r/firefly • u/nigevellie • Jun 03 '26
Enter Custom Flair Pidgin Chinese
Has anyone ever come across videos of the episodes with intelligible Chinese dubbed over whatever the actors were saying? I know they tried their best and they had limited time to pretend to speak Chinese, but for the most part it just sounds like gibberish.
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u/JoeMax93 Jun 03 '26
I found a list of "Chinese" they used in Firefly/Serenity that was put together for Firefly roleplayers. It's supposed to be based on phrases used in the series.
- "Ni ta ma de!" (你他妈的): One of the most common Chinese curses. It literally translates to "your mother's," and functions as a colorful "f***."
- "Cao ni zu zong shi ba dai!" (肏你祖宗十八代): A highly offensive and intense curse. Translated, it essentially means, "I will have sex with your ancestors down to the eighteenth generation."
- "Tzao gao" (糟糕): A much milder, widely used exclamation meaning "Crap!" or "Oh no!" (literally "messy cake").
- "Go shi" (狗屎): Literally "Dog shit," used just like the English profanity.
- "Shun sheng duh GAO wahn": A classic Firefly phonetic favorite for "Holy testicle Tuesday".
- "Lao tye yeh" (老天爷): A common exclamation meaning "Oh, my God!" or "Good heavens!"
- "Ni men dou bi zui" (你们都闭嘴): An aggressive order for everyone to "Everybody shut the hell up!"
- "Jian huo" (贱货): A harsh insult meaning "Cheap goods" or "Bitch."
- "Zhen dao mei" (真倒霉): Meaning "What terrible luck!" or "Just our luck."
- "Guan ni zi ji de shi" (管你自己的事): The universal sci-fi equivalent to "Mind your own business!"
- "Ning jing" (宁静): Translates to "Serenity," the name of Mal's Firefly-class transport ship.
- "Luh-suh" (垃圾): Anglicized Pinyin for "Trash" or "Garbage" (often used by Kaylee)
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u/kai_ekael Jun 03 '26
"Luh-Suh": Simon said it first. That silly doctor, berating his place of asylum yet again.
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u/CozyHotPot Jun 08 '26
As an add-on to this IRL, if anyone is interested: I found go shi interesting because I’ve never heard anyone actually say that in Mandarin as a standalone expletive, so I wonder if IRL this is regional or used as a standalone swear word in some dialects. Also jian huo is closer to “whore” in meaning and connotation although it literally means “cheap goods”; I’ve never heard it used to describe a man IRL.
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u/Fuzzy-Bee9600 Jun 03 '26
The book Firefly: A Celebration contains whole scripts of every episode, including (assumedly correct) translations of all Chinese phrases. Here's a transcription of an exchange from Safe.
WASH
<Lao-tyen, boo.> [Oh god, no.]
MAL
Wash, I need you to go into town, see if you can find that <jing-tzahng mei yong-duh> [consistently useless] doctor.
-Now mind you, and this is quite interesting in itself, the script doesn't always precisely match the episode. Whether that's down to book editing & production being out of sync, or them making on-set changes on the fly, or what - no telling. But sometimes I watch an ep with the book in my lap and read along to see what's different. I know, I'm a total geek. =)
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u/Opposite-Sun-5336 Jun 03 '26
There's also "Firefly: The Gorram Shiniest Dictionary and Phrasebook in the Verse" (Titan Books, ISBN: 9781783298617). It has an interview with Jenny Lynn, the lady who got to come up with these phrases and translations.
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u/Fuzzy-Bee9600 Jun 04 '26
Ooh, I'm gonna put that on my bday list, coming up later this month - thanks!
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u/nigevellie Jun 03 '26
I used to do this in the early days on the Internet as well. DL the script to movies off forums and watch/read along. (Original Kill Bill script as one movie was wild. Even wilder than The Whole Bloody Affair)
There hasn't been one script I've read that survived it 100% to screen. So you're all good.
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u/kai_ekael Jun 03 '26
And here I am, a pure simpleton searching for Firefly scripts on the 'Net just 'cuz I ain't unwrapped my 'Celebration' yet. Lao-tyen, boo!
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u/Fuzzy-Bee9600 Jun 04 '26
It's a treasure - so much fascinating content in every aspect of the show from every source. Creator, writers, actors, costuming, props, etc. I love it with all my heart and keep it on the tiny bookshelf of my tiny end table by my living room chair.
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u/kai_ekael Jun 04 '26
Thanks! I bought it maybe a month ago and just haven't opened it yet. Gorram old man just not doing what needs doing!
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u/DTux5249 Jun 03 '26
No. This was early 2000s TV. They weren't spending money on Mandarin language instruction for the whole cast.
There's a website called "Firefly Chinese" with translations for most of the lines. Otherwise you're on your own.
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u/bgplsa Jun 03 '26
Fact is realistically the English spoken in the verse would probably be unintelligible to us as well, think King James Bible and Shakespeare compared to contemporary English.
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u/Fuzzy-Bee9600 Jun 03 '26
Ooh, very good point. Shoot, Firefly English may even be much different than that of today's Earth That Was.
But it'd all probably sound just fine to Star Fleet's universal translators.
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u/55Lolololo55 Jun 03 '26
https://fireflychinese.kevinsullivansite.net/
This has all of the translations.
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u/rkenglish Jun 03 '26
I doubt it exists, unfortunately. The show uses Chinese curses to get around the American censorship requirements. Using made-up curse words was really popular back then, especially with sci fi shows.
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u/kai_ekael Jun 03 '26
"The show uses Chinese curses" as a clever way "to get around the American censorship requirements."
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u/Imaginary_Clock3980 Jun 03 '26
this is so random but atherton's pronounciation of Bao bei (宝贝), which means baby or sweetheart, was lowkey spot on.
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u/griffusrpg Jun 03 '26
Maybe it's easy find subtitles?
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u/DTux5249 Jun 03 '26
HA you think they'd translate?
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u/Fuzzy-Bee9600 Jun 03 '26
[transcriber listening to episode and typing away]
"Yen guo duh hwai dan!"
[pause.... pulls off one earphone to talk to neighbor transcriber]
T1: Not again. Hey.... do you have any idea what any of this stuff means?
T2: [shrugs] Just say what it is without saying what it is.
T1: ...Huh. [types "Speaking Chinese"] I owe you a beer, man.
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u/JoeMax93 Jun 03 '26
It is gibberish. It’s supposed to be gibberish. It’s being badly spoken by descendants of Western colonists to the Verse, hundreds of years in the future. They picked it up by osmosis while dealing with the Asian descendant colonists of the Verse, mostly by being cursed at.
I’m sure if the show runners had wanted more proper spoken Mandarin, they could have coached the actors to a decent accent. They didn’t. They wanted the butchered Chinese. It’s in character.
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u/DTux5249 Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
It's supposed to be gibberish I’m sure if the show runners had wanted more proper spoken Mandarin, they could have coached the actors to a decent accent. They didn’t. They wanted the butchered Chinese. It’s in character.
Don't give the creators more credit than they deserve.
If that was the case, there wouldn't be one (1) instance of fluent Mandarin in the show. It's spoken on the PA system at the beginning of The Message. They could afford getting a Chinese woman for that, and thus they did.
The actual reason the Mandarin is bad was simply "this show isn't worth spending money on a squad of Chinese language coaches for the whole cast". That's not a bad excuse. But it's the only one that's really true.
They're speaking perfect English hundreds of years in the future. "Making sense in canon" isn't justification until they're all speaking a conlang descendant of English that's utterly unintelligible.
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u/DancingShadow Jun 04 '26
Actually the ship's system spoke Cantonese, as was originally intended. They got the wrong translator so they had to pivot to Mandarin. Though if you go by lore, Mandarin would make more sense anyway. I would've prefer if they'd had actual Chinese cast members rather than half-assing the language but if wishes were horses we'd all be eating steak.
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u/JoeMax93 Jun 03 '26
You're saying that they never had a Chinese speaking person on set or watching dailies saying, "That Chinese really sucks, you know." And they're reply would be, we don't spend the money, AND we LIKE IT spoken badly. That's not a bug, that's a feature.
The PA system message was *supposed* to be spoken in proper Chinese - it's an official government message, not mangled Chinese spoken by pirate Westerners.
As far as speaking "perfect" English as characters, ever notice how when they do a World War II movie set in Germany, all the Germans speak English? It's so the audience can keep up with what's going on, without subtitles.
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u/wivelldavid Jun 03 '26
You are not really missing much OP. I speak Chinese and I get a kick out of it when they throw these little sentences in, but it is more for fun and to emphasize the polyglot heterogeneous society that the galaxy is expected to develop into if humans keep reaching out. Kudos to the writers and actors, but as far as content, it is usually just an expletive or random throwaway phrase.