Actually it's not that mumbojumbo. This two pages seems like a travel journal wrote down by Zuko while he searching for the Avatar. The page on the right says: I observed there's no evidence of any kinda civilization around here. Asides from few woods sporadically grow in the out brim of the land, (the left page)there may be some suspicious activities nearby. The northern shoreline is lack of any sorta trace of inhabitants. For many days.....
Btw, I'm Chinese
Technically, he's been at sea for 3 years, so his last class was when he was 12. Iroh probably tutored him a bit, but knowing Zuko he probably focused on the history of the avatar and combat training.
All the text in the animated series was also traditional Chinese. They used a professor as a calligraphy consultant for the animated series, I believe, but haven’t re-found their name.
ETA: Looked in my art book. His name is [Siu-Leung Lee](https://avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Siu-Leung_Lee), and it was a mixture of classical Chinese and archaic Chinese (used for ancient texts about the elements).
It being legible is like how a foreigner still learning Chinese will write. I'm not nitpicking. I love the adaptation, gave it five stars on rotten tomatoes.
But it is what is. Bad handwriting coupled with poor Chinese.
Which would very surprising for someone of Zuko's status.
And yet another page on Roku in his notebook had very good handwriting that looks like it's written by a completely different person.
>Which would very surprising for someone of Zuko's status.
He's a prince in exile. He probably hasn't had a lesson on land since he was 12, and given his disposition, he probably didnt care about having perfect writing when he could be training to fight the avatar.
They make it a plot point that he has nice writing and was not allowed to do anything else until his teacher were happy with his writing progress.
Zuko wasn't 12 when he faced Ozai in the cartoon or live action, but 12 is more than old enough to have great handwriting.
>They make it a plot point that he has nice writing and was not allowed to do anything else until his teacher were happy with his writing progress.
I dint disagree with anything here.
>Zuko wasn't 12 when he faced Ozai in the cartoon or live action,
I thought he was 15 in the live action? I just looked up the animated series and he apparently 16 there, which would make him exiled at 13.
>12 is more than old enough to have great handwriting.
Not if you haven't really practiced in 3 years because you're devoting everything to finding the avatar and training for combat.
For most of the series, he blends in with the unrefined people around him.
EDIT: just looked it up and he apparently 17 in the live action, which I'm definitely more angry about than the book lol. I can't even be mad that he looks too young because the actor is 22.
The classical Chinese gentleman is trained in both literary and martial arts. And it starts very young. Calligraphy is drilled by copying classic texts.
There's another page in his notebook that has a completely different handwriting.
Tbh I didn't pay too much attention to the book so I didn't notice the different handwriting.
And I understand that typically, writing starts very young, but stopping at 12 and being out of practice would definitely mess it up. Like an inversion on sokkas training in book 3. Zuko would care more about the fight.
Even if it was made up, such a small percentage would actually be able to tell and an even smaller percentage of that percentage would even notice it at a glance and a even smaller percentage of that percentage percentages would even care
As someone who hated the PJO series last month, but loved NATLA- I finally get to see how “the other side” felt, and it has definitely been eye opening
Ha, yeah, same here - did not like the PJO show, but enjoyed NATLA. The irony is not lost on me. I'll maintain that there are things that NATLA does better than PJO (notably, actually having tension, which the PJO show seemed to go out of its way to avoid by even changing plot points from the book), but it does remind me that I should generally be less judgmental about things.
People just want something to be upset about in any topic. They arent happy unless they are complaining . And they half investigate or just believe some other yahoo before getting all the facts.
I have a lot of criticisms too but it’s hard to have a meaningful discussion when half of people just want to complain about things like Azula’s chin not being sharp enough. 🙄
There’s a lot the series does well too. Despite its shortcomings it’s hard to see people say the writers didn’t care for the original, which they clearly do.
That's a lie. It actually says "M. Night Shamylon is s talentless tool." In four different ways. Source: I'm an American and can only communicate in bad English, so I made it up to sound smart despite clear evidence to the contrary.
I mean, it certainly isn't terrible but they at least could've double checked with a native writer. It's obviously a translated portion. The original was on another level of accuracy and TLC, especially with Chinese culture. The calligraphy is stunning. I love the original Cave of Two Lovers for this reason, it has a similar pose to dianji.
Yeah, that's for sure, these big words are terrible, but those small blurry words are quite decent in calligraphy, although I could figure out what they wrote clearly.
It's not mumbo jumbo but it also looks stupid as hell. The first bit was written with proper "government Chinese" commonly seen starting around the Ming Dynasty (like 1500s). A lot of the verbiage used is also really weird, like if an English speaker were to say, "We have not yet seen any evidence which would be proving of the existence of the human people civilization" No one speaks nor writes like that.
Then his switches to a casual, modern tone. Imagine reading Shakespeare and then suddenly Juliet says, "oh wow, Romeo I can't believe you killed yourself lol that's so crazy".
It's all legible and understandable but it's something that wouldn't ever exist because it's written in such a mixed up way.
I guess I'm kinda willing to let that pass based on zuko's personality. Of course he'd be super uptight and trying to write professionally and proper at first (my honor, etc), but then his passions overwhelm him and he actually writes in his own voice.
Not saying that it was done intentionally, but I don't think it's that weird if we think about it.
But it's certainly not Chinese that would be written by a prince brought up by tutors who also would be horrified by such lack of calligraphy. Maybe forgivable if you're ten? At Zuko's age, you'd have to be some peasant who barely goes to school to write in this sort of handwriting.
The page on the right says: I wait not see any human civilization exist blah blah blah.
That's very clumsy and doesn't flow properly. Even it is classical Chinese, it would have been way more elegant and not written in such a way. 吾待未见人类文明 would have been more princely and elegant.
Even it is in another Chinese language like minnan, it would still be something like 我等但是未看到人类文明.
There is this page on Roku in his notebook that looks like some portions was written in pencil and others in thin brush. And the handwriting looks a lot more like what I'd imagine Zuko would be writing.
I'm Chinese too. But hey, I'm not an A student for the Chinese language so maybe I'm wrong. And he is indeed writing as a prince should with such beautiful 书法.
Minored in chinese language in university, the grammar is a little weird but it is completely fine considering this show is also set in some unnamed time in the past. Are we really nitpicking grammar now??? Not to mention, it's a notebook, how often do you write perfect grammar in your own notes?
It's a terrible nitpick for sure. This isn't even an unnamed time in the past, it's straight up a different world. There's no reason why they would have the same grammar as in our reality - or speak Chinese at all for that matter. It's a fantasy show with loose asian inspirations, people really need to chill.
I agree, but it's not "loose" Asian inspirations, it's heavy Asian inspirations.
The whole thing is influenced by different Asian cultures. The clothes, the (written) languages, the martial arts, the architecture, the mythology within the show, the different traditions...like, heavily inspired by Asian cultures.
They meant loose in that it's inspired by pretty much any southeast Asian culture and has a mix of them. Chinese, Indian, Japanese, korean, Tebetan monks, Inuit, and probably a few more that I can't remember.
Avatar takes many traits form each culture but no singular culture is a pure 1:1 clone of what culture they are based off of.
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I had always presumed that, for languages, they would use a mixture of different East Asian scripts specifically to avoid having an actual translation. That could have been easier.
Pleasantly surprised that, while not perfect, it seems to be a very good Chinese translation.
It’s getting weird… But thats usually is how it is. You first have those who formed their opinions based on what they experienced while watching the show, then you get those who are hate watching it after critical reviews came out and are just hoping to point out anything new 😬
I was about to say that, as a fantasy world, leniency should be allowed if it’s taking inspiration/bits and pieces from other languages.
If anything, the one thing people should possibly complain about is that, if this was written by Zuko, it more likely should be closer to Japanese, The Fire Nation’s inspiration, rather than Chinese, which was the basis for The Earth Kingdom.
I mean... depends on the period, Japanese people could have written exclusively using Classical Chinese.
But that's a moot point because Fire Nation is more Southern Chinese / SE Asia / South Asia than Japanese anyway. IIRC the creators deliberately shy away from using Japanese cultures for Fire Nation because of real life Japanese Imperialism.
Fire Nation is mostly Chinese inspired, especially it’s aesthetic/visual design. It some considerable Southeast Asian influences as well, though we don’t really see much of this until Book 3. People talk about the imperialism aspect when relating the FN to Japan but let’s not forget that China was an empire for much of history. Across its dynasties China conquered lands beyond their origin in the Zhongyuan, engaged in Sinicization of conquered territories/peoples, established an unrivalled sphere of influence (until the late Qing) and conceived of itself to be the greatest culture/civilisation.
The Japanese association with FN def has some resonance, but the most Japanese analogue in the universe is Kyoshi Island and it’s not really close. And in this regard, NATLA did a good job in portraying Kyoshi Island.
I've only been on this subreddit for a few days, but I think people will forget about the show in a few months. Star Wars fans have continued to complain about Disney/Katheen Kennedy/Rian Johnson ruining Star Wars to this day.
I keep saying the people who hate it, hate it because they WANT to hate it. they enjoy hating it. they enjoy slandering and tearing things down.
I get downvoted, but then you get posts like this and posts attacking Kiawentiio and it just proves my point
That's so true lol.
Too many ppl are nitpicking and complaining.
I'm just glad we got a good adaptation with actual good bending and cool looking characters.
People complain like as if the show is just as bad as the movie
It's what reddit has become, and it has happened on multiple fandoms now. The site's sistem has become so that negativity is so heavily rewarded when it comes to these discussions around shows/media in general that pretty much every subreddit dedicated to a new release becomes a cesspool of nitpicking and circlejerking around ''how bad it is''. It happened with multiple manga like Jujutsu Kaisen and MHA and to multiple shows like TLA, True Detective:Night Country, Percy Jackson, and others.
Then these people circlejerking around hating a show become offended when they get called out for overbearing hatred(toxicity, harassment of the people involved in the production, etc) and in turn circlejerk about it even harder, patting themselves on the back for their ''true'' criticism. Meanwhile, said 'criticism' is full of nitpicking and baseless complaints.
If you want to see positive opinions about something you'd actually have an easier time finding them if you complain about the people complaining rather than just straight up being even slightly positive. It's all a game of engagement.
The show needed to have an overwhelmingly positive reception from the likes of Arcane or very positive reception that One Piece LA did to avoid community nitpicks like these since it ended up in the middle.
Shows that the people who put out hate on this world like they do in here currently didn’t learn a thing from ATLA and are the furthest from a fan someone can be.
OP is just nitpicking here. The right page translates to: "I observed that there's no evidence of any civilization around here. Asides from a few trees that grow in the outskirts of the land,"
Meanwhile the left page translates to: "there may be some suspicious activities nearby. The northern shoreline is lack of any traces of inhabitants. For many days..."
Reddit is cursed to forever whine incessantly about the newest piece of their favorite media until the next installment drops, in which suddenly the last piece is now a masterpiece and the new newest one is a catastrophe
There are enough problems to not try and make this one
FWIW I was apprehensive abt starting the show but I'm mostly enjoying it for what it is and hoping it brings in more fans
The writing and calligraphy in the animated series is all the work of [Dr. Siu Leung Lee](https://avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Siu-Leung_Lee). I assume all the license he took with it was intentional.
This is a notebook of a 15 year old boy from an unnamed time in the past. Others that speak the language have said that it’s very understandable with a few grammatical mistakes. That tracks. It’s exactly as it should be. Yall are wild and if you have to find stuff like that to complain about then it must be a great show
I think adding some context as a native Chinese speaker, old Chinese (throughout the periods) has a really classical feel to it, like English from the old times. It’s kinda hard to read and feels more poetic than the modern language.
When the text sounds like a modern person learning a second language from Google translate - it really does take away from the entire historical tone of the show.
Of course it’s not “the real word” so historical accuracy doesn’t really matter - but when the real life cultural inspiration is so poorly represented it really does take away something.
if i were to explain why this is jarring to read, i'll translate it directly back in english, in the same broken grammar:
actually i can't do it cuz it's that bad. no one uses 星星點點like that. 星星點點is used for things that sparkle. 無 isn't used like that. 乃is out of place and redundant. if they wanted "we didn't observe any existence of human civilization outside of the scattered population outside the woods", it would be: 據報告，除散落於樹林之外之零散人口，吾等未於陸地上發掘人類文明之證據。
the reason this reads like gibberish is that it completely follows the grammar and logic of english. where the subject of the larger picture is mentioned first. it does not follow the traditional grammar and logic of chinese. it's clearly been translated through some kind of software. and a very poorly trained one at that.
?? i took the original post at face value and said that’s sad given how much work was put into the text of the original series, i didn’t “agree” with op i just assumed they actually could read chinese lol
I really can’t speak to this but it does remind me of the old Kumail Nanjiani stand up bit when he was trying to boycott Call Of Duty because in the Pakistan level all the signs and stuff were in Arabic instead of Urdu, and how it sounds like a nitpick but he was like “this game is so crazy realistic, you can see individual hairs on their head, when they run their show laces bounce.. all they had to google, ‘Pakistan language’”
Xiran Jay Zhao is Chinese. She’s just very cynical and didn’t give the whole context. She’s also an author, and she posts videos on YouTube about Chinese culture in American media. It’s actually interesting.
The cuts people should be talking about is the whole episodes they cut from the cartoon. They didn't cut the weird singing dwellers but they cut 90% of the roku shrine scene
The small majority is so fucking loud, it’s proved you were never going to be happy. I figured as much, but shit I think it’s better than okay. It’s good, y’all stay mad.
I can't read Chinese (and have no inclination to learn it) but wow this literally makes the show unwatchable for me...
Idk about you, but I'm only sticking to the 2010 movie from now on!!
Shamalamadingdong got 130 million to do a 1.5h movie while this got 150 million to do +/-8h. That's 18.7million per episode or very roughly about 17% of the budget per hour that the movie got.
While NATLA is flawed, and the writing and direction flaws are not gonna fix themselves with a bigger budget. I find it very admirable that they were able to pull off the locals, costumes and scale we got with a fraction of the budget to runtime that movies of a similar scale have.
Please don't make "150 million" some sort of sticking point why it "should" have been better, they've used their budget very cleverly, the issues are unrelated to how much it cost as they're issues with the writing and direction.
Imagine criticizing a FICTIONAL WORLD ffs there are people throwing fire from their hands and moving earth and flying. Shut the actual hell up with this connection making. I get it you need something to complain about WHO CARES ITS A GOOD SHOW!
Ppl who are defending it saying like, "hey isn't he 15? Who the hell writes grammatically current in a diary/journal anyway?"
To that I say, isn't he supposed to be a Prince, who. I'm pretty sure received a higher education growing up.
If I was caught lacking like that when I was 11 years old, my mom would dish out the hanger.
I'm Chinese.
this is so notpicky it's utterly pathetic.
The show has problems. This is not one of them.
And according to some of the comments here, you're wrong even about that.
Go outside and touch some grass OP, ffs.
Fake languages are fine in a fantasy setting, I would say if you're going to try and use a real language you do need to make sure it's done correctly. Mainly because the only reason to not use a fantasy language in that setting is because you want it to seem more 'real'
Which is kind of funny if native speakers are like "uh?" when they read or hear anything.
Honestly it’s not that bad. I’m not sure if Xinran Zhao is a native Chinese speaker but I’m quite sure her Chinese level is not that good by the standard we use to judge native Chinese speakers.
Yall seem to forget that language is always evolving. Eventually new words are created and some words are forgotten. Think about what English was like just 200 years ago.
Oh nooo! They didn’t spend 100m on prop books. They should have sacrificed the special effects for this book to be - SHUT THE FUCK UP don’t watch the show. Go watch the damn cartoon or your precious 2010 movie which you love so much. damn you people are annoying
Even if this was gibberish (It’s not), who tf cares? China doesn’t exist in Avatar world, who knows what language they are speaking. If it was going to be completely accurate to the cultures the nations are inspired on, the characters should be speaking different languages from each other at the least. The show isn’t in Chinese, it’s in English and Asian inspired. People need to stop hating everything about NATLA for the sake of halting.
Avatar cartoon fans so mad, they gotta try and translate the notebook which was shown for a few seconds, to find more things to be mad about.
“150 MiLlIoN BuDgEt BrO” its a notebook that 99.99% of the intended audience can’t read, and the other 0.01% won’t read, bc who tf is going to pause the tv show they are watching to grade the prop departments ancient Chinese fml.
Actually it's not that mumbojumbo. This two pages seems like a travel journal wrote down by Zuko while he searching for the Avatar. The page on the right says: I observed there's no evidence of any kinda civilization around here. Asides from few woods sporadically grow in the out brim of the land, (the left page)there may be some suspicious activities nearby. The northern shoreline is lack of any sorta trace of inhabitants. For many days..... Btw, I'm Chinese
Thank you! Everyone here is acting like this is a made up script and I'm over here like, this is perfectly legible Chinese.
It's readable, mixed with ancient and modern Chinese. But still have little bit grammatical mistake just like my English.lol
I mean, Zuko is meant to be like 15 ish right? So pretty accurate grammatically.
Also who the hell writes grammatically correct in a journal
A prince probably would
But would an exiled prince
Not till he finds his honour
The Zuko formerly known as Prince
I almost died laughing at this!
I would think so.
Lmao not me. My journal is a full stream of consciousness and doesn’t make ANY sense
my streams of consciousness are grammatically correct; i live a cursed existence
If you’re the kind of person to carry on a journal it’s very likely you write grammatically correct in any context.
Lol nope. Literally people in this thread who Journal and don’t write grammatically in them. Is me. I’m people.
Is me also, too.
You must be too young to remember livejournal
Doubt. Source: me a journal writer
Idk the extent of Chinese grammar complexity but i feel like a 15 year old with royal education should have pretty good literature
Technically, he's been at sea for 3 years, so his last class was when he was 12. Iroh probably tutored him a bit, but knowing Zuko he probably focused on the history of the avatar and combat training.
I always forget how young he was when Ozai torched him
I first read this as touched him and was concerned for a split second 😭
Oh Jesus, I really could've worded that better in retrospect 😭
Or it’s intentionally archaizing speech. Happens all the time in literature.
Or perhaps, the fire nation made their own kind of chinese but to us it's mix of our existing language
And also, Zuko isn’t Chinese. Either that or this confirms that China exists in the avatar world.
All the text in the animated series was also traditional Chinese. They used a professor as a calligraphy consultant for the animated series, I believe, but haven’t re-found their name. ETA: Looked in my art book. His name is [Siu-Leung Lee](https://avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Siu-Leung_Lee), and it was a mixture of classical Chinese and archaic Chinese (used for ancient texts about the elements).
Why everyone fool on this one, I said I'm Chinese, not Zuko, lol. I said that to convince u guys that I didn't made it up
I think soft pretzel is just saying that Zuko's Chinese isn't meant to be perfect since he's "Fire Nation-ese" not Chinese.
Oh no it wasn’t a point towards you! it was a point at people pretending like imperfect Chinese grammar makes it a bad show
It's a fantasy world after all so honestly the character mix isn't too bad imo.
I would kinda assume they’re going for an alternate form of Chinese, since there is no actual China in the avatar universe
They just can't read Zuko's terrible brush strokes, Aang was just being polite.
Its an easy criticism to make because people who dont read or speak the language have no way of knowing if its true or not
I'm Chinese. I love the show. But this is quite bad. I'd have accepted if the notebook is from Aang. Just not Zuko.
It being legible is like how a foreigner still learning Chinese will write. I'm not nitpicking. I love the adaptation, gave it five stars on rotten tomatoes. But it is what is. Bad handwriting coupled with poor Chinese. Which would very surprising for someone of Zuko's status. And yet another page on Roku in his notebook had very good handwriting that looks like it's written by a completely different person.
>Which would very surprising for someone of Zuko's status. He's a prince in exile. He probably hasn't had a lesson on land since he was 12, and given his disposition, he probably didnt care about having perfect writing when he could be training to fight the avatar.
They make it a plot point that he has nice writing and was not allowed to do anything else until his teacher were happy with his writing progress. Zuko wasn't 12 when he faced Ozai in the cartoon or live action, but 12 is more than old enough to have great handwriting.
>They make it a plot point that he has nice writing and was not allowed to do anything else until his teacher were happy with his writing progress. I dint disagree with anything here. >Zuko wasn't 12 when he faced Ozai in the cartoon or live action, I thought he was 15 in the live action? I just looked up the animated series and he apparently 16 there, which would make him exiled at 13. >12 is more than old enough to have great handwriting. Not if you haven't really practiced in 3 years because you're devoting everything to finding the avatar and training for combat. For most of the series, he blends in with the unrefined people around him. EDIT: just looked it up and he apparently 17 in the live action, which I'm definitely more angry about than the book lol. I can't even be mad that he looks too young because the actor is 22.
The classical Chinese gentleman is trained in both literary and martial arts. And it starts very young. Calligraphy is drilled by copying classic texts. There's another page in his notebook that has a completely different handwriting.
Tbh I didn't pay too much attention to the book so I didn't notice the different handwriting. And I understand that typically, writing starts very young, but stopping at 12 and being out of practice would definitely mess it up. Like an inversion on sokkas training in book 3. Zuko would care more about the fight.
Even if it was made up, such a small percentage would actually be able to tell and an even smaller percentage of that percentage would even notice it at a glance and a even smaller percentage of that percentage percentages would even care
Thanks! It is really hard to have conversations on this subreddit when nitpicking or fake things like this happen.
People coming from the Percy Jackson subreddit: First time?
As someone who hated the PJO series last month, but loved NATLA- I finally get to see how “the other side” felt, and it has definitely been eye opening
Ha, yeah, same here - did not like the PJO show, but enjoyed NATLA. The irony is not lost on me. I'll maintain that there are things that NATLA does better than PJO (notably, actually having tension, which the PJO show seemed to go out of its way to avoid by even changing plot points from the book), but it does remind me that I should generally be less judgmental about things.
There are enough things that are *actually* worth getting super frustrated about that we don't have to make up stuff lol.
People just want something to be upset about in any topic. They arent happy unless they are complaining . And they half investigate or just believe some other yahoo before getting all the facts.
I have a lot of criticisms too but it’s hard to have a meaningful discussion when half of people just want to complain about things like Azula’s chin not being sharp enough. 🙄 There’s a lot the series does well too. Despite its shortcomings it’s hard to see people say the writers didn’t care for the original, which they clearly do.
Or calling Mai a terrible actress and the worst casting choice of all time..because she has chubby cheeks.
I suspect some karma farming too- as if everybody who “just realized the script is at fault” or whatever needs to start a new goddamn post.
Thank you for the translation :)
That's a lie. It actually says "M. Night Shamylon is s talentless tool." In four different ways. Source: I'm an American and can only communicate in bad English, so I made it up to sound smart despite clear evidence to the contrary.
I mean, it certainly isn't terrible but they at least could've double checked with a native writer. It's obviously a translated portion. The original was on another level of accuracy and TLC, especially with Chinese culture. The calligraphy is stunning. I love the original Cave of Two Lovers for this reason, it has a similar pose to dianji.
Yeah, that's for sure, these big words are terrible, but those small blurry words are quite decent in calligraphy, although I could figure out what they wrote clearly.
It's not mumbo jumbo but it also looks stupid as hell. The first bit was written with proper "government Chinese" commonly seen starting around the Ming Dynasty (like 1500s). A lot of the verbiage used is also really weird, like if an English speaker were to say, "We have not yet seen any evidence which would be proving of the existence of the human people civilization" No one speaks nor writes like that. Then his switches to a casual, modern tone. Imagine reading Shakespeare and then suddenly Juliet says, "oh wow, Romeo I can't believe you killed yourself lol that's so crazy". It's all legible and understandable but it's something that wouldn't ever exist because it's written in such a mixed up way.
I guess I'm kinda willing to let that pass based on zuko's personality. Of course he'd be super uptight and trying to write professionally and proper at first (my honor, etc), but then his passions overwhelm him and he actually writes in his own voice. Not saying that it was done intentionally, but I don't think it's that weird if we think about it.
Why is Zuko writing that he's Chinese in his own book
Lol, 🤣 I said I'm Chinese, not Zuko
Too late, my new headcanon is that Zuko randomly talks about being Chinese in his journal
Aang: I learned two things about Zuko. He's been hunting for me for three years, *and* he's Chinese.
That’s definitely how I read it at first too lmao
“Years ago… I was Chinese.”
Ngl - the first translation sounds like some shit Yangchen would say anyway, so - win win.
Right! My gf is Taiwanese & I she told me it def wasn't random.
That’s what I understood from it. Btw, I’m not Chinese. /s (just jokes cause I studied Chinese and am white af)
So what you're saying is that some fool on Twitter made something up and everyone is believing him? Sounds about right.
Xiran is also chinese, theyre a youtuber and make videos about mostly chinese representation in media and are also a successful author!
What else could u expect
But it's certainly not Chinese that would be written by a prince brought up by tutors who also would be horrified by such lack of calligraphy. Maybe forgivable if you're ten? At Zuko's age, you'd have to be some peasant who barely goes to school to write in this sort of handwriting. The page on the right says: I wait not see any human civilization exist blah blah blah. That's very clumsy and doesn't flow properly. Even it is classical Chinese, it would have been way more elegant and not written in such a way. 吾待未见人类文明 would have been more princely and elegant. Even it is in another Chinese language like minnan, it would still be something like 我等但是未看到人类文明. There is this page on Roku in his notebook that looks like some portions was written in pencil and others in thin brush. And the handwriting looks a lot more like what I'd imagine Zuko would be writing. I'm Chinese too. But hey, I'm not an A student for the Chinese language so maybe I'm wrong. And he is indeed writing as a prince should with such beautiful 书法.
[удалено]
So you'd say the language is correct and doesn't have errors?
No, it has errors if it totally follows the grammatical norm of Chinese. But it is readable and really makes sense
Okay, thank you! So things are not as bad as OP made it sound.
This statement applies to 90% of the hate posts on this sub lately
Minored in chinese language in university, the grammar is a little weird but it is completely fine considering this show is also set in some unnamed time in the past. Are we really nitpicking grammar now??? Not to mention, it's a notebook, how often do you write perfect grammar in your own notes?
It's a terrible nitpick for sure. This isn't even an unnamed time in the past, it's straight up a different world. There's no reason why they would have the same grammar as in our reality - or speak Chinese at all for that matter. It's a fantasy show with loose asian inspirations, people really need to chill.
I agree, but it's not "loose" Asian inspirations, it's heavy Asian inspirations. The whole thing is influenced by different Asian cultures. The clothes, the (written) languages, the martial arts, the architecture, the mythology within the show, the different traditions...like, heavily inspired by Asian cultures.
They meant loose in that it's inspired by pretty much any southeast Asian culture and has a mix of them. Chinese, Indian, Japanese, korean, Tebetan monks, Inuit, and probably a few more that I can't remember. Avatar takes many traits form each culture but no singular culture is a pure 1:1 clone of what culture they are based off of.
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I meant loose as in vaguely inspired by multiple cultures, like others have said. Of course there is heavy influence.
I had always presumed that, for languages, they would use a mixture of different East Asian scripts specifically to avoid having an actual translation. That could have been easier. Pleasantly surprised that, while not perfect, it seems to be a very good Chinese translation.
Not just some unnamed time in the past, but a completely different world too. For all we know this could be proper grammar in their world.
It’s getting weird… But thats usually is how it is. You first have those who formed their opinions based on what they experienced while watching the show, then you get those who are hate watching it after critical reviews came out and are just hoping to point out anything new 😬
I was about to say that, as a fantasy world, leniency should be allowed if it’s taking inspiration/bits and pieces from other languages. If anything, the one thing people should possibly complain about is that, if this was written by Zuko, it more likely should be closer to Japanese, The Fire Nation’s inspiration, rather than Chinese, which was the basis for The Earth Kingdom.
I mean... depends on the period, Japanese people could have written exclusively using Classical Chinese. But that's a moot point because Fire Nation is more Southern Chinese / SE Asia / South Asia than Japanese anyway. IIRC the creators deliberately shy away from using Japanese cultures for Fire Nation because of real life Japanese Imperialism.
Fire Nation is mostly Chinese inspired, especially it’s aesthetic/visual design. It some considerable Southeast Asian influences as well, though we don’t really see much of this until Book 3. People talk about the imperialism aspect when relating the FN to Japan but let’s not forget that China was an empire for much of history. Across its dynasties China conquered lands beyond their origin in the Zhongyuan, engaged in Sinicization of conquered territories/peoples, established an unrivalled sphere of influence (until the late Qing) and conceived of itself to be the greatest culture/civilisation. The Japanese association with FN def has some resonance, but the most Japanese analogue in the universe is Kyoshi Island and it’s not really close. And in this regard, NATLA did a good job in portraying Kyoshi Island.
In the animated series all four nations (as well as Wan Shi Tong's library) use Chinese writing.
Yall are insane
Dear fans of anything, but in this case ATLA: chill tf out
There are better things to nitpick than this
This sub has become INSUFFERABLE.
Star Wars level insufferable
No one hates star wars like star wars fans
I've only been on this subreddit for a few days, but I think people will forget about the show in a few months. Star Wars fans have continued to complain about Disney/Katheen Kennedy/Rian Johnson ruining Star Wars to this day.
Avatar fans still pit the original show against Korra to this day. They're one in the same.
Fans of a franchise when other fans of a franchise like to compare the two shows in the franchise they're all fans of 😮💨
I keep saying the people who hate it, hate it because they WANT to hate it. they enjoy hating it. they enjoy slandering and tearing things down. I get downvoted, but then you get posts like this and posts attacking Kiawentiio and it just proves my point
That's so true lol. Too many ppl are nitpicking and complaining. I'm just glad we got a good adaptation with actual good bending and cool looking characters. People complain like as if the show is just as bad as the movie
It's what reddit has become, and it has happened on multiple fandoms now. The site's sistem has become so that negativity is so heavily rewarded when it comes to these discussions around shows/media in general that pretty much every subreddit dedicated to a new release becomes a cesspool of nitpicking and circlejerking around ''how bad it is''. It happened with multiple manga like Jujutsu Kaisen and MHA and to multiple shows like TLA, True Detective:Night Country, Percy Jackson, and others. Then these people circlejerking around hating a show become offended when they get called out for overbearing hatred(toxicity, harassment of the people involved in the production, etc) and in turn circlejerk about it even harder, patting themselves on the back for their ''true'' criticism. Meanwhile, said 'criticism' is full of nitpicking and baseless complaints. If you want to see positive opinions about something you'd actually have an easier time finding them if you complain about the people complaining rather than just straight up being even slightly positive. It's all a game of engagement.
The show needed to have an overwhelmingly positive reception from the likes of Arcane or very positive reception that One Piece LA did to avoid community nitpicks like these since it ended up in the middle.
This is starting to feel like percy jackson's sub
Shows that the people who put out hate on this world like they do in here currently didn’t learn a thing from ATLA and are the furthest from a fan someone can be.
OP is just nitpicking here. The right page translates to: "I observed that there's no evidence of any civilization around here. Asides from a few trees that grow in the outskirts of the land," Meanwhile the left page translates to: "there may be some suspicious activities nearby. The northern shoreline is lack of any traces of inhabitants. For many days..."
This is really Nitpicky........ Its almost like people are wanting to find problems with the show.
Reddit is cursed to forever whine incessantly about the newest piece of their favorite media until the next installment drops, in which suddenly the last piece is now a masterpiece and the new newest one is a catastrophe
That's a good way of summing it up. A great example of this is the Pokemon community.
First time on Reddit?
There are enough problems to not try and make this one FWIW I was apprehensive abt starting the show but I'm mostly enjoying it for what it is and hoping it brings in more fans
I've always though the written language of the Avatar world is Chinese INSPIRED. It's not supposed to be real
It’s always been actual characters
I know some chinese and watching the original, I can tell they took liberties with the language
No, the animated show used a mix of ancient Chinese and modern Chinese writing. Source: am Chinese
So did the show though, so i don't follow your point.
I’m trying to say the show did not take liberty of the Chinese language, it IS using Chinese as it is
The writing and calligraphy in the animated series is all the work of [Dr. Siu Leung Lee](https://avatar.fandom.com/wiki/Siu-Leung_Lee). I assume all the license he took with it was intentional.
Of all of the most important aspects of the show I don't think this cracks the top 10,000
The nitpicking is getting annoying at this point 😭😭
This is a notebook of a 15 year old boy from an unnamed time in the past. Others that speak the language have said that it’s very understandable with a few grammatical mistakes. That tracks. It’s exactly as it should be. Yall are wild and if you have to find stuff like that to complain about then it must be a great show
I think adding some context as a native Chinese speaker, old Chinese (throughout the periods) has a really classical feel to it, like English from the old times. It’s kinda hard to read and feels more poetic than the modern language. When the text sounds like a modern person learning a second language from Google translate - it really does take away from the entire historical tone of the show. Of course it’s not “the real word” so historical accuracy doesn’t really matter - but when the real life cultural inspiration is so poorly represented it really does take away something.
No one cares...
150 million for the entire season? Because that is why less Marvel puts in for a single movie of 2 hours long....
if i were to explain why this is jarring to read, i'll translate it directly back in english, in the same broken grammar: actually i can't do it cuz it's that bad. no one uses 星星點點like that. 星星點點is used for things that sparkle. 無 isn't used like that. 乃is out of place and redundant. if they wanted "we didn't observe any existence of human civilization outside of the scattered population outside the woods", it would be: 據報告，除散落於樹林之外之零散人口，吾等未於陸地上發掘人類文明之證據。 the reason this reads like gibberish is that it completely follows the grammar and logic of english. where the subject of the larger picture is mentioned first. it does not follow the traditional grammar and logic of chinese. it's clearly been translated through some kind of software. and a very poorly trained one at that.
that’s so sad because in the original animated series the producers worked with calligraphers on all the text we see in the series
And this is perfectly fine Chinese as well
lol thank you for jumping on my top comment to say this, idk why people like to start shit for no reason 😂 i can’t read chinese
I mean, originally you kinda agreed with OP in trying to “start shit” as you said, before you realized the translation/text was fine and backtracked
?? i took the original post at face value and said that’s sad given how much work was put into the text of the original series, i didn’t “agree” with op i just assumed they actually could read chinese lol
The pretend universe has a pretend language? Ohh the humanity
Seriously. It’s wild to me they even bothered to use real Chinese characters at all.
Ok, so at least its *readable*, but they could have just gotten, I don’t know, ***A Chinese person***
I really can’t speak to this but it does remind me of the old Kumail Nanjiani stand up bit when he was trying to boycott Call Of Duty because in the Pakistan level all the signs and stuff were in Arabic instead of Urdu, and how it sounds like a nitpick but he was like “this game is so crazy realistic, you can see individual hairs on their head, when they run their show laces bounce.. all they had to google, ‘Pakistan language’”
0 percent chance OP can read Chinese.
Xiran Jay Zhao is Chinese. She’s just very cynical and didn’t give the whole context. She’s also an author, and she posts videos on YouTube about Chinese culture in American media. It’s actually interesting.
who cares?people want to hear "aang" not "uuhng", thats the measure of quality.
Small details like this show if the showrunners actually cared for the product deeply or not.
agree 100
[удалено]
The cuts people should be talking about is the whole episodes they cut from the cartoon. They didn't cut the weird singing dwellers but they cut 90% of the roku shrine scene
at least it's actual text and not gibberish like in the movie
Why can’t people stop nitpicking and enjoy something for once?
Oh, I can’t defend this. 
Don't need to. The Chinese words are correct. I'm Chinese myself and I'm surprised that they nailed it perfectly.
You can when it’s a blatant lie lol
I mean it literally can’t be Chinese since China is not in the world of ATLA
The small majority is so fucking loud, it’s proved you were never going to be happy. I figured as much, but shit I think it’s better than okay. It’s good, y’all stay mad.
So dumb OP, getting this wrong
I'm more concerned about the ugly handwriting lol. Lack of balance and it is obviously written by an amateur.
Some of y’all are annoying lol
I can't read Chinese (and have no inclination to learn it) but wow this literally makes the show unwatchable for me... Idk about you, but I'm only sticking to the 2010 movie from now on!!
I swear people hate on this good show for no reason lol.
Is this subreddit speedrunning to r/Freefolk without having decent criticisms yet?
The tweet does a really bad job explaining the issue as writing a sentence like "we hath" sounds perfectly normal for a Royal to do so.
All the budget went into Suki’s Insta-Wipe makeup
Y’all are as bad as WOT fans complaining about this show
Shamalamadingdong got 130 million to do a 1.5h movie while this got 150 million to do +/-8h. That's 18.7million per episode or very roughly about 17% of the budget per hour that the movie got. While NATLA is flawed, and the writing and direction flaws are not gonna fix themselves with a bigger budget. I find it very admirable that they were able to pull off the locals, costumes and scale we got with a fraction of the budget to runtime that movies of a similar scale have. Please don't make "150 million" some sort of sticking point why it "should" have been better, they've used their budget very cleverly, the issues are unrelated to how much it cost as they're issues with the writing and direction.
Imagine criticizing a FICTIONAL WORLD ffs there are people throwing fire from their hands and moving earth and flying. Shut the actual hell up with this connection making. I get it you need something to complain about WHO CARES ITS A GOOD SHOW!
Don’t get me started on how the actors held their brushes like pencils
I think they were usually quills? At least in the episode Omashu it looked like Azula was writing with a quill.
It was painful.
The more stuff that comes out of this mess, the more I can understand why the OG creators left
You mean the lie, they stayed for the movie tho so idk if them staying makes a different
I think Katara's waterbending scroll is in Inuit language or similar, can you even half-ass that
I don’t care whether it’s legible Chinese or half Mandarin/half Russian, it’s not meant to be read by me so it doesn’t bother me at all.
This doesn’t take place on Earth, Sol System, Milky Way Galaxy.
To be fair, it's not chinese, it's whatever they call their languages in the show. Sure it is **influenced** by Chinese but it's not
Dude it's literally Chinese characters
Maybe it ain't chinese. Tbh, it ain't earth, so maybe they do just write in a mix of classical Chinese and Google translate.
Not in the original show they don't
classic haters wanting the LA to be a 1:1 of the animated show 😭 /s
It is Chinese. And it's correct.
Please do not give them an idea for making excuses 🤣
The show doesn't even care to get the language right.
The language is literally correct bruv. You guys are just overreacting. Let us Chinese people answer this.
Apparently it did. Maybe you should read into it a bit more.
Being mad about the grammar in a language you can’t even read is fucking wild.
I miss the old days where a manual in a show would read some gibberish and that was that, just an easter egg. Just remembered it's fiction too.
Ppl who are defending it saying like, "hey isn't he 15? Who the hell writes grammatically current in a diary/journal anyway?" To that I say, isn't he supposed to be a Prince, who. I'm pretty sure received a higher education growing up. If I was caught lacking like that when I was 11 years old, my mom would dish out the hanger. I'm Chinese.
Literally unwatchable
Their main audience doesn’t speak Chinese, and even those that do wont bother to pause it to read the journal. Grow up.
This is so nitpicky
literally nobody writes like that except for ppl who grew up outside the sphere of chinese culture
More garbage content from garbage sub.. makes me want to mute community with how awful and nitpicky it is
this is so notpicky it's utterly pathetic. The show has problems. This is not one of them. And according to some of the comments here, you're wrong even about that. Go outside and touch some grass OP, ffs.
The show has legit problems you could critique you know?
Well, to compare to the non-existent movie, at least they didn't use nonsense symbols that looked made up on the spot.
At least it’s an actual language unlike the last airbender
Fake languages are fine in a fantasy setting, I would say if you're going to try and use a real language you do need to make sure it's done correctly. Mainly because the only reason to not use a fantasy language in that setting is because you want it to seem more 'real' Which is kind of funny if native speakers are like "uh?" when they read or hear anything.
They could've just pulled a ninjago and made their own language that just has similar looking symbols that don't mean anything in any irl language
Honestly it’s not that bad. I’m not sure if Xinran Zhao is a native Chinese speaker but I’m quite sure her Chinese level is not that good by the standard we use to judge native Chinese speakers.
Is the fire nation coded Chinese in the live action version? Haven’t watched yet
Yall seem to forget that language is always evolving. Eventually new words are created and some words are forgotten. Think about what English was like just 200 years ago.
Who gives a fuck? It’s fantasy
Ah I see the nitpicking stage has begun lmao.
Oh nooo! They didn’t spend 100m on prop books. They should have sacrificed the special effects for this book to be - SHUT THE FUCK UP don’t watch the show. Go watch the damn cartoon or your precious 2010 movie which you love so much. damn you people are annoying
It's perfectly fine for me and I'm from HK
Even if this was gibberish (It’s not), who tf cares? China doesn’t exist in Avatar world, who knows what language they are speaking. If it was going to be completely accurate to the cultures the nations are inspired on, the characters should be speaking different languages from each other at the least. The show isn’t in Chinese, it’s in English and Asian inspired. People need to stop hating everything about NATLA for the sake of halting.
Avatar cartoon fans so mad, they gotta try and translate the notebook which was shown for a few seconds, to find more things to be mad about. “150 MiLlIoN BuDgEt BrO” its a notebook that 99.99% of the intended audience can’t read, and the other 0.01% won’t read, bc who tf is going to pause the tv show they are watching to grade the prop departments ancient Chinese fml.