To the scriptwriters of Monster Hunter, it was a simple pun on words, some light-hearted dialogue between two American soldiers.
But to Chinese cinemagoers, these two short lines were a major insult, their translation causing such public outrage that within 24 hours of the film’s release, it was pulled from Chinese cinemas.
“What knees are these?” jokes an Asian soldier to a white soldier.
“Chi-knees,” he responds.
What the film company failed to realize was that the Chinese subtitles changed the hard-to-translate pun to “there is gold underneath my knees” – a reference to a proverb that means men do not kneel or submit easily.
The backlash to the fantasy action movie was swift as outra
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Dec 10, 2020