Moon Knight’s treatment of Mandarin as "gibberish" sparks outcry

Los Angeles Times

Simu Liu already called out Ethan Hawke's character's use of Mandarin in a conversation with Oscar Isaac's Steven Grant, tweeting: “Arthur Harrow needs to fire his Mandarin teacher.” But other viewers are calling the show out for not even translating what Harrow said, instead showing that they are “speaking in Mandarin." As the Los Angeles Times' Tracy Brown points out, Moon Knight has also had characters speaking French and "ancient Egyptian" without translation. But Brown also notes that Marvel has a history of mutilating an Asian language, from the Japanese in Avengers: Endgame to the Korean in Black Panther. "Mandarin has a reputation for being a difficult language to learn for native English speakers, particularly because of its varied tonal pronunciation," says Brown. "But the lack of subtitles makes Moon Knight’s treatment of Mandarin appear particularly careless — a prop language, of sorts, that the creative forces behind the series didn’t bother to get right."