There is some behind the scenes footage from the making of Indiana Jones, where we see Kate learning the song with her vocal coach, and she's holding a piece of paper with the song lyrics, written phonetically - I feel bad that she gets a lot of flack for her mispronounciation, when in actual fact she was just singing the words, as they were written for her :/
@@orion8835 Agreed, great fun...and a tribute to Busby Berkeley movies I watched with my dad on rainy afternoons. Ridiculously fun! All those chorus girls are gonna MAKE IT! AND MAKE IT BIG!
And this was how an actress from a small town in Missouri caught the eye of the director Steven Spielberg and landed herself a marriage to one of Hollywood's biggest film director/producers. Nicely done Kate
@@davidw.2791 Not exactly. The song is about how quickly social morals are changing, how what was shocking only a few decades ago is totally normal now. The dance sequence is just spectacle for the benefit of the movie viewer. It's just a fancy way to do/"hide" the opening credits.
As a COMPLETE linguaphile nerd and professional translator (NOT for Chinese, but have been a been around the block in China (mostly Beijing)), this was absolutely fantastic, mate. REALLY enjoyed your prospective on this. I "speak" Chinese, but quite poorly, I've ALWAYS wondered what she was uttering in this song lol. Thank you!
And most of the folks who are wealthy enough to dine on champagne and barbecued pigeons in a glamorous Shanghainese nightclub in presumably an imperialist concession (i.e. full of proud foreign capitalists and adventurers) would not care about the Chinese being spoken there.
She’s not a native speaker and wasn’t pretending to be. Everybody needs to calm down about the mispronunciations. She was acting in a movie. Maybe a little insensitive on the part of the producers, but it surely isn’t any fault of Kate Capshaw.
yes, these Chinese complain too much about mispronouncition. the lesson is, Hollywood should not bother with anything Chinese, and completely ignore them.
I'm born in China so I'm fluent in Madarin. When I watched the movie, I wasn't offended, I was more confused. I wasn't sure if she was pronouncing things badly, speaking a dialect or just trying to sound like she's speaking in Chinese. So I couldnt focus on anything else lol. But now that I think about it, it kindda fits her character of an egocentric american who doesn't care about the local culture. But I'm also confused by the fact that I couldnt understand anyone speaking Chinese in the movie. Were they all given a phonetic script?
Excellent and very interesting background info! No wonder a Chinese friend of mine was very uneasy at my request to translate it for me- to compare to Porters lyrics! In the context of the movie I guess that the Chinese audience in the club would think "ahhh! Isn't she sweet trying to sing in Chinese-hopeless, but sweet" Anyway, I guess it's anything goes...and the intro is a massive tribute to Busby Berkeley, certainly grabs the attention! Thanks for all your hard work! Cheers, Silver-13
Hey, thanks. :) In the movie the singer is supposedly singing in perfect Chinese (whatever dialect it was), and the club audience understood it perfectly. For the people watching the movie, it didn't matter because most of the audience wouldn't be able to tell the difference of real or imitated foreign languages. Kate Capshaw did have a good voice though. Nowadays Hollywood do try to employ accurate Chinese dialogues for Chinese characters, so that the movie might sell well in China.
@@AlanKrantas first off, great job with the video. The effort is much appreciated. As for "she is supposedly singing in perfect Chinese," what makes you say that? The audience reaction? Maybe they just really like her voice. Maybe they're just really polite. Willie Scott is basically a failed Hollywood starlet who essentially gave up on her dream of breaking into Hollywood by taking a (presumably well paid) job on the other side of the planet. Learning perfect Chinese for a gig she probably resents taking seems like an excessive amount of preparation, to me.
@@gtrdaveg Honesty, you are right, nothing suggested that the story had she singing in perfect Chinese. But surely a high-end night club won't have a girl singing really bad Chinese in front of Chinese audiences, let alone a Chinese crime lord. It's also like me hearing people speaking some eastern European language in a movie in Prague and I would assume they are speaking real Czech but not some fake or hybrid stuff.
Well, as someone who tried (unsuccessfully) to learn Chinese, I suspected right away that she was trying her best and that it was indeed Chinese. Even I could pick up bits ... like yīdìng huíbào ... that I recognized. But I know it is easier two English speaking people to converse in Chinese than it is for an English speaker to make someone who has Chinese as a first language understand. The English speakers all mispronounce the characters and butcher the tones the same way. So they really aren't speaking Chinese at all, but some bastard language of their own. I speak from painful experience. I really appreciated the translation and it was obvious that no criticism on her attempt was meant.
Had my Chinese friend listen to this. At first he thought she was singing Japanese because it was so different, and then once he saw the lyrics, said it was very terribly sung. He said she doesn't make sense.
Of course it doesn't make sense because it's a made up language. No one knows what the Fuck that bitch is attempting to say. No one is speaking ANY kind of REAL language in this movie other than English. Everything is ad-libbed or just blatant mumbo jumbo.
1.) Thank you very much for this 'first hand' account of this production number. Though at the time of the film's release I had no working knowledge of any forms of spoken Chinese, my best friend in high school was Asian-Canadian and we had talked enough about Canto-pop and tones for me to know that Capshaw was not landing the lyrics to any degree; but I think it can be interpreted that that's the point: as endearing (and irritating) as Willie Scott can be, I think we're meant to assume she's kind of second rate all round, hired by this shady Shanghai nightclub based on God knows what back room deal. She's certainly very much a chip off the ice block of many of the cheesiest 1930s and 40s adventure serials. This leads me to my second point... 2.) When this film came out, there was a great deal of smirking that it was silly and sophomoric (to which Spielberg and Lucas later admitted) and just not what 'Raiders' had been - but that was precisely the reason I liked it: believe it or not, even though it was understood to be a rapturous nod to Depression era serials (as was Allen's 'The Purple Rose of Cairo'), 'Raiders' was taken VERY seriously, if not as an art object, at least as one of high cinematic aim and craft (which it is), but it was grandly, slickly - even morally nostalgic [The Nazi/Old Testament plot gave it a kind of social muscle that elevated it above mere thrills] - its almost too good at melding historical high-mindedness with fun spectacle, ultimately making it a very hard film to qualify and quantify. Every time you see it you are reminded how damn good it really is (enough to take the melting faces with a grain of salt). Why I like 'Temple' then, is that it is almost poking fun at the immense cultural moment in the summer of 1981 when 'Raiders' both repeated and overturned the common vibe of the summer blockbuster (What, no shark? No dogfights against star fields? A guy with a bullwhip and a bunch of Nazis out of 'The Dirty Dozen'? - you've gotta be kidding.) How could this be followed in all seriousness...why by REALLY going for what 1930s serials were all about: arch and self-conscious set pieces, i.e.: tacky exoticism/lurid comic book cultural and racial stereotypes, gems, poisons and antidotes, car chases, plane crashes, bats, secret passages, strangulation by ceiling fan, bugs, death chambers, sentimentality (slave children), freaky temples, lava, mine cars, deluges, rope bridges...its almost as if this film is a 15-part serial in one. It's a comic masterpiece; it's no so much played for laughs as much is it (inadvertently?) proposes it may be laughing at us. Was this a self-conscious gesture on the part of the filmmakers? No, but I think the film can be enjoyed and defended because of its effect. It's brutal and camp and once. To be offended by the film is to miss the point; sure it's clumsy in that its 'period' evocation of Charlie Chan, Nawabs, and Maharajahs comes across as best 'reductionist', but if I, as a white male 17 year old living in a small town in 1984 could see that this was going on and could be questioned and could cause one to query the representation of cultures in ANY film, then the 'covert' effects of this piece aren't that obscure. Though the film is certainly not above criticism for this point (not at all!), it does bring to the fore that far more highly regarded social documents may contain far more subtle racializing effects.
Yes, I do get comments that think I made this only to make fun of this film or Kate Capshaw, most of them happened to be written by white people. Like them, you clearly never bothered to read the video description section. I made this just because I wanted to answer a question from my own childhood. As an big Indiana Jones movies' fan myself, watching these movies again and again firstly on VHS tapes - and later played two Indiana Jones PC games, as bad as they were, just because there were no "new" films - I'll tell you this: to love a film deeply doesn't mean you have to embrace it completely and defend it at all cost. That's toxic fandom. I'm a huge Star Wars fan too, even more so than Indiana Jones, and I still thinks there are a lot of silly and weird stuff in those films. Those details never change my feelings toward these films. The Temple is a master piece? Well, you could say that, but I'll say The Last Crusade is better.
I’m currently watching the making-of which was done in the early 2000s and in it Steven Spielberg says “she had to learn the song in Mandarin.” So there goes the Manchu theory.
It was the best part of this stupid movie. That and the Duesenberg getaway car. Where did they dig up all the blonde chorus girls in the middle of China? Signed Boomer Vet
Thank you so much! I’ve wondered about this since I first saw the movie as a child. I’ve done song translations between French and English for a long time, and it is a very delicate art to making the same ideas singable in both languages. You have to be equal parts translator and lyricist. I really love this video and your work.
Great work! I'm guessing "I always know my wish will eventually be answered" could refer to the line "I'm sure that you're bound to answer when I propose"
According to the story she was actually trying to sing to the gang master in his Manchu language, that's why Chinese can't understand it.( I speak both Mandarin and Cantonese myself and I can't even know what she's singing.)
I doubt an American nightclub singer working in Shanghai would be able to sing a language that vey, very few people still use in 1935, which was already dying in 18/19th century. Manchu language revivalism only began in the post-Mao era (1976-). The Asian drug lords in Tropic Thunder "speak" Chinese in the exactly same way. You can still understand a word or two but not all of it, which is typical for non-native and untrained Chinese speakers. Also, Lao Che's son Chen clearly speak standard Chinese when he tried to shoot Indy.
The Manchu are an ethnic minority in China and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. They are sometimes called "red-tasseled Manchus", a reference to the ornamentation on traditional Manchu hats. The Later Jin (1616-1636), and Qing dynasty (1636-1912) were established and ruled by Manchus, who are descended from the Jurchen people who earlier established the Jin dynasty (1115-1234) in China. Manchus form the largest branch of the Tungusic peoples and are distributed throughout China, forming the fourth largest ethnic group in the country. They can be found in 31 Chinese provincial regions. They also form the largest minority group in China without an autonomous region. Among them, Liaoning has the largest population and Hebei, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Inner Mongolia and Beijing have over 100,000 Manchu residents. About half of the population live in Liaoning and one-fifth in Hebei. There are a number of Manchu autonomous counties in China, such as Xinbin, Xiuyan, Qinglong, Fengning, Yitong, Qingyuan, Weichang, Kuancheng, Benxi, Kuandian, Huanren, Fengcheng, Beizhen and over 300 Manchu towns and townships. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchu_people
@@AlanKrantas You're making an assumption that she has any idea what she's trying to sing. People sing in foreign languages all the time. It's about replicating the sounds as opposed to knowing the translation. Everyone here keeps trying to make her out to be a linguist or something. Like you said, she's a nightclub singer trying to make this gang master happy. Odds are that she would have been given the foreign lyrics that she needed to sing and learned them.
@@michellemoirai7274 Yes, it's possible that she can sing perfect Manchu without any understanding, but the language was practically dead at that time (and also at the time of making the movie). People (not me) thought so because it fit the setting of the story, and also because they cannot tell the difference of Manchu and Mandarin. Also please read the video description section.
Appreciate the effort put to create this! But as a native Chinese speaker I'm pretty sure it's still far from the original lyrics since some words are just too rude while others just doesn't make sense
Thanks! I could never figure out what she was singing, I thought maybe it was Shanghainese. Still she does a great job selling it. No wonder the director married her!
@@lazzy2012 i also speak standard chinese and shanghainese and i can tell you that the lead singer has the worst pronunciation of all time lmao (which is fine) point being, i would have never guessed it's sung in chinese if wasnt cuz of the subtitles.
She was singing Chinese????? I remember when I was a kid and watched this movie in the theater and I was so amazed of how cool this movie was being made!!!! We should careless of what she was singing I guess......
I mean people shouldn't really be super mad at the lyrics anyway since they're so much more relevant now in our current social climate than back then. 😊
It's really not her fault about the heinous pronunciation. The producers just wrote the lyrics down phonetically and told her to learn it. She didn't have any teaching in Mandarin and they never even consulted a native Mandarin speaker to help her. Plus, this was 1984, the didn't have the internet, so it's not like she could use a TH-cam tutorial or a translate app.
I think the two lines could be based on the lines from Frank Sinatra recording: "So though I'm not a great romancer / I know that you're bound to answer / When I propose," Which is what seems to be the gist of your translation!
@@yamiart6149 exactly, there are very few people who can speak Manchu even back in 1980's. And I'm pretty certain there were none in Hollywood. I doubt even the last Emperor of Qing Dynasty could speak Manchurian fluently.
Capshaw still did a great performance despite the supposed egregious pronunciation of Chinese (As said so by many people, including the uploader, of whom has plenty of credentials to prove such claims), but I still love the charm of it, and how it segues into a tense conversation with a Chinese crime lord and then a high octane fight, with Ford fighting for his life. Anything goes! Hahahahahaha To the uploader, I appreciate the time you took to translate and explain it to us. As someone that does not speak or read any Chinese language, we get to have a perspective how bad a Westerner would pronounce a language vastly different from ours, and what she is saying (Hopefully) with English subtitles. :)
Alan, thanks for your hard work. I'd also be really fascinated to hear any translations of the Chinese/Cantonese spoken in the movie. I haven't found anywhere on the internet where people have translated it, although I know some forums where Germans have translated lots of the German in Raiders and Last Crusade. Can you translate any of the dialogue spoken by Indy, Lao Che and his sons? I think there's also some spoken by the pilots on the plane that bail out, and then by Indy himself when he warns Shorty about cutting the rope bridge. Oh, and Shorty and Indy when they get in an argument over cheating in poker.
The film is believed using several Asian languages, and I can only understand standard Chinese. So far the only lines I can understand are the "I kill you" at the end of my video, and Indy said something like "小子, 抓緊繩子!" (kid, hold tight on the rope!) on the bridge. His Chinese was terrible. When Indy said "I spared his life" to Lao Che, I think his son said "What are you saying!?" in Cantonese (the meaning is more like "How dare you!"). Cantonese is very similar to a local Taiwanese dialect so I can understand a little bit of it. This language is very effective for insulting people :p I've seen discussion that saying Ke Huy Quan (who played short round and is Vietnamese) was also speaking Cantonese in various occuations, including the poker scene. Nobody had a clue what was Lao Che and Indy saying to each other, some suggested it was Shanghaiese or indeed Manchu, but the actor Roy Chiao was based in Hong Kong and born in Shanghai, so it could be either Cantonese or Shanghaiese.
They are speaking Shanghaiese at the Club scene. Lao Che's son was saying " 儂講啥" ~ means "what are you saying !?" When Indy entered the club he greeted Lao Che "(words not clear, 謝謝儂) ~ means (......., thanks to you). Sorry that I don't actually know Shanghaiese but can only make out a few words
The playing card scene ~ (Short Round was speaking Cantonese） Short round: I have all your money, ha ha. Indy: It’s poker, Shorty. Anythings can happen. Short round（found extra cards from Indy’s hand）: Hey, you cheat! Dr. Jones. You cheat! You get four cards! Short round: No…. Indy: It’s a mistake. Short round: I’m very little. You cheat very big! Short round: You pay me money. You own me ten ??? Indy(found cards hidden in Shorty’s sleeve): Look at this. Look at this. You accused me of cheating?! Short round: 你呃我。 （You tricked me）你攞四張牌（You took four cards） Indy： 我無攞四張牌（I did not take four cards） Short Round： 你有攞四張牌 （You did so take four cards!） Indy： 我無攞四張牌（I did not take four cards） Short Round：你專門呃細路 （You always cheat on small kids） Short Round： 你呃我（You tricked me）． You make me poor, no fun. Play with you, no fun! Indy： 我唔玩嘞(I quit the game). I quit. Short Round： 我唔玩嘞(I quit playing).
Curiosity: Is it even possible to translate a song from a non-tonal language into a tonal language while preserving both melody *and* meaning? Wouldn't getting the meaning correct basically require that some of the notes be changed to hit the tones of the necessary words?
We can tell the meanings mostly by context (and I guess songwriters would try to avoid ambiguous expressions), but it is indeed harder to understand than usual speech. The translated lyrics would not 100% accurate, especially when you have to consider rhyme and timing, but most of the Chinese-version Disney songs I've heard seems to be pretty faithful to the originals.
Oh I am so happy I found this, actually I am going to sing this song on a concert in 2 days and I almost gave up learning the Chinese lyrics but this gave me some hope! :) (The concert's theme is soundtracks) I am using google translator for pronunciation but it is really hard to identify the rhythm... Any native speakers here who could maybe read it out for me more less in the rhythm of the song..? :D :D Long shot, but worth a try! :D
@@AlanKrantas oh wow thanks a lot! I will work around with google translate pronunciation and the detailed lyrics you sent! Thank you so much! Will share the recording if I manage to learn until tomorrow! 😆
1:16 - 1:22 "although I'm not his dream lover, I always know my wish will eventually be answered" isn't unclear, it's another translation of the original song, "and though I'm not a great romancer I know that you're bound to answer whan I propose" !
And you clearly didn't read the video description. I wrote the Chinese lyrics (which was indeed based on Cole Porter's work) and "translate" them into English myself. The problem is that I was really not sure what was she singing.
You're simply fantastic. You're able to catch her mispronunciation and translate her lyrics to Chinese. All this while I was wondering which European language she was singing in? Indiana Jones's version of Anything Goes is the best I've ever heard.
Another nuance with her mispronouncing the Mandarin is that it could be deliberate. She's a foreign singer in Shanghai, living with a criminal sugar daddy, completely oblivious to the exotic and sinister world around her. She later describes the experience as having a nice little house with a garden and nonstop parties. She mouthes the Mandarin perhaps because she never really cared to learn the actual language, and is just politely responding to a request made by the patrons of the club. In the same way the monkey brain dinner is extremely un-Hindu but on closer inspection reveals that Pankot palace might be doing some really evil, off-the-menu shit. Jesus this movie is brilliant on a level I find hard to fathom.
Thanks for this! It's always so interesting to see what native speakers have to say on non-native speakers using their dialect. Do you think it would have been possible for her to have been trained to be more understandable?
Is there any chance you could translate the rest of the dialogue in that scene? There are a couple of moments where Indy and Lao Che speak in what I ignorantly assume to be Chinese.
I never even considered they may be Chinese. She's a famous singer (according to the movie of course, as she is totally fictional), so it's not implausible she would have a large group of experienced dancers and perhaps secondary vocalists travelling with her.
@@adriannn3720 She's performing in Shanghai. Bear in mind I'm referring to the dancers in the actual club. Regardless of who or where the headliner is and from there's still local talent for the sideliners. Especially in an age where commercial flights were not common. So bully for you that you never considered them to me Chinese in your perfect white world.
I don't know how it has been this story on the making of Indiana Jones 2, but I think she was very simple, because I've seen many times this movie and though in a movie an actor has to repeat several times a scene automatically he knows the text and all movements, so playing an act or a song become natural and easy for her.
Good Job, @UCtgyPxERoXN1ClvkWdVkVGw! Thanks also for helping to solve this confounded riddle that has been puzzling me for all these past decades ever since watching the film.
Actually if it follows the original lyrics then right after the business of Mae West it goes and wanting to see me naked than anything goes look up the original lyrics it's in there. There's also the original Cole Porter version you can find on Spotify and it's there too that's just a guess.
To be fair, there are plenty of American songs with lyrics that are difficult to understand, even to native English speakers--Rusted Root's "Send Me On My Way" and Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", for example--and as many diverse languages are spoken in Asia, an Asian audience member would probably assume that she's just singing in some other language they don't speak, and simply not worry about it.
I just recently heard this song on another media and remembered this movie. Then I wanted to check if the singer, Kate was singing in Mandarin or was singing in English because I wasn't remembering the movie right. As a student of two dialects of Chinese I guess that explains why I was so confused. But then again, guess my two concepts were somehow correct. I don't feel offended of how she sang the song, I think it fits her character and she of course has a wonderful voice. The mix of old swing plus the chinese misspronunciated Lyrics are like a mix I get to enjoy, and more of like a way to offend another culture I see it as maybe as a try to approach them and make them part of the movie, their own way but part of it. 😊
I really appreciate the acknowledgement that not only are there so many different branch/sub languages and dialects under the collective umbrella of Chinese, but that crap enunciation makes _everything_ so much more difficult to understand! So, I guess for trying to translate something like this? Anything really does go!
When I attended Colorado University tye football team advanced to play Notre Dame in the Federal Express Orange Bowl. The theme was Cole Porter and his legacy. F.W.I.W. Colorado defeated Notre Dame. 10-9. A tribute to Cole Porter. I think it was called You'll get a kick out of Cole. Obviously it included this song. Unfortunately I can't remember the other ones he wrote.
I think nobody could have guessed. George Lucas himself picked Kathleen Kennedy as his successor, because she produced so many films with Steven Spielberg.
When I first saw this in the 1980s as a kid. The dance number stuck with me. I had seen old movies so I knew spielberg was referencing the era where Dr Jones was living in that is the mid 1930s and American culture and Hollywood was becoming popular not just in America but worldwide Big bands, Jazz Music and Tap dancers and flashy flamboyant American style Dancing ladies was the rage. So I think spielberg captured that era very accurately. If you were at a night club. This is exactly how it would go down in the mid 1930s. Also to add, after that I knew I was in for hell of a ride in the darkened theatre for the next two hours with John Williams and the great colourful 1980s cinematography. The movie was heavily criticised even back then in pre-woke times. A lot of people took offence to much of the matter in the movie especially how it portrayed asians. But that is how it was i the 1930s. Spielberg was just trying to be accurate. I personally as a kid was unaware of all that and just enjoyed the movie for what it is which is a highly entertaining movie with great music John Williams delivers in my opinion a superb soundtrack the best of the Indiana Jones series in my opinnion, great set design, great cinematography. Harrison Ford at his best. A gorgous 1980s Kate Capshaw complete with mid 1980s blond dyed permed hairstyle. One of the best action movies of the 1980s despite the movie being heavily criticised in certain quarters. If I had one criticism of the movie it would be the gory scenes at the Temple of doom. I think Spielberg and Lucas went overboard there and could have cut those scenes from the movie to make it more family friendly. Thats a minor criticism to otherwise a splendid action film and I don't think they make it like this anymore.
Translating the lyrics from Chinese English is interesting, but since there is so much drift between the original and the RE-translation, it's not going to give àn accurate understanding of the original lyrics. And as for all the clever rhymes and word play in the original Cole Porter. Incidental note, This song, performed in English, was the opening credits number for The Boys In The Band, the 1971 movie about a group of closeted gay friends having a birthday party in a penthouse apartment, back before "out of the closet" was a thing. It was "Anything Goes" in a different context!
>the last two lines are very unclear, and there are seesm to be no corresponding parts in Cole Porter's work. There is an English version of the same track from the Temple of Doom, it used different lyrics from Cole Porter. You can see it here: th-cam.com/video/pqZN6u41qaM/w-d-xo.html The last two lines go like this "So though I'm not a great romancer / I know that you're bound to answer / When I propose, anything goes" which seems to somewhat fit the Chinese lyrics proposed her. Great work!
If this is set in SHANGHAI in the 1930s....shouldn't she be singing in Shanghainese? This is Mandarin (I think? Hard to tell, she's kinda mangling the pronunciation)
Okay, Mister Smart Guy, maybe now you can explain to us how the nightclub managed to fit 30 identical blonde chorus girls inside a gong--and where did it find them all in 1935 Shanghai and enlist the services of Busby Berkeley to choreograph their routine? Otherwise, well done, mate!
This movie was a very huge success and is still today. Whatever complaints about mispronunciations here is not important. She sang what she was told from a piece of paper provided for her. You could have complained to Steven Spielberg.
Yes, like I said in the description, this has already happened so many times in the (Hollywood) movie history. I love Indiana Jones movies since I was a kid, and this Chinese-like-gibberish is actually still very entertaining. Why should I complain about it?
Since the club is in Shanghai, I had assume she was singing in Shanghainese which is very different from Mandarin. If she was singing in Mandarin then I’m sorry, I could not understand a single word she was singing. But given her character in the movie who is suppose to be somewhat ditzy/ damsel in distress, I don’t think it matters what she was singing.
If you know any Chinese singers, you should get someone to record it. My Mandarin isn't that good but I'd love to tackle it at a karaoke at Comic Con someday.
She was trying to sing in some ungodly language that NO ONE seems to speak or understand. So basically it was a made up load of horse crap and I consider it a disgrace to Mankind.
Even if this was sung poorly, it can be explained because Willie A. wasn't the sharpest knife the drawer and B. wasn't exactly tearing up the theatre scene. Why else would she be a chanteuse in some shanghai gangster bar and not hollywood?
The two lines at the end that are said not to correspond to Cole Porter's work are actually in the song, but I think were only added in the 50s by Sinatra. I couldn't find them in any version from the 30s. The lyrics go: "And though I'm not a great romancer I know that you're bound to answer when I propose".
I still can't find any information about these lines being in the original 1934 musical, but they wouldn't be out of place considering the fact that in the context of the play one character is considering marrying another. Though as I said previously this change could've been added in the 50s, because then it can be heard in multiple versions by, among others, Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. By the 1960s multiple others changes to the lyrics were made to better suit the 1962 revival of the musical.
Ethel Merman - the original Broadway actress (1934) and Jeanne Aubert from West End (1935) both sing the original Cole Porter's version. It is save to assume that the lines were added after 1954 (which saw a film adaptation of Anything Goes - also with the original lyrics). In 1955 Sinatra already had the lines in his version so it would seem that he's the author of "And though I'm not a great romancer I know that you're bound to answer when I propose". This shows an inaccuracy in the movie, because she sings lines that had no business being translated 20 years before even being written.
@@Adam-tx3iq This is very interesting and informative, thanks!. I added some guesses in the description section, although "romancer" in Chinese mostly refers to men.
Exactly now that I think about it is if you like Mae West and seeing me undressed than anything goes and when you can sit with Cole Porter who wrote it in 1934 and he's the one who sings it in the original yeah you've got to wonder about it.
There is some behind the scenes footage from the making of Indiana Jones, where we see Kate learning the song with her vocal coach, and she's holding a piece of paper with the song lyrics, written phonetically - I feel bad that she gets a lot of flack for her mispronounciation, when in actual fact she was just singing the words, as they were written for her :/
Dale McCarthy. I am sure she is over it . The picture was a huge success and that’s all that matters to most Americans in the film world .
She wasn't singing in chinese, but in manchu language
@@orion8835 Agreed, great fun...and a tribute to Busby Berkeley movies I watched with my dad on rainy afternoons. Ridiculously fun! All those chorus girls are gonna MAKE IT! AND MAKE IT BIG!
I mean I think that was part of the bit- she's a displaced american who definitely does NOT speak any language other than english
is there an original refrence? or the song is made up?
And this was how an actress from a small town in Missouri caught the eye of the director Steven Spielberg and landed herself a marriage to one of Hollywood's biggest film director/producers. Nicely done Kate
it's not just that Kate was sitting and waiting for Steven to pick her up. She was quite a good actor
Wrong she was a schoolteacher😊
@@user-Ados-amerika When was she a schoolteacher? In any case, she was already an actress before she met Spielberg, albeit mostly in small roles.
Just how big is this restaurant
It's a nightclub so it has entertainment, music, dinner and theater all in one. Club Obi Wan or something. Pretty damn big.
Club Obi-Wan obviously had a Gallifreyan architect.
pretty sure the tapdancing show number didn't actually happen.
@@retro2103I wonder if the big dance scene has something to do with the lyrics of Anything Goes.
@@davidw.2791 Not exactly. The song is about how quickly social morals are changing, how what was shocking only a few decades ago is totally normal now. The dance sequence is just spectacle for the benefit of the movie viewer. It's just a fancy way to do/"hide" the opening credits.
As a COMPLETE linguaphile nerd and professional translator (NOT for Chinese, but have been a been around the block in China (mostly Beijing)), this was absolutely fantastic, mate. REALLY enjoyed your prospective on this. I "speak" Chinese, but quite poorly, I've ALWAYS wondered what she was uttering in this song lol. Thank you!
In all fairness, this fits the character perfectly. Willie Scott has a lot of different talents, but she's no scholar or linguist.
Excellent point! This is very much her.
And most of the folks who are wealthy enough to dine on champagne and barbecued pigeons in a glamorous Shanghainese nightclub in presumably an imperialist concession (i.e. full of proud foreign capitalists and adventurers) would not care about the Chinese being spoken there.
This opening stuck with me so much as a child that I know this version better than the original.
Kate was a fantastic singer, much better than the original. I love this film !!
She’s not a native speaker and wasn’t pretending to be. Everybody needs to calm down about the mispronunciations. She was acting in a movie. Maybe a little insensitive on the part of the producers, but it surely isn’t any fault of Kate Capshaw.
Agreed! EVERYONE, ITS NOT MEANT TO BE INSULTING, just imagine the club goers are thinking " Ahh! Sweet girl with terrible accent- never mind!"
@@silver-1397 just like the dinner scene, its meant to be light hearted fun not a cruel representation
@@DarealCarlAqtf2002 Hi, totally agree. Is it the dinner scene with Snake surprise- when Willie settles on fruit brought to her later by Indy?!!
yes, these Chinese complain too much about mispronouncition.
the lesson is, Hollywood should not bother with anything Chinese, and completely ignore them.
I'm born in China so I'm fluent in Madarin. When I watched the movie, I wasn't offended, I was more confused. I wasn't sure if she was pronouncing things badly, speaking a dialect or just trying to sound like she's speaking in Chinese. So I couldnt focus on anything else lol. But now that I think about it, it kindda fits her character of an egocentric american who doesn't care about the local culture. But I'm also confused by the fact that I couldnt understand anyone speaking Chinese in the movie. Were they all given a phonetic script?
Excellent and very interesting background info! No wonder a Chinese friend of mine was very uneasy at my request to translate it for me- to compare to Porters lyrics! In the context of the movie I guess that the Chinese audience in the club would think "ahhh! Isn't she sweet trying to sing in Chinese-hopeless, but sweet" Anyway, I guess it's anything goes...and the intro is a massive tribute to Busby Berkeley, certainly grabs the attention! Thanks for all your hard work! Cheers, Silver-13
Hey, thanks. :)
In the movie the singer is supposedly singing in perfect Chinese (whatever dialect it was), and the club audience understood it perfectly. For the people watching the movie, it didn't matter because most of the audience wouldn't be able to tell the difference of real or imitated foreign languages. Kate Capshaw did have a good voice though.
Nowadays Hollywood do try to employ accurate Chinese dialogues for Chinese characters, so that the movie might sell well in China.
@@AlanKrantas
Glaermomnalmerm Hnlmaermon
@@AlanKrantas first off, great job with the video. The effort is much appreciated. As for "she is supposedly singing in perfect Chinese," what makes you say that? The audience reaction? Maybe they just really like her voice. Maybe they're just really polite. Willie Scott is basically a failed Hollywood starlet who essentially gave up on her dream of breaking into Hollywood by taking a (presumably well paid) job on the other side of the planet. Learning perfect Chinese for a gig she probably resents taking seems like an excessive amount of preparation, to me.
@@gtrdaveg Honesty, you are right, nothing suggested that the story had she singing in perfect Chinese. But surely a high-end night club won't have a girl singing really bad Chinese in front of Chinese audiences, let alone a Chinese crime lord.
It's also like me hearing people speaking some eastern European language in a movie in Prague and I would assume they are speaking real Czech but not some fake or hybrid stuff.
Your analysis was spot on from beginning to end (the end especially), well done lmaoooo
OMG, I’ve been looking for this for decades, and the lyrics made me laugh so hard. Thanks!
Well, as someone who tried (unsuccessfully) to learn Chinese, I suspected right away that she was trying her best and that it was indeed Chinese. Even I could pick up bits ... like yīdìng huíbào ... that I recognized. But I know it is easier two English speaking people to converse in Chinese than it is for an English speaker to make someone who has Chinese as a first language understand. The English speakers all mispronounce the characters and butcher the tones the same way. So they really aren't speaking Chinese at all, but some bastard language of their own. I speak from painful experience. I really appreciated the translation and it was obvious that no criticism on her attempt was meant.
Had my Chinese friend listen to this. At first he thought she was singing Japanese because it was so different, and then once he saw the lyrics, said it was very terribly sung. He said she doesn't make sense.
She makes sense if you know the manchu language
Manchu
Willie is the biggest idiot I know.
Of course it doesn't make sense because it's a made up language. No one knows what the Fuck that bitch is attempting to say. No one is speaking ANY kind of REAL language in this movie other than English. Everything is ad-libbed or just blatant mumbo jumbo.
@@PU8698 She was the first Empress, of Manchu Dynasty
1.) Thank you very much for this 'first hand' account of this production number. Though at the time of the film's release I had no working knowledge of any forms of spoken Chinese, my best friend in high school was Asian-Canadian and we had talked enough about Canto-pop and tones for me to know that Capshaw was not landing the lyrics to any degree; but I think it can be interpreted that that's the point: as endearing (and irritating) as Willie Scott can be, I think we're meant to assume she's kind of second rate all round, hired by this shady Shanghai nightclub based on God knows what back room deal. She's certainly very much a chip off the ice block of many of the cheesiest 1930s and 40s adventure serials.
This leads me to my second point...
2.) When this film came out, there was a great deal of smirking that it was silly and sophomoric (to which Spielberg and Lucas later admitted) and just not what 'Raiders' had been - but that was precisely the reason I liked it: believe it or not, even though it was understood to be a rapturous nod to Depression era serials (as was Allen's 'The Purple Rose of Cairo'), 'Raiders' was taken VERY seriously, if not as an art object, at least as one of high cinematic aim and craft (which it is), but it was grandly, slickly - even morally nostalgic [The Nazi/Old Testament plot gave it a kind of social muscle that elevated it above mere thrills] - its almost too good at melding historical high-mindedness with fun spectacle, ultimately making it a very hard film to qualify and quantify. Every time you see it you are reminded how damn good it really is (enough to take the melting faces with a grain of salt). Why I like 'Temple' then, is that it is almost poking fun at the immense cultural moment in the summer of 1981 when 'Raiders' both repeated and overturned the common vibe of the summer blockbuster (What, no shark? No dogfights against star fields? A guy with a bullwhip and a bunch of Nazis out of 'The Dirty Dozen'? - you've gotta be kidding.) How could this be followed in all seriousness...why by REALLY going for what 1930s serials were all about: arch and self-conscious set pieces, i.e.: tacky exoticism/lurid comic book cultural and racial stereotypes, gems, poisons and antidotes, car chases, plane crashes, bats, secret passages, strangulation by ceiling fan, bugs, death chambers, sentimentality (slave children), freaky temples, lava, mine cars, deluges, rope bridges...its almost as if this film is a 15-part serial in one. It's a comic masterpiece; it's no so much played for laughs as much is it (inadvertently?) proposes it may be laughing at us. Was this a self-conscious gesture on the part of the filmmakers? No, but I think the film can be enjoyed and defended because of its effect. It's brutal and camp and once. To be offended by the film is to miss the point; sure it's clumsy in that its 'period' evocation of Charlie Chan, Nawabs, and Maharajahs comes across as best 'reductionist', but if I, as a white male 17 year old living in a small town in 1984 could see that this was going on and could be questioned and could cause one to query the representation of cultures in ANY film, then the 'covert' effects of this piece aren't that obscure. Though the film is certainly not above criticism for this point (not at all!), it does bring to the fore that far more highly regarded social documents may contain far more subtle racializing effects.
Yes, I do get comments that think I made this only to make fun of this film or Kate Capshaw, most of them happened to be written by white people. Like them, you clearly never bothered to read the video description section. I made this just because I wanted to answer a question from my own childhood.
As an big Indiana Jones movies' fan myself, watching these movies again and again firstly on VHS tapes - and later played two Indiana Jones PC games, as bad as they were, just because there were no "new" films - I'll tell you this: to love a film deeply doesn't mean you have to embrace it completely and defend it at all cost. That's toxic fandom. I'm a huge Star Wars fan too, even more so than Indiana Jones, and I still thinks there are a lot of silly and weird stuff in those films. Those details never change my feelings toward these films.
The Temple is a master piece? Well, you could say that, but I'll say The Last Crusade is better.
@@AlanKrantas you have chosen your film . . . . wisely.
I’m currently watching the making-of which was done in the early 2000s and in it Steven Spielberg says “she had to learn the song in Mandarin.” So there goes the Manchu theory.
Actually a very powerful message in this song and relevant to our times
its true - anything DOES go
It's just a conservative cliche.
@@10mimu look at him go
@@esotericulmanist8331 Indeed I do, while you stay behind, a relic of ignorance in history
@@10mimu LOL
BEST OPENING IN THE HISTORY OF CINEMA
It was the best part of this stupid movie. That and the Duesenberg getaway car. Where did they dig up all the blonde chorus girls in the middle of China? Signed Boomer Vet
@@charlesross9260 how is this movie stupid you must be sjw
@@boneleg6952 People shit on this movie because they are assholes.
Thank you so much! I’ve wondered about this since I first saw the movie as a child. I’ve done song translations between French and English for a long time, and it is a very delicate art to making the same ideas singable in both languages. You have to be equal parts translator and lyricist. I really love this video and your work.
Great work!
I'm guessing "I always know my wish will eventually be answered" could refer to the line "I'm sure that you're bound to answer when I propose"
According to the story she was actually trying to sing to the gang master in his Manchu language, that's why Chinese can't understand it.( I speak both Mandarin and Cantonese myself and I can't even know what she's singing.)
I doubt an American nightclub singer working in Shanghai would be able to sing a language that vey, very few people still use in 1935, which was already dying in 18/19th century. Manchu language revivalism only began in the post-Mao era (1976-).
The Asian drug lords in Tropic Thunder "speak" Chinese in the exactly same way. You can still understand a word or two but not all of it, which is typical for non-native and untrained Chinese speakers. Also, Lao Che's son Chen clearly speak standard Chinese when he tried to shoot Indy.
The Manchu are an ethnic minority in China and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. They are sometimes called "red-tasseled Manchus", a reference to the ornamentation on traditional Manchu hats. The Later Jin (1616-1636), and Qing dynasty (1636-1912) were established and ruled by Manchus, who are descended from the Jurchen people who earlier established the Jin dynasty (1115-1234) in China.
Manchus form the largest branch of the Tungusic peoples and are distributed throughout China, forming the fourth largest ethnic group in the country. They can be found in 31 Chinese provincial regions. They also form the largest minority group in China without an autonomous region. Among them, Liaoning has the largest population and Hebei, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Inner Mongolia and Beijing have over 100,000 Manchu residents. About half of the population live in Liaoning and one-fifth in Hebei. There are a number of Manchu autonomous counties in China, such as Xinbin, Xiuyan, Qinglong, Fengning, Yitong, Qingyuan, Weichang, Kuancheng, Benxi, Kuandian, Huanren, Fengcheng, Beizhen and over 300 Manchu towns and townships.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchu_people
@@AlanKrantas You're making an assumption that she has any idea what she's trying to sing. People sing in foreign languages all the time. It's about replicating the sounds as opposed to knowing the translation. Everyone here keeps trying to make her out to be a linguist or something. Like you said, she's a nightclub singer trying to make this gang master happy. Odds are that she would have been given the foreign lyrics that she needed to sing and learned them.
@@michellemoirai7274 Yes, it's possible that she can sing perfect Manchu without any understanding, but the language was practically dead at that time (and also at the time of making the movie). People (not me) thought so because it fit the setting of the story, and also because they cannot tell the difference of Manchu and Mandarin.
Also please read the video description section.
我都唔知
Appreciate the effort put to create this! But as a native Chinese speaker I'm pretty sure it's still far from the original lyrics since some words are just too rude while others just doesn't make sense
okay but I would kill for a full version of this song done with proper mandarin pronunciation, it sounds pretty good ignoring the pronunciation.
Thanks! I could never figure out what she was singing, I thought maybe it was Shanghainese. Still she does a great job selling it. No wonder the director married her!
I speak mandarin, shanghainese and canto... for the life of me, I have no idea wtf she's saying XD
When I first saw the movie, I thought she was singing in French! 🤣
You speak lies
@@lazzy2012 i also speak standard chinese and shanghainese and i can tell you that the lead singer has the worst pronunciation of all time lmao (which is fine) point being, i would have never guessed it's sung in chinese if wasnt cuz of the subtitles.
IT sounds like French Words to maby mixed ?
@@silvanaorizi1766 I doubt she would be singing French in a Chinese nightclub.
Thank you for this! I was super curious and this is very well done! I can guess this takes time and effort! Thanks!
This is the kind of video I expect when I waste my time here on youtube, great analysis!!
She was singing Chinese????? I remember when I was a kid and watched this movie in the theater and I was so amazed of how cool this movie was being made!!!! We should careless of what she was singing I guess......
I mean people shouldn't really be super mad at the lyrics anyway since they're so much more relevant now in our current social climate than back then. 😊
It's really not her fault about the heinous pronunciation. The producers just wrote the lyrics down phonetically and told her to learn it. She didn't have any teaching in Mandarin and they never even consulted a native Mandarin speaker to help her. Plus, this was 1984, the didn't have the internet, so it's not like she could use a TH-cam tutorial or a translate app.
0:34 Indiana Jones és a végzet temploma.
I think the two lines could be based on the lines from Frank Sinatra recording: "So though I'm not a great romancer / I know that you're bound to answer / When I propose," Which is what seems to be the gist of your translation!
Mandarin Chinese is my native language, but even I couldn't understand what she was singing until watching this video.
She sang in manchu, not mandarin or cantonese
@@PU8698 I know I'm 10 months late, but you have no idea of how Manchu sounds like
@@yamiart6149 exactly, there are very few people who can speak Manchu even back in 1980's.
And I'm pretty certain there were none in Hollywood.
I doubt even the last Emperor of Qing Dynasty could speak Manchurian fluently.
Even though I have no clue what language she is singing, Kate Capshaw did her best and was playing a character, so I give her credit for that!
Capshaw still did a great performance despite the supposed egregious pronunciation of Chinese (As said so by many people, including the uploader, of whom has plenty of credentials to prove such claims), but I still love the charm of it, and how it segues into a tense conversation with a Chinese crime lord and then a high octane fight, with Ford fighting for his life. Anything goes! Hahahahahaha
To the uploader, I appreciate the time you took to translate and explain it to us. As someone that does not speak or read any Chinese language, we get to have a perspective how bad a Westerner would pronounce a language vastly different from ours, and what she is saying (Hopefully) with English subtitles. :)
one best start to any feature film ,managed watch behind scenes\amazing dances scenes and music number\
Alan, thanks for your hard work. I'd also be really fascinated to hear any translations of the Chinese/Cantonese spoken in the movie. I haven't found anywhere on the internet where people have translated it, although I know some forums where Germans have translated lots of the German in Raiders and Last Crusade. Can you translate any of the dialogue spoken by Indy, Lao Che and his sons? I think there's also some spoken by the pilots on the plane that bail out, and then by Indy himself when he warns Shorty about cutting the rope bridge. Oh, and Shorty and Indy when they get in an argument over cheating in poker.
The film is believed using several Asian languages, and I can only understand standard Chinese.
So far the only lines I can understand are the "I kill you" at the end of my video, and Indy said something like "小子, 抓緊繩子!" (kid, hold tight on the rope!) on the bridge. His Chinese was terrible.
When Indy said "I spared his life" to Lao Che, I think his son said "What are you saying!?" in Cantonese (the meaning is more like "How dare you!"). Cantonese is very similar to a local Taiwanese dialect so I can understand a little bit of it. This language is very effective for insulting people :p
I've seen discussion that saying Ke Huy Quan (who played short round and is Vietnamese) was also speaking Cantonese in various occuations, including the poker scene. Nobody had a clue what was Lao Che and Indy saying to each other, some suggested it was Shanghaiese or indeed Manchu, but the actor Roy Chiao was based in Hong Kong and born in Shanghai, so it could be either Cantonese or Shanghaiese.
They are speaking Shanghaiese at the Club scene. Lao Che's son was saying " 儂講啥" ~ means "what are you saying !?" When Indy entered the club he greeted Lao Che "(words not clear, 謝謝儂) ~ means (......., thanks to you). Sorry that I don't actually know Shanghaiese but can only make out a few words
The playing card scene ~ (Short Round was speaking Cantonese）
Short round: I have all your money, ha ha.
Indy: It’s poker, Shorty. Anythings can happen.
Short round（found extra cards from Indy’s hand）: Hey, you cheat! Dr. Jones. You cheat! You get four cards!
Short round: No….
Indy: It’s a mistake.
Short round: I’m very little. You cheat very big!
Short round: You pay me money. You own me ten ???
Indy(found cards hidden in Shorty’s sleeve): Look at this. Look at this. You accused me of cheating?!
Short round: 你呃我。 （You tricked me）你攞四張牌（You took four cards）
Indy： 我無攞四張牌（I did not take four cards）
Short Round： 你有攞四張牌 （You did so take four cards!）
Indy： 我無攞四張牌（I did not take four cards）
Short Round：你專門呃細路 （You always cheat on small kids）
Short Round： 你呃我（You tricked me）． You make me poor, no fun. Play with you, no fun!
Indy： 我唔玩嘞(I quit the game). I quit.
Short Round： 我唔玩嘞(I quit playing).
Curiosity: Is it even possible to translate a song from a non-tonal language into a tonal language while preserving both melody *and* meaning? Wouldn't getting the meaning correct basically require that some of the notes be changed to hit the tones of the necessary words?
We can tell the meanings mostly by context (and I guess songwriters would try to avoid ambiguous expressions), but it is indeed harder to understand than usual speech.
The translated lyrics would not 100% accurate, especially when you have to consider rhyme and timing, but most of the Chinese-version Disney songs I've heard seems to be pretty faithful to the originals.
@@AlanKrantas: Thanks for the explanation!
Oh I am so happy I found this, actually I am going to sing this song on a concert in 2 days and I almost gave up learning the Chinese lyrics but this gave me some hope! :) (The concert's theme is soundtracks) I am using google translator for pronunciation but it is really hard to identify the rhythm... Any native speakers here who could maybe read it out for me more less in the rhythm of the song..? :D :D Long shot, but worth a try! :D
Would this be helpful? github.com/alankrantas/anything-goes/blob/main/README.md
@@AlanKrantas oh wow thanks a lot! I will work around with google translate pronunciation and the detailed lyrics you sent! Thank you so much! Will share the recording if I manage to learn until tomorrow! 😆
This is the best opening credits of all time.
Thank you; this was super interesting. Thank you for your effort :)
1:16 - 1:22 "although I'm not his dream lover, I always know my wish will eventually be answered" isn't unclear, it's another translation of the original song, "and though I'm not a great romancer I know that you're bound to answer whan I propose" !
And you clearly didn't read the video description. I wrote the Chinese lyrics (which was indeed based on Cole Porter's work) and "translate" them into English myself. The problem is that I was really not sure what was she singing.
@@AlanKrantas ah, okay, makes sense now, thanks ! I thought you were sure of what she sung, but not of what it refered to in the original !
oh my god hahah that was actually so funny loved it. I am a Chinese and im pretty sure it's in some kind of accent. otherwise made up hahah
You're simply fantastic. You're able to catch her mispronunciation and translate her lyrics to Chinese. All this while I was wondering which European language she was singing in? Indiana Jones's version of Anything Goes is the best I've ever heard.
Another nuance with her mispronouncing the Mandarin is that it could be deliberate. She's a foreign singer in Shanghai, living with a criminal sugar daddy, completely oblivious to the exotic and sinister world around her. She later describes the experience as having a nice little house with a garden and nonstop parties. She mouthes the Mandarin perhaps because she never really cared to learn the actual language, and is just politely responding to a request made by the patrons of the club. In the same way the monkey brain dinner is extremely un-Hindu but on closer inspection reveals that Pankot palace might be doing some really evil, off-the-menu shit. Jesus this movie is brilliant on a level I find hard to fathom.
I don't care what she was singing. She's beautiful here. No wonder Steven married her.
Yes, just like he married Amy Irving from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
這翻譯超高難度，聽力跟想像力要很高，辛苦你了！
excellent analysis.....appreciate your time with all this.......
Thanks for this! It's always so interesting to see what native speakers have to say on non-native speakers using their dialect.
Do you think it would have been possible for her to have been trained to be more understandable?
I think it's possible, but they probably didn't have that much time (it's difficult) and didn't think people would know the difference.
Is there any chance you could translate the rest of the dialogue in that scene? There are a couple of moments where Indy and Lao Che speak in what I ignorantly assume to be Chinese.
Love that last caption XD I was watching this and I assumed the backup dancers were Chinese. Shocked they weren't. Shame they weren't really.
I never even considered they may be Chinese. She's a famous singer (according to the movie of course, as she is totally fictional), so it's not implausible she would have a large group of experienced dancers and perhaps secondary vocalists travelling with her.
@@adriannn3720 She's performing in Shanghai. Bear in mind I'm referring to the dancers in the actual club.
Regardless of who or where the headliner is and from there's still local talent for the sideliners.
Especially in an age where commercial flights were not common. So bully for you that you never considered them to me Chinese in your perfect white world.
Love this performance!
I don't know how it has been this story on the making of Indiana Jones 2, but I think she was very simple, because I've seen many times this movie and though in a movie an actor has to repeat several times a scene automatically he knows the text and all movements, so playing an act or a song become natural and easy for her.
Good Job, @UCtgyPxERoXN1ClvkWdVkVGw! Thanks also for helping to solve this confounded riddle that has been puzzling me for all these past decades ever since watching the film.
whatever. the best opening of a movie ever 💐
More like anything goes even CHINESE -Colonel Noodles 2002 PTR2
Gracias por traducir la canción
Actually if it follows the original lyrics then right after the business of Mae West it goes and wanting to see me naked than anything goes look up the original lyrics it's in there. There's also the original Cole Porter version you can find on Spotify and it's there too that's just a guess.
To be fair, there are plenty of American songs with lyrics that are difficult to understand, even to native English speakers--Rusted Root's "Send Me On My Way" and Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", for example--and as many diverse languages are spoken in Asia, an Asian audience member would probably assume that she's just singing in some other language they don't speak, and simply not worry about it.
"Fijate juan carlos esta EXQUISITO fijate"
I knew I heard that song before but couldn’t place it thanks for posting this! 😳😮🎵🎶👊👍Rip Cole Porter..
I just recently heard this song on another media and remembered this movie.
Then I wanted to check if the singer, Kate was singing in Mandarin or was singing in English because I wasn't remembering the movie right.
As a student of two dialects of Chinese I guess that explains why I was so confused.
But then again, guess my two concepts were somehow correct.
I don't feel offended of how she sang the song, I think it fits her character and she of course has a wonderful voice.
The mix of old swing plus the chinese misspronunciated Lyrics are like a mix I get to enjoy, and more of like a way to offend another culture I see it as maybe as a try to approach them and make them part of the movie, their own way but part of it. 😊
Good job buddy.
Esto es algo inolvidable para la historia para todos aquellos que eramos unos niños ciando vimos esta película por primera vez..
I really appreciate the acknowledgement that not only are there so many different branch/sub languages and dialects under the collective umbrella of Chinese, but that crap enunciation makes _everything_ so much more difficult to understand!
So, I guess for trying to translate something like this? Anything really does go!
I love this opening tap dance number & they did it right with the proper Mary Jane tap shoes
All the chinese speaking people in the world and they couldn't bother to ask one 😂
Beautiful!!! I love it!!! 👏👏👏👏👏👏💖
When I attended Colorado University tye football team advanced to play Notre Dame in the Federal Express Orange Bowl. The theme was Cole Porter and his legacy. F.W.I.W. Colorado defeated Notre Dame. 10-9. A tribute to Cole Porter. I think it was called You'll get a kick out of Cole. Obviously it included this song. Unfortunately I can't remember the other ones he wrote.
Spielberg studied cinematography under the master, Mel Brooks. His famous line which defines producers' artistic license, "It's good to be the king."
1:44 "Associate producer - Kathleen Kennedy" Ugh, if only they knew back then.
I think nobody could have guessed. George Lucas himself picked Kathleen Kennedy as his successor, because she produced so many films with Steven Spielberg.
No but let's be fr she slayed
Love it thank you for the translation
I do wonder what a more correct translation sung in this style would sound like.
When I first saw this in the 1980s as a kid. The dance number stuck with me. I had seen old movies so I knew spielberg was referencing the era where Dr Jones was living in that is the mid 1930s and American culture and Hollywood was becoming popular not just in America but worldwide Big bands, Jazz Music and Tap dancers and flashy flamboyant American style Dancing ladies was the rage. So I think spielberg captured that era very accurately. If you were at a night club. This is exactly how it would go down in the mid 1930s. Also to add, after that I knew I was in for hell of a ride in the darkened theatre for the next two hours with John Williams and the great colourful 1980s cinematography. The movie was heavily criticised even back then in pre-woke times. A lot of people took offence to much of the matter in the movie especially how it portrayed asians. But that is how it was i the 1930s. Spielberg was just trying to be accurate. I personally as a kid was unaware of all that and just enjoyed the movie for what it is which is a highly entertaining movie with great music John Williams delivers in my opinion a superb soundtrack the best of the Indiana Jones series in my opinnion, great set design, great cinematography. Harrison Ford at his best. A gorgous 1980s Kate Capshaw complete with mid 1980s blond dyed permed hairstyle. One of the best action movies of the 1980s despite the movie being heavily criticised in certain quarters. If I had one criticism of the movie it would be the gory scenes at the Temple of doom. I think Spielberg and Lucas went overboard there and could have cut those scenes from the movie to make it more family friendly. Thats a minor criticism to otherwise a splendid action film and I don't think they make it like this anymore.
I thought this was french when I heard it. I have never seen Temple of doom I heard it as background music on a video.
I have been wanting to know what that guy with the tommy gun was saying for years.
lmao that last caption had me fucking dying
The opening scene with the gong is homage to Rank Productions .Did they borrow the Rockettes ?
Does anyone know where I can get these lyrics transliterated into English? Struggling so hard.
I love her😍😍😍
Translating the lyrics from Chinese English is interesting, but since there is so much drift between the original and the RE-translation, it's not going to give àn accurate understanding of the original lyrics. And as for all the clever rhymes and word play in the original Cole Porter.
Incidental note, This song, performed in English, was the opening credits number for The Boys In The Band, the 1971 movie about a group of closeted gay friends having a birthday party in a penthouse apartment, back before "out of the closet" was a thing. It was "Anything Goes" in a different context!
I knew was familiar when watching it then she said "anything goes" and I realised it was this amazing song
>the last two lines are very unclear, and there are seesm to be no corresponding parts in Cole Porter's work.
There is an English version of the same track from the Temple of Doom, it used different lyrics from Cole Porter. You can see it here: th-cam.com/video/pqZN6u41qaM/w-d-xo.html
The last two lines go like this "So though I'm not a great romancer / I know that you're bound to answer / When I propose, anything goes" which seems to somewhat fit the Chinese lyrics proposed her.
Great work!
Thanks!
Dance,dance to the music!!!!!! And show them what we've got!!!!
Thank you for this video. I always wonder If a native chinese speaker could understand what she was singing.
Native Chinese speaker says this is all gibberish!
If this is set in SHANGHAI in the 1930s....shouldn't she be singing in Shanghainese? This is Mandarin (I think? Hard to tell, she's kinda mangling the pronunciation)
It was also in the game fallout 3
Being chinese, i say this is pretty good
Is Kate Capshaw good on Mandarin?
Temple of doom gotta be the greatest movie of all time
Certainly racist.
i can not afford to go to movies but happy at home with indy and jj second star wars movie was great
Okay, Mister Smart Guy, maybe now you can explain to us how the nightclub managed to fit 30 identical blonde chorus girls inside a gong--and where did it find them all in 1935 Shanghai and enlist the services of Busby Berkeley to choreograph their routine?
Otherwise, well done, mate!
Well, the place is called Club Obi Wan after all. The spacetime distortion was probably created by the Force (of George Lucas' will). :p
wtached this movie so much as a kid and never knew what she said except ''anything goes'' XD
This movie was a very huge success and is still today. Whatever complaints about mispronunciations here is not important. She sang what she was told from a piece of paper provided for her. You could have complained to Steven Spielberg.
Yes, like I said in the description, this has already happened so many times in the (Hollywood) movie history. I love Indiana Jones movies since I was a kid, and this Chinese-like-gibberish is actually still very entertaining. Why should I complain about it?
Since the club is in Shanghai, I had assume she was singing in Shanghainese which is very different from Mandarin. If she was singing in Mandarin then I’m sorry, I could not understand a single word she was singing. But given her character in the movie who is suppose to be somewhat ditzy/ damsel in distress, I don’t think it matters what she was singing.
Cactus teléfono Gato
Can you give me the link to how you found the lyrics in Chinese
There's none. I wrote most of it by myself.
@@AlanKrantas I for one appreciate the effort.
If you know any Chinese singers, you should get someone to record it. My Mandarin isn't that good but I'd love to tackle it at a karaoke at Comic Con someday.
Apparently Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw) was singing "Anything Goes" in Mandarin here?
Manchu, not mandarin
@@PU8698 ah ok ty
@@PU8698 Still fun though?!
She was trying to sing in some ungodly language that NO ONE seems to speak or understand. So basically it was a made up load of horse crap and I consider it a disgrace to Mankind.
@@captaincaveman2040 Disgrace to Mankind? Really...
Even if this was sung poorly, it can be explained because Willie A. wasn't the sharpest knife the drawer and B. wasn't exactly tearing up the theatre scene. Why else would she be a chanteuse in some shanghai gangster bar and not hollywood?
The two lines at the end that are said not to correspond to Cole Porter's work are actually in the song, but I think were only added in the 50s by Sinatra. I couldn't find them in any version from the 30s. The lyrics go: "And though I'm not a great romancer I know that you're bound to answer when I propose".
I still can't find any information about these lines being in the original 1934 musical, but they wouldn't be out of place considering the fact that in the context of the play one character is considering marrying another. Though as I said previously this change could've been added in the 50s, because then it can be heard in multiple versions by, among others, Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. By the 1960s multiple others changes to the lyrics were made to better suit the 1962 revival of the musical.
Ethel Merman - the original Broadway actress (1934) and Jeanne Aubert from West End (1935) both sing the original Cole Porter's version. It is save to assume that the lines were added after 1954 (which saw a film adaptation of Anything Goes - also with the original lyrics). In 1955 Sinatra already had the lines in his version so it would seem that he's the author of "And though I'm not a great romancer I know that you're bound to answer when I propose".
This shows an inaccuracy in the movie, because she sings lines that had no business being translated 20 years before even being written.
@@Adam-tx3iq This is very interesting and informative, thanks!. I added some guesses in the description section, although "romancer" in Chinese mostly refers to men.
Exactly now that I think about it is if you like Mae West and seeing me undressed than anything goes and when you can sit with Cole Porter who wrote it in 1934 and he's the one who sings it in the original yeah you've got to wonder about it.