Subj : Re: Serenity and Chinese To : alt.tv.farscape From : weirdwolf Date : Tue Oct 04 2005 03:21:58 From Newsgroup: alt.tv.farscape Jim Larson wrote in news:Xns96E4C20DFE5783v234oiwofui3284af93@130.133.1.18: > Anyone know how well the actors were able to pull of the Chinese bits > in Firefly? Usually they had to say no more than a couple of words, so > maybe it's not that bad. In Serenity, there is a small bit where River > curses(?) at length and probably pretty creatively in Chinese. I > wonder if Summer Glau came even close to pulling it off. Must query > Ted when he's seen it. > They had a specialist translator/teacher. I've seen some outakes where they had more than a little trouble. I'm not really good enough to tell. I do know that there are certain sounds that are very unusual for English speakers as they don't appear in English and different ways of pronouncing certain letters. The best examples are a 6th vowel n which is a sort of ew noise and h which is from the front of the mouth rather than the back of the throat. Please bare in mind however that I have only had two lessons. Ted -- Stare too long into the abyss and the abyss looks like a nifty place to hide the bodies .