There’s A Deeper Meaning Behind Shang-Chi’s Subtitles
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings features a lot of subtitled dialogue, but the translations provided have multiple potential meanings. Shang-Chi's martial arts-filled adventure, the 25th film in the MCU, hit theaters in the fall of 2021, holding the distinction of being the first Marvel movie with a predominantly Asian cast. In addition to the performances of the cast, such as Simu Liu and Tony Leung, Shang-Chi also received high praise for its fantastic martial arts sequences.
As part of its story, a good deal of Shang-Chi's dialogue is spoken in Mandarin Chinese. While being subtitled into English, the translations provided were not necessarily direct translations of the dialogue being spoken on-screen. This is simply a natural byproduct of linguistics, but interestingly, it creates another layer in the dialogue of Shang-Chi.
Many viewers wasted no time in exploring exactly this as soon as Shang-Chi hit theaters. One particularly notable example of the different interpretations of language can be seen in the dialogue of Shang-Chi's father Wenwu (Tony Leung). Wenwu, having lived for centuries, asserts himself heavily during the third act in Ta Lo, telling Master Guang Bo (Yuen Wah) "I've lived ten of your lifetimes," subtitled exactly as that from Mandarin to English. However, this isn't an exact translation. As Reddit user u/ashiakatamaki pointed out (via Looper), the more literal translation of Wenwu's line is actually "Kid, show some respect when you talk to me. I've eaten more salt than you've eaten rice in your entire life." Right there, Shang-Chi presents two different readings of the same line of dialogue. Moreover, each carries its own meaning of the same point.
The subtitled version confers a sense of Wenwu's wisdom as a man who has lived longer than anyone else. The Mandarin dialogue acts as more of a scolding type of line, effectively Wenwu's way of saying "Get off my lawn!" to a much younger character. Both lines emphasize Shang-Chi's paternal villain, Wenwu as living an unusually long life, due to his use of the Ten Rings, but the two convey the same point in drastically different ways.
In another interview, director Destin Daniel Cretton described Shang-Chi as an exercise in "the art of subtitling." (via Polygon) Cretton further explained, "There is no direct translation between any two languages," and that "The best translation — sometimes it’s poetic, sometimes it’s slightly different to what the Chinese words are saying." The numerous differences in languages were also featured in Shang-Chi in a different way. In his life away from the Ten Rings in San Francisco, Shang-Chi adopts the pseudonym "Shaun," which brings name Anglicization into Shang-Chi's story.
Translating dialogue from one language to another frequently requires some amount of interpretation to be incorporated from the speaker to the listener. Shang-Chi, being the most subtitled of any MCU movie, does exactly that with its English subtitles translating its Mandarin lines of dialogue. The differences in what the subtitles come out to and what the Mandarin lines actually say add a whole other element to Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. These subtitles make rewatches even more fun, with viewers able to delve into the nuances of the film's subtitled lines alongside the movie's excellent martial arts battles orchestrated by the late Brad Allan.