House -- Epic Fail Chinese Dialog
Some Chinese vocabulary in House Episode 2 of Season 6. Cuddy visits House who is cooking with a friend Cecile at timestamp 14:44. The following conversation takes place.
Which was translated in the subtitles as
The English is a pun on the "missionary position." I'd be surprised if 职业 (which is "position" in the sense of occupation, job) has a usage in Chinese similar to that implied by the subtitles.
Non-Chinese speakers may paste the Hanzi into this this app and click annotate to see the romanization and translation.
Of course I may have made transcription errors.
Cecile: 她是谁呀？
House: 传教士。
Cecile: 如果她是个传教士，为什么穿的让一个街女？
House: 我是指她的职业。
Which was translated in the subtitles as
Cecile: Who's the broad?The English makes sense but the Chinese for the last sentence doesn't seem to match. Specifically "the position" != "her position" ~ 她的职业.
House: Missionary.
Cecile: If she's a missionary, why is she dressed like a hooker?
House: I meant the position.
The English is a pun on the "missionary position." I'd be surprised if 职业 (which is "position" in the sense of occupation, job) has a usage in Chinese similar to that implied by the subtitles.
Non-Chinese speakers may paste the Hanzi into this this app and click annotate to see the romanization and translation.
Of course I may have made transcription errors.
posted by kudra at 9:27 PM
2 Comments:
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Good one, Kudra.
You are right. This one is tough to translate into Chinese. That phrase is called 传教士体位 or 男上女下式. Most people would understand 男上女下式, not many would understand 传教士体位. Yeah, it is a nice pun in English, but the Chinese translation seems a bit forced.
Initially I was on the fence on using "broad" for 女的. Cecile was definitely referring Cuddy in a dismissive, condescending way, with a touch of jealousy, but "broad" might have been too strong. Then she said Cuddy looked like a hooker, so "broad" is the right word to use in this context after all.
By the way, I didn't know "broad" has that meaning. Now I've learned a bad word :)
It is very likely that the actress who played Cecil couldn't speak Chinese. So when she said "为什么穿的让一个街女", I guess she meant "为什么穿的像一个妓女".
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