- #Why did i get an apple email in some asian language series#
- #Why did i get an apple email in some asian language tv#
For broad comedy, they're really not thinking about the authenticity so much," he says.īut some of Honorof's assignments involve days of extensive exercises with an actor with the end goal of not just sounding "Chinese." "Sometimes they just want the mouth to move. Still, Honorof says the level of authenticity depends in part on what the director wants.
"You try to make it appear that you actually can speak even though you really can't." "It's really more about the physical part of it – what you do with your tongue, your lips and your jaw," he explains. The trick, Honorof says, isn't actually learning the language. That means more demand for dialect coaches like Doug Honorof, who helps actors pull off the illusion of speaking Chinese fluently. ( See Iron Man 3 and Looper for recent examples.) " been, for the longest time, catering first to American audiences, and then the rest of the world just sort of gobbled up everything that was being made ," she says.īut today there's more entertainment that's designed to work in both America and China. Yang says the reality facing Hollywood portrayals of Chinese characters is shifting. "So they ran my Mandarin by some people who actually speak Chinese, and they said, 'That's really bad! Go with his Cantonese!' I guess it's not factually correct, but then, you know, that's movies. "But I said, 'I'm sorry! My Mandarin is even worse than my Cantonese!' " he recalls. Chan, who grew up speaking Cantonese, says the role was originally written to speak in Mandarin. You may have heard him yelling in Cantonese at Jack Nicholson's character Frank Costello. In 2005, Chinese-American actor Robert Chan filmed a small role as a mob boss from mainland China in Martin Scorsese's The Departed. "As it is, people can't really distinguish between Chinese and Japanese and Korean and Vietnamese and any Asian, so Asians tend to get lumped together." "The assumption is that nobody will notice or care," says film producer Janet Yang has worked for decades on films in both China and Hollywood, including The Joy Luck Club and a Chinese remake of High School Musical.
#Why did i get an apple email in some asian language tv#
In American TV shows and movies, characters from China are often played by actors of Asian descent who are not fluent Chinese speakers. "Whether or not sound like, you know, natives of Beijing or not is certainly questionable, but you know, if you go to China, people have a lot of different accents." "Obviously we're always trying to get as close to accurate as we can get," he says. Staff writer Kenneth Lin wrote the Mandarin dialogue for the show's Chinese characters. If you think we're nitpicking, you're right.īut that only seems fair given that the show is obsessed with authenticity ("from the macro to the micro," the show's executive producer Beau Willimon recently told TV Guide). " could be that he knows some Mandarin, but not very good pronunciation of each word."īut she praised another clip of a Mandarin translator speaking on the phone as "much more fluid and fluent." Speidel hasn't seen the show yet, so I played her an audio clip of a businessman from China telling one of his staff members to bring over a spoon in Mandarin. "Because I'm correcting people's pronunciation daily in class, I'm pretty critical when I hear Chinese in American movies ," she said. Now she teaches Chinese to students at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. So I called an expert – one of my Chinese language instructors in college, Kirsten Speidel, who was born in Taiwan and first learned Mandarin Chinese as a child. Louis to be a fluent Chinese speaker.īut in the show's second season, there are a few roles that would call for actors to perform in Chinese fluently. You wouldn't expect an American billionaire from St. My fellow binge watchers may remember the character Raymond Tusk speaking in heavily accented Mandarin Chinese during business calls in the show's first season. That's one detail, though, the show doesn't get quite right. Its characters regularly name-drop real-life political journalists, some of whom make on-screen cameos.Īnd a few episodes feature actors speaking in Chinese. The show has consulted with computer hackers and political scientists on storylines.
#Why did i get an apple email in some asian language series#
The success of the Netflix series House of Cards lies in the details. Chinese billionaire Xander Feng, played by Terry Chen, shakes hands with Francis Underwood, played by Kevin Spacey, in Netflix's House of Cards.
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