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dlrconlicense · 3 years

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So I've gone and seen Shang Chi and the Legend of Ten Rings. Here are some random thoughts I had about the film.

(Spoilers below)

1) They had to have done the opening arrow scene on purpose and I actually busted out in a laugh. So lemme explain, like about circa 15 years ago, the "great" director Zhang Yimou had his foray into the martial arts genre with a little film called "Hero", starring your Mr. Wen Wu, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai (I always say his Chinese name because a) like Wen Wu said your name is sacred, b) there are two great Tony Leungs in HK Entertainment). So anyhoo, in that film there was an incredibly ridiculous scene where an entire army shoots like thousands of arrows at Jet Li's character to execute him. I remember one of the student groups back in college had held a screening of it (which basically is a bunch of us cramped inside a classroom showing a bootleg copy on the projector) and the entire lot of us busted out laughing.

Tony wasn't gonna die from arrows like Jet, he yeeted them away.

2) I think in a circle of Asian American friends, we knew a Shaun-like character, we all knew a Katy, we all have one of THOSE lawyer friends.

3) I actually loved the bus fight scene....and yeah that sounds about right in regards to San Fran public transport lol.

4) Why was Wong hustling for money? He clearly had a hand in fixing matches with Abomination. Was he investigating the Xu siblings and was undercover? Or they really needed money to fix the roof. Actually the Wong scene was rather...unnecessary somehow.

5) I love that this film's main character doesn't fall in to the trap of Asian film main leads...typical good at everything, classically good looking (i.e pasty a la kdrama/c-dramas), RICH by legacy. Shaun running from legacy actually makes him rather relatable in a way. He found his own path eventually to take up his mantle.

6) When I saw the trailer, I had mistook Xialing for the actress who played her mom. The actress, Fala Chen, had an extremely similar bob in one of my favorite TV series from HK. You could see similarities between Meng'er and Fala, so kudos to casting for that.

7) Speaking of Fala, I've always thought that she was infinitely wasted in the later years at her job in the TV station in HK. It was crap scripts one after the other. She was by far the most natural of the actresses that started around the same time, yet she was probably the most criticized. When I saw that she quit her job and further her career by going to Julliard, I thought good for her and what a badass.

8) God, why Ronny Chieng? Just effing why him?!

9) Katy is the best friend you wish you had. Literally.

10) So speaking as a trilingual (native Cantonese speaker, English and fluent in Mandarin), I think the part that really threw off a bit was the Chinese. I've always found Chinese dialogue that pops up in Hollywood productions a bit awkward and clunky. The interchange between English and Mandarin Chinese in this definitely was not awkward. It actually does sound like how my family would communicate at times. While I don't find the dialogue an issue, I did find Tony's Mandarin throws me off while we have other characters speak perfect Mandarin. Just let the man speak Cantonese lol. (Simu's was very typical ABC/CBC to be fair and come to think of it, this is the first time I've heard Fala act in Mandarin Chinese, her self-taught Canto is extremely good btw).

11) The action scenes were awesome, although the dragon fight was a bit dizzying.

12) So basically the final battle is like Mortal Kombat, The Hobbit movie, and Raya all rolled into one.

13) I am glad they don't overuse "honor" in this. There is no honor to defend in this entire family. In fact, speaking as a Chinese person, we don't "defend honor" like we eat rice. We either choose to live honorably like any other folks or just do our own thing.

14) Speaking of eating rice, I completely lost my shit when Wen Wu went to Guang Bo (Mr. Landlord Yuen Wah!) and said a common telling off in Chinese "I've eaten more salt than you've ate rice young man, so you better speak to me with more respect." He's seen more shit than you. I keep on forgetting Wen Wu is like thousands of years old.

15) Tony is very good looking for a thousand years old.

16) During the battle between father and son, I kept on thinking....are those rings from a similar meteor like in Wakanda? Meaning they are Vibranium?

17) So definitely love and grief are the main themes of this new era in the MCU. Wenwu's motivations definitely is like the Strange episode of "What If..." His family was his everything and his weakness.

18) When Shang Chi looked at Katy like THAT, I very audibly said "No!" in the theater. Why can't they just be besties for life? I'm telling you, BroTP for life. It's not even about making the Asian male lead asexual. Why can't a guy and a girl can be ride and die like that.

19) Ok...thank you Bruce for the answer to my questions about the rings.

20) God I wanna hang out with Wong.

21) Is Xialing rebuilding the Ten Rings and why do I have a feeling she is going to have ties to Sharon's Power Broker?

Final thought: A very fun, very solid entry into MCU. I went in with very low expectations and definitely found myself enjoying it more than I thought I would. I definitely will rewatch this film when it comes out on streaming. I actually wouldn't mind seeing more of Shaun and Katy.

P.S. Has anyone told Trevor that Liverpool won the League one year?

#shang chi and the ten rings #Shang Chi #Simu Liu #MCU #Awkwafina #Fala Chen #Tony Leung Chiu Wai #Zhang Meng'er #shang chi spoilers

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scrunchyharry · 3 years

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on allowing translations of our fics: a non-native English speaker’s perspective

Here’s some 7am thoughts from my brain to your screens. This isn’t criticism, to be clear. I’m thinking out loud.

Under a cut because it’s pretty long and verging on Discourse.

I’ve been writing fics for 15 years, across four different fandoms and as many platforms. I’ve always allowed translations to be made of my fics because, I suppose que je comprends que certaines personnes ne disposent pas des capacités nécessaires pour lire des œuvres écrites en anglais.

I couldn’t comfortably read a novel in English until I was 17-18. It took me three weeks to get through Of Mice and Men in high school and when I was asked to read Dracula in my 9th grade ESL-A class, I found a French translation of it. I still can’t go to a Shakespeare play and hope to understand what’s going on. I’ve tried, numerous times. I’ve tried with Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing and Hamlet. I just do not understand them when they speak (to be fair, I have seen a handful of Molière plays and also struggled my way through the Ancien Régime French, so maybe I just have really bad hearing comprehension).

And I’m Canadian, so English is omnipresent in my life. I started learning when I was in the 4th grade, I only truly felt like I could call myself bilingual in my early twenties, after going to university in English. Je comprends donc que l’anglais n’est pas confortablement accessible à tous et à toutes.

the 1D fandom is the first where I see people being against translations, yet it is also the most "international" of the fandoms I’ve been in. I have to clarify: I never witnessed any discussions of translations in my previous fandoms, is what I mean by that. Whether for or against them, I never saw people talking about them. The 1D fandom is the first where I a) see it being talked about and b) see people against them.

It stands out as odd to me because I personally never had any objections to it, I never even gave it a second thought beyond making sure that I was properly credited and asking for a link to the final product so that I can verify that I was. I think, perhaps, it speaks to the fact that the English speaking world is so rarely confronted to works in a language inaccessible to them. The outcries around Parasite being in Korean with English subs come to mind, while the rest of the non-English world was like "this is a regular Monday for us? To have to contend with translated or subtitled works to be able to access the hegemonic culture?"

Being a non-English speaker in an Anglo-centric world means constantly readjusting what you thought you knew. I didn’t grow up watching The Lion King or reading Anne of Green Gables. I grew up watching Le Roi lion and reading Anne et la maison aux pignons verts. Translations are an integral part of my life. Hell, on days when I’m really tired, I’ll switch whatever I’m watching on Netflix to French (when it’s available, which is a topic for another discussion) so that my brain can catch a break.

When I say readjusting, I mean that you’re always reframing. “Oh, I didn’t know that Severus Rogue’s English name was Severus Snape. Let me keep that in mind throughout our entire discussion in my second language.” “Oh, right, Americans have middle school so I better remember what years that covers and speak accordingly so I don’t have to go down the longer road of explaining that, actually, my French-Canadian school system didn’t have middle school and oh, also, our high school ends in the 10th grade and...” you get my drift.

This post is getting away from me. I’ll try to reel it back in. When I was in undergrad, I took a lit class from the French department (remember my bit about giving my brain a break?) and it was about the early 20th century. After suffering through the inevitable Proust, we moved on to Milan Kundera, a Czech writer (I had to use autocorrect for that, see, for me Czech is Tchèque) who became a French citizen. I don’t have the exact quote, that notebook has been gone since 2012, but I remember that he considered translations to be entirely new works of fiction and that the translator’s touch made the book anew because of the interpretations they chose when translating. Here’s an excerpt from an abstract about this:

"Kundera showed displeasure at any translator who, however briefly, would impersonate the author and take some license in translating Kundera’s work. Further, Kundera decided that only his full authorial involvement in the process would ascertain “the same authenticity” of his translations as the original Czech works. Kundera thus becomes the omnipresent, omnipotent author, himself impersonating God controlling his own creation."

Margala, Miriam. (2011). The Unbearable Torment of Translation: Milan Kundera, Impersonation, and The Joke. TranscUlturAl: A Journal of Translation and Cultural Studies. 1. 10.21992/T9C62H.

I’m not just name dropping Milan Kundera to show that I’m Educated. I’m bringing this point up because this isn’t my personal perspective on translation, but I can understand how it can be other people’s. My stance on this is that I want my work to be as universally accessible as it can be. Once I’ve put a story out into the world, while I do retain the copyright of it, it isn’t mine anymore. Every person reading it will read a different story because of their own inner lives and what they bring to it. Similarly, translations may bring out other perspectives of it. My work is done, though, the moment I click "post" and send it out into the world. I am no longer in control of the way it will be understood. And I’m at peace with this. It is a true ego death to read comments and see people picking up on things you did not even notice yourself as the omnipotent little god of your own creation.

As I was revising this essay, memories of bygone discourse came back to my mind, from the time I was in the Les Misérables fandom. You can imagine that I got a kick out of being able to say I had read it in the original French, but beyond that, the most interesting conversations I had in those days were when comparing the various English translations of the novel to each other and to the original French. There were Opinions on who had done it best, and who got closer to the original, but then not quite as much, because “see, here this word that Hugo used can be interpreted in a different way and it changes the entire meaning of the next sentence.”

More recently, a woman translated The Illiad or the Odyssey, I don’t quite remember, and her interpretation of certain scenes completely changed their meaning. I’m working off my memory, here, but I think I recall reading that where men had translated “prostitute”, she had translated “companion”, or something along those lines, and it showed how the translator brings their own worldview to a work, it’s inevitable.

I am not trying to compare One Direction fanfiction to The Illiad, let’s be clear. What I’m attempting to say in too many words is that fanfiction is derivative work, and so are translations. I, personally, will never be against people translating my work if I’m credited correctly. Without translations, I wouldn’t have known Disney growing up. I wouldn’t have known Anne of Green Gables, or Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter, or Winnie the Pooh, or Alice in Wonderland, or any other work that have shaped my psyche as a child. Far from me to say that my native French culture is not rich in itself with works (I owe as much to the Comtesse de Ségur as I do to Lucy Maud Montgomery), but translations allow me to be able to take part of a global conversation, to be a part of the Internet’s collective unconscious.

At the same time, with the plague that are unauthorized reposts of our works, I understand why other people are wary of anything that involves a form of reposting. There is no easy answer to this, but I did want to share my thoughts on the matter as a non-native English speaker and, most importantly, writer.

I’ll conclude by saying that, if anyone is wondering, I’m not writing in my native French because the mere thought of writing a sex scene in the same language I use to talk to my mother is enough to Catholic-guilt me off the face of the planet, without even breaching the topic of writing in the language that has the biggest potential reach.

so, huh, yeah. thank you for coming to my ted talk.

#I'm sure no one will read all of this but here it goes #my two cents on a topic that is close to my heart #dare I tag this #discourse #I hope no one feels attacked by this because it truly wasn't my intention

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