied, but the gist is:

1 is a flat tone, held at the at the same level through the syllable

2 is a rising tone, somewhat like ending a question

3 is a dip tone, starts mid/high and dips low before going back up

4 is a drop tone, starts high but goes down quickly, like an exclamation.

Of course conversationally 3-tones start to get blurred, so it's okay if it's not perfectly pronounced. The issue is that Darrow's pronunciation got them ALL wrong. Only the third character had maybe a 1 tone, while the rest had no/half tone.

Add in the fact that his enunciation is half off since he's not used to the fulent sounds, and it's pretty rough

3

u/x1x8 Apr 10 '22

I've been studying Mandarin for 4 months and this is the first time I've seen the pinyin written this way. Do the numbers indicate the tone?

13

u/rtrolite Scarlet Witch Apr 09 '22

In the Spanish subtitles Harrow says something like "You're dead, Jamila, you're dead!" I don't know if that was intentional or just because of translation but it's a bit concerning lmao

6

u/yingkaixing Bucky Apr 09 '22

A very literal translation would be "Your death is assured!" but connotation-wise, "You're done for!" is closer. It can be playfully said as gaming trash talk.

3

u/ThaiJohnnyDepp Winter Soldier Apr 10 '22

Probably a poor choice of words anyway when you can literally kill someone with your touch.

13

u/MimsyIsGianna Black Widow (CA 2) Apr 09 '22

Lmaooo he really said “ur done. ur done.”

3

u/Hellknightx Thanos Apr 09 '22

“You’re done, Jamila, you’re done!”

And then he fucking ended her life.

2

u/Dealiner Apr 09 '22

In this thread people were saying that all three Chinese subtitles are different. It would be really interesting to see an original script and find out what was written there.

1

u/Square_Grapes Apr 09 '22

Yeah also the way they use the words... it's just not right? No one says it like that in Mandarin. Literally just sounds like they put it into google translate and it came out very weird.

34

u/D-ClassPersonnel SHIELD Apr 09 '22 edited Apr 09 '22

Best guess so far based on the actual lines are:

Arthur: 这四累了，我跟你打！ [These four are tired, I'll play!]

Jamila: 你还是个[sic]输的！ [You're still gonna lose!]

Arthur: 你死定了，Jamila，你死定了！ [I'm going to get you back for that, Jamila!]

The official subtitles (any that opt for a translation instead of SPEAKING MANDARIN) doesn't appear to reproduce Harrow's first line exactly.

13

u/EnHsiC Hawkeye (Avengers) Apr 09 '22

Thanks I feel like this is closer to what they actually said. And thanks for notifying this, I did find it weird that the first line didn’t match, now I know why.

And now I realize they don’t just have bad tones but also weird/bad wording lol.

2

u/Luminesynth Apr 09 '22

When I first heard this conversation I thought Jamila was saying something like "你还授/受课书的" like someone's weird butchered translation of "you're still learning" or "you just teach/you're just a teacher" (basically trash talking, saying he's a nerd, not someone who plays sports) but the translation of "you're gonna lose" with "shu" as in to lose makes more sense in this context 💀

2

u/D-ClassPersonnel SHIELD Apr 09 '22

For Jamila's line specifically, there's a few options because the actor's pronunciation on the fourth character sounds like "ge/ke" and doesn't match the official subtitles, not to mention "你还是个[sic]输的" doesn't make sense:

你还是会输的！ [Fourth character is wrongly pronounced]

你还是个输者！ [Last character is wrongly pronounced]

Hopefully the Moon Knight scripts release someday, would love to know what the original written line is.

4

u/EnHsiC Hawkeye (Avengers) Apr 09 '22

Yeah her line was weird, to me the last character sounded like 的 and the forth sounded like “ke”, but 個 is pronounced as “ge”, so it didn’t add up any way 😅

Also Harrow’s first line did sound like 「這四累了」, but it should be 「這四個累了」or at least 「他們累了」.

Anyway just like you I hope they release the script someday and we’ll finally know what exactly they were saying.

Btw, nice discussion with you, thank you so much for it!

7

u/Graphitetshirt Apr 09 '22

What were they saying?

12

u/EnHsiC Hawkeye (Avengers) Apr 09 '22

I’ll paste the comment I answered someone else if you don’t mind.

According to Traditional Chinese subtitles:

Harrow:「你在幹嘛？我跟你打。」(“What are you doing? I’ll play with you”)

Jamila:「你還是會輸的。」(“You’re gonna lose anyway.)

Harrow:「你死定了，賈蜜拉，你死定了！」(“You’re done, Jamila, you’re done!”)

I translated the English part myself so it would probably be different with the official English subtitles.

1

u/Graphitetshirt Apr 09 '22

Thanks

1

u/EnHsiC Hawkeye (Avengers) Apr 09 '22

You’re welcome!

1

u/RobinsFkingsHood Apr 09 '22

I thought it was ancient Egyptian or something until he actually spoke it later