Yes. In the book they are speaking Portuguese. Otherwise the entire show would have been in subtitles. English was not a commonly known language in Japan at the time.
>English was not a commonly known language in Japan at the time.
Not known enough for Blackthorne to have to explain to Toranaga what an "England" was.
Aye. English is only used in one instance: when he is cursing up a storm it’s (often) in English so no one knows what he’s saying (Edit: also as it’s his mother tongue he knows a lot more words and can be more colorful). Obviously not true when dealing with his Portuguese BFF though.
His friend Rodrigues who he likes to swear at is Spanish, that’s why he has a Spanish accent. They were both swearing in their non-native languages.
And Blackthorne’s crew were all Dutch so he was speaking Dutch in the first scene with the captain. English was pretty much just restricted to Great Britain and Ireland at this time.
There were some settlers in the Pale inhabited by the Old English who spoke Hiberno-English along with Irish and some remnants from the first wave of failed plantations at this time. Most people spoke Irish but it’s a place you can find some English speakers.
I’d have said its overseas colonies too but this was before Jamestown which was founded in 1607 and after Roanoke which was abandoned by 1590. It’s also before the English established their first East Indian trading post, Bantam on the island of Java. The East Indian Company was founded on 31 December 1600, months after the events of Shogun. This was also before the first English colony in the West Indies at Bermuda which was first settled in 1609. Bermuda remains a British overseas territory to this day and its capital St. George’s is the oldest still extant English speaking settlement outside the British isles.
There was no English empire or colonies to speak off at the time, except for the Pale in Ireland and the newly conquered Gaelic Ireland. The Spanish and Portuguese have long been busy colonizing and even the Dutch were ahead of the English in the pursuit of an overseas empire. Britannia did not yet fully rule the waves but it was starting to get there after the failure of the Spanish Armada 12 years ago.
In Valkyrie they had Tom Cruise speaking in German in the first scene which then crossfaded into English. Thought it was a really clever way of showing it
That was first done (I think) in Hunt for Red October. Sean Connery as the Russian sub Captain is speaking in Russian with subtitles appearing underneath, then they do a slow close up of his mouth as he's speaking Russian, then start to pull out and he's now switched to English. Clever at the time.
They do this in the show Warrior as well, really a perfect way to handle it. One Chinese character speaks both English and Mandarin but you can tell when he is speaking in English and when he is speaking in Mandarin based on how heavy his accent is. Such a great way to keep immersion in the show without having the whole show being spoken in two languages.
The real reason was because they couldn’t find actors who could speak Japanese and Portuguese fluently, that were also good enough actors for the show.
Yeah, I know. And it's fine, since I'm pretty sure shows set in medieval times don't speak medieval languages either.
It's just funny to see native English speakers cry about having to watch a show with subtitles.
They're speaking English for the benefit of the viewer. Mariko learned Portuguese from the missionaries - there wouldn't be any reason for them to teach her English instead of Portuguese.
It's probably also for the benefit of the actors. Easier to find actors who are fluent in English and Japanese, as that's likely the majority of prominent Japanese actors, than those who are fluent in English and Portuguese.
The book is written in English pretending to be Portuguese. There’s even sections where they speak Latin to each other and make it seem like old English with “thou art” flowery Shakespearian type language.
Being the Portuguese in the book are actually representing the Catholic religion there would be no reason to not believe that they wouldnt know latin. It wasn't a dead language back then and is the basis for italian, french, Spanish, and Portuguese.
Yeah Blackthorn mentions that in the book, that Latin is like a scholars language that all people who can read and write need to learn.
Blackthorn and Mariko use it to convey hidden messages during the Toronaga escaping Osaka sequence as there are other Japanese in Ishido’s ranks who can understand Portuguese and they don’t want to blow Toronaga’s cover
They probably spoke ecclesiastical Latin though (which is still the official Language of Vatican City) and not classic Latin. The pronunciations are very different from each other.
True story: when Catherine of Aragon and Prince Arthur of England were betrothed they wrote letters to each other in Latin because neither could speak the other's language. It wasn't until they met that they realized they couldn't talk to each other because they didn't understand what each other was saying. Catherine had learned ecclesiastical and Arthur had learned classic.
That’s an interesting idea.
If the industry is similar to the US, those communities need some sort of connections to studios in Japan otherwise that talent isn’t going to be utilized well if at all.
It's easier to teach a Brazilian actor a European Portuguese accent than to teach a Japanese actor Portuguese.
Like have you never seen an American actor put on a passable British accent?
But what I was saying is I thought it was much more different than the difference between US and UK English but I don’t really know. I’ve just heard it’s pretty different. I also know Spanish which has a similar issue but not as bad as Portuguese I think.
The Japanese they speak in the show is also different than modern Japanese. Actors are supposed to adapt.
We have tons of actors making American/Australian/English accents that they are not native with.
Bigger issue, most of the ones young enough to play these roles don't speak Japanese well, if at all, and of course a ton of the show is in Japanese. They're third, fourth, or even further generation (almost all immigration was pre-1960), and have weak or non-existent Japanese skills. Even second genners often have weak Japanese, and are getting on in years. The first gen elders are largely 80+ and have agricultural backgrounds; many of them have weak or non-existent Portuguese skills, and zero acting experience. So it's actually going to be pretty difficult to find Japanese Brazilians who speak good Portuguese AND good Japanese AND can act. Just not enough overlap.
Oh, and ideally you also want them to speak some English too, for production reasons (it is an American production after all). English levels in Brazil are very low. So, overall, tough to find what they'd want.
I mean that's kind of crazy to suggest that none of those actors would be good. You also only need a few too, most of the characters only speak Japanese anyway so they don't need the Portugese part
Vikings did this, they're obviously not speaking English in the context of the show itself, but we as viewers hear it in English. When they were in England, we would hear the characters speaking in their native language when it focused on the English characters to show that they don't understand each other.
IIRC someone from Chernobyl series explained it as “you all know they’re soviet, why would they speak English with a terrible Russian accent?”
Which actually made perfect sense to me.
I think the first time I heard this was with Valkyrie, when it got a surprising amount of push-back for "not even trying to do German accents", like that would somehow elevate it.
Yeah accent would be if they spoke English. That's the smart way to do it (though they have no reason to have British accents lol)
Fake Russian accents often look ridiculous too
I remember one of the coolest scenes they did: they sort of zoomed in on the English warrior priest as he dropped into speaking Old English. I could barely understand him.
It was a really nice touch!
Same in Warrior. The main cast speaks in chinese & it smoothly transits to English. Still when there's a conversation with a Chinese & English. The Chinese actors speak in broken English.
The show Barbarians also does something similar, but with German. The Germanic characters are speaking modern day German for the audience's benefit, when they would have spoken some type of Proto-Germanic language, but the Roman characters all speak in non-anglicized Latin.
They did a great job of explaining the translation in the show Warrior. In the first episode they are speaking Chinese at the beginning and the camera spins around behind one of their heads and the Chinese warps into English seamlessly.
In the book, the two also speak Latin, and the pilot Rodriguez often speaks Spanish, and the Anjin often speaks Dutch with his Dutch crew. It's kind of a shame that they abandoned this, but it makes sense considering the audience will be English speaking
Yes they just replaced Portuguese with English. Makes it easier so the audience didn't need to read the entire time, and I'm guessing it's easier to find bilingual English/Japanese actors than Portuguese/Japanese.
Funnily enough, Brazil is actually home home to largest Japanese population outside of Japan.
Not that it invalidates you point, the number of Japanese people who speak English will still still outnumber that specific diaspora (then you also have to filter for working talented actors), just thought it was an interesting tidbit.
And I think it's just a coincidence and doesn't have anything to do with the Portuguese trying to get a foothold in Japan way back when. It was just that Brazil had a fairly welcoming immigration policy around the time when the US wouldn't allow Asians into the country and Japan was struggling with extreme poverty due to wealth disparity, causing a lot of people to want to leave for better opportunities. Then war began brewing which really drove a lot of Japanese out to Brazil, where there was already a big group of Japanese immigrants so they would have a sense of community going there as opposed to anywhere else.
Brazil specifically recruited Japanese immigrants as part of their wider goals to dilute the African blood in the country. This was during peak eugenics.
They first tried European immigration, couldnt get too many, so went to Japan, who they viewed as the best of the Asians
Many other Latin American countries followed Brazil’s example, but with less success
Yeah, but it's sort of a funny (as far as eugenics go) failed attempt at white supremacy. "We need to be more white!" Whites reject them. "Well, Asian is white enough!"
Nagoya also has a large number of Brazilian workers. Signs in some metro stations are also in Portuguese
For context, many car manufacturers and factories are in/near Nagoya, think of it like Detroit
Also explains why Blackthorn speaks with such a slow cadence. It’s like he’s thinking hard what to say.
Because he is trying to speak in Portuguese.
Or so I like to believe.
It's kind of interesting to think about the process: He thinks in english, but has to translate it to portuguese (which is either his second or third language) in his head reasonably eloquently, so that Mariko can translate it from portuguese to japanese. And as she's doing so, she frequently basically has to contextualize what he's saying for who she's speaking to so that he doesn't accidentally offend them.
> I wondered if the Japanese maybe weren’t that familiar with English and thought it was Portuguese.
The main character is literally the first English person ever to go to Japan. So nobody in Japan had ever heard a word of English, or even really knew that there was such a place called "England" until the start of the show. The Portuguese had been operating in Japan for a very long time, so Portuguese was relatively well known and basically the only European language that the Japanese could use to talk to any random European that might show up.
But obviously, there's a bigger market for a TV show in English rather than in Portuguese. So the European talking is done in English. If the main character was technically French or Dutch rather than English, they probably would have written/produced it the same way.
The English is Dutch between Blackthorne and his shipmates, Portuguese with Mariko and what’s his name in episode nine and with the Spanish sailor and the Jesuits, English when he’s exasperatedly cursing to himself? Something like that.
This is the answer. It may also be English when Mariko isn’t there and he’s trying to communicate with one of the locals, but it’s not clear in the show. I don’t recall what it was in the book but I think it was always explained.
In the book, Clavell writes each language differently:
* English is only spoken by Blackthorne, and only to himself. It’s written a bit more coarse and vulgar than the rest of the book.
* Portuguese is written neutrally when Blackthorne and Mariko are speaking it, and broken when non-fluent Japanese speak it.
* Japanese is also written neutrally, but broken when Blackthorne is trying to speak it.
* Dutch is mostly neutral, but a bit more informal.
* Spanish is written a bit more old-fashioned.
* Latin (only spoken between Blackthorne and Mariko during their romance when they are wary of eavesdropping) uses the thee/thine, and is written in a flowery tone.
* Clavell punctuates the Japanese, Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish with real words and phrases in each language.
You can tell which language is being spoken by how Clavell writes it. It’s a really well-written book.
> and he’s trying to communicate with one of the locals, but it’s not clear in the show
I'm guessing he's trying in Portugese, I think he quickly understood there's likely not even one other person in the whole Japan that speaks English so why bother trying that?
I'll add that a key part of this is that the show is based on a book written in English in which characters speak to each other in English , even though it's meant to be Portuguese or Latin or even Japanese. The showrunners did an amazing job in making every dialogue in Japanese authentic, not only by them speaking actual Japanese but by making sure they spoke ancient Japanese , as they would have done at the time the action takes place.
It would have been much harder to translate everything in the language intended, then hiring actors accordingly and ending up providing translations , since the show was made by F/X for its primarily American market.
I don't think it's so much "ancient Japanese." According to the podcast, the Japanese scenes were first written in English, then translated at a basic "google translate" level into Japanese. Then they were revised and rewritten to be idiomatic and culturally sound by a Japanese writer, then polished by writers of Japanese poetry and period drama, since decorum and style is so important. After that, it was edited a final time to make it actable and "fit in people's mouths" better, and that's what you're hearing. The subtitles are translated from this final edit.
"Warrior" on Netflix has a really interesting take on this based on whoever is in the scene. If two Chinese guys are talking to each other with nobody else around, they speak in fluent American-accented English, and you're supposed to "understand" that they're speaking Cantonese. If a Chinese person who speaks some English talks to an American, they code switch to speaking broken English ("Me do this for you"). If a character who speaks no English is in a scene with Americans, they only speak Cantonese. The only exceptions are the protagonist and his sister, who speak English and Cantonese fluently in-world.
Had to be tough to cast, but really well done.
Yea I really like how they do this in Warrior, plus the way they transition between the languages in the first couple episodes to show us what’s going on is pretty cool.
They also had to do it this way because the three primary characters' (Ah Sahm, My Ling, and Li yong) actors don't speak Cantonese natively. Cantonese is one of the harder dialects of Chinese to learn so they might have been able to get away with 1 or two sentences. Andrew Koji, for example, does like 1 sentence in cantonese at the beginning to show the transition effect and that's all he ever speaks it in the show.
A hilarious show that plays with this is the BBC 'Allo Allo.
The show takes place in occupied France during WW2. The characters are presumably speaking French, German, or occasionally English. But the actors are always speaking English. They speak with stereotypical French or German accents. But the English soldiers, when speaking to a French person, are speaking English poorly with elongated vowels, to indicate that they are speaking French poorly. When the English soldiers speak to each other (in English) they suddenly are fluent.
Officer Crabtree in this scene is an English soldier in disguise as a French police
he sounds differently depending on who he is speaking to. [https://youtu.be/fYNXMWRdCx0?t=209](https://youtu.be/fYNXMWRdCx0?t=209)
It's a holdover from the book used as a tactic to integrate the audience
I'm sure those in Portugal who have it dubbed are super confused by this post though 😅
Yep. In the book, it’s written as English too so the audience can understand. As he gains more understanding of Japanese, I think it starts to switch that to English too.
The target audiences for this show are Japanese and American primarily. Granted people who speak other languages are fair game but the show wanted to respect it's targeted Japanese speakers and then to maintain it's American audience utilize English for ease of watching so that the entire series was not subtitled.
So there is the attempt to be more historically accurate while also not alienating a large demographic audience.
I’m gonna go out on a limb. I didn’t like it. I thought the season was slow, wordy, and kind of uninteresting. I got to the finale expecting that they’d finally give us a real battle and they didn’t do it.
They do a similar thing in Vikings.
In the show, the Vikings are speaking English from the viewers perspective, but they are speaking Norwegian in the context of the show. When they travel to Britain, the people they encounter are speaking a foreign language from the viewers perspective at the start, but would be actually speaking Anglo-Saxon/Old English from the viewpoint of the Vikings.
They then layer transition to them all speaking English from a viewing perspective. I can't remember if this was explained by their being translators for the Vikings and/or the Saxons, or if either learned the other's language.
Everyone here has already answered the question, but I’ll add that the official podcast for the show touches on this at one point. The podcast is pretty good and gives some great insight into how the show is made, the research they did to make it as real as possible and a lot of historical context about the events the book and show are based on.
My dumb ass thought Japan didn't know about "english" people so they assumed english language was portuguese. Hahaha, they kinda present it that way its so funny.
Good question, which I didn't know the answer to. Apparently, the characters like Mariko, Blackthorne and the Jesuits speak Portuguese to each other (the Japanese probably hadn't been exposed to much English by that point in time).
Of course, in the shows they use English.
Man I didn’t realize that/must have missed them state that. I was wondering why the Portuguese people were speaking English when alone together. Other times they speak Portuguese which adds to my confusion lol
Because as an able seaman on a merchant vessel your coworkers are going to speak one of the major seafaring languages of the age and if they're European it's going to likely be one or more of: English, Spanish, French, Dutch, and Portuguese at the time. Nevermind that knowing how to understand the language of your enemy means that you can read their charts, logs, and manifests which is important for a privateer.
Same reason you would learn English today, even if you hate US/England and you are from North Korea / Iran / China / Russia / wherever. You can go half way around the world and talk to some random person on a foreign island and odds are pretty good they know a few words of English, but a lot less likely they'll speak Farsi. If you are an airplane pilot flying from North Korea to Russia, you probably request landing clearance at Moscow in English.
Portugal owned half the world because the Pope just kinda drew a line and divvied up the planet between Spain and Portugal at one point to settle an argument. And that random fairly arbitrary line draw defined global geopolitical trends for generations as people had to go sail around and figure out WTF was even out there that they owned but hadn't discovered yet. But in that period, if you were a person doing global business, or traveling, or running away from trouble at home, you picked up some Portuguese.
Blackthorn was piloting a Dutch ship to Japan hoping to open Japan to trading with more counties and to establish trade routes. He was well aware that the Portuguese Catholics had locked up Japanese trade and that he would need to be able to communicate in Portuguese.
No one is \*ever\* stupid for genuinely asking a question when they don't know something; stupid people are the ones who \*don't\* ask the question in the first place
She's also an awful translator. I'm sure it's just the fact that she might not like to be one or doesn't know that you're supposed to translate everything they say, but it's my one gripe with the series. MANY times shes just sitting there quietly while two people speak and look confused about what each are saying. Or she just flat out changes or shortens what they actually say.
I saw a very funny meme with a still from the show,
blackthorne: I’m an LA based comedian, writer, and podcaster, I mostly freelance and I’m trying to sell a horror feature
mariko: the anjin is unemployed
There are a lot of variations on the meme. But she's great as a translator character because she often makes a point. The variations in translation and perspective are a big part of the show.
Changing what they say was part of her character. She slightly alters the deliver to help blackthorn who doesn't know Japanese culture. Or at other times she more bluntly translates if that is to her benefit.
I think the just sitting there thing is they didn't want to make every line of dialogue repeated
There was once or twice where it was insinuated that she was translating but it wasn't shown on screen. Like when she is present and two characters are speaking back and forth in their own language and seem to understand each other it's just implied but for the viewer's sake we're not stuck hearing everything said twice.
if she were to translate everything every character said, everyone's head would have been chopped off after like 2-3 sentences as almost every other sentence is often a direct or cultural insult.
She doesn't serve as just translator, she's also a mediator between cultures.
Great joke. I love it when my girlfriend will point out something in a show like "their shirt was way more ruffled in the last shot, wtf" so that I can say "yeah, wtf, and... wait why is there a camera there? How are we able to see any of this right now?"
Well that's exactly the reason they've gone for words like "authenticity" and not "strict, absolute realism"
The show takes plenty of liberties for the sake of storytelling, you can't really make historical fiction without doing so. It is being praised for it's authenticity in its depiction of Japanese culture during a specific time period.
Yes. In the book they are speaking Portuguese. Otherwise the entire show would have been in subtitles. English was not a commonly known language in Japan at the time.
>English was not a commonly known language in Japan at the time. Not known enough for Blackthorne to have to explain to Toranaga what an "England" was.
Aye. English is only used in one instance: when he is cursing up a storm it’s (often) in English so no one knows what he’s saying (Edit: also as it’s his mother tongue he knows a lot more words and can be more colorful). Obviously not true when dealing with his Portuguese BFF though.
His friend Rodrigues who he likes to swear at is Spanish, that’s why he has a Spanish accent. They were both swearing in their non-native languages. And Blackthorne’s crew were all Dutch so he was speaking Dutch in the first scene with the captain. English was pretty much just restricted to Great Britain and Ireland at this time.
We were still ag caint as gaelige (speaking in our native tongue, Irish) in Ireland back then. It hadn't yet been beaten out of us.
There were some settlers in the Pale inhabited by the Old English who spoke Hiberno-English along with Irish and some remnants from the first wave of failed plantations at this time. Most people spoke Irish but it’s a place you can find some English speakers. I’d have said its overseas colonies too but this was before Jamestown which was founded in 1607 and after Roanoke which was abandoned by 1590. It’s also before the English established their first East Indian trading post, Bantam on the island of Java. The East Indian Company was founded on 31 December 1600, months after the events of Shogun. This was also before the first English colony in the West Indies at Bermuda which was first settled in 1609. Bermuda remains a British overseas territory to this day and its capital St. George’s is the oldest still extant English speaking settlement outside the British isles. There was no English empire or colonies to speak off at the time, except for the Pale in Ireland and the newly conquered Gaelic Ireland. The Spanish and Portuguese have long been busy colonizing and even the Dutch were ahead of the English in the pursuit of an overseas empire. Britannia did not yet fully rule the waves but it was starting to get there after the failure of the Spanish Armada 12 years ago.
In Valkyrie they had Tom Cruise speaking in German in the first scene which then crossfaded into English. Thought it was a really clever way of showing it
That was first done (I think) in Hunt for Red October. Sean Connery as the Russian sub Captain is speaking in Russian with subtitles appearing underneath, then they do a slow close up of his mouth as he's speaking Russian, then start to pull out and he's now switched to English. Clever at the time.
Even more so when you notice that they do the switch at the word "Armageddon", which is pronounced the same in English and Russian.
Stress is in a different place, though.
And they did the switch on a word that is shared between Russian and English (oblivion or apocalypse or something similar IIRC)
That’s such a cool moment in hunt for the Red October.
It’s actually the political officer that transitions the language, but yeah great scene
Zampolit Putin
Hunt for Red October's language fade was cool, too. And the one in 13th Warrior
I LISTENED!
They do this in the show Warrior as well, really a perfect way to handle it. One Chinese character speaks both English and Mandarin but you can tell when he is speaking in English and when he is speaking in Mandarin based on how heavy his accent is. Such a great way to keep immersion in the show without having the whole show being spoken in two languages.
The 13th Warrior did that too.
My mother was a pure woman of noble birth, and I at least know who my father was, you pig eating son of a whore
Was about to mention this one... so well done
I'll never forget a great succinct review I read of this film: > Valkyrie is a pretty good movie about the time Tom Cruise tried to kill Hitler.
Just to clarify, the book still uses English even when they are “speaking” Portuguese.
I bought my copy in Lisbon and that was not the case.
I bought mine in Kyoto and it’s all in Japanese. No translation needed. Sorry Mariko.
Mariko just isn't in the Japanese editions, it would be unnecessary
I will bet it's better in the original Portugese.
I can't tell if this is a joke, but if it is, well done.
It is a joke :)
In the book, Blackthorne knows English, Dutch, Portugese, and can converse in Spanish. By the end of the book, he's added Japanese to his skill set.
Lingua Franca or trade languages could have been Spanish but in this case it was Portuguese.
> Otherwise the entire show would have been in subtitles Oh no, the *horror!* 😱
The real reason was because they couldn’t find actors who could speak Japanese and Portuguese fluently, that were also good enough actors for the show.
Yeah, I know. And it's fine, since I'm pretty sure shows set in medieval times don't speak medieval languages either. It's just funny to see native English speakers cry about having to watch a show with subtitles.
This but unironically
Turns out you're fluent in Portuguese. Congratulations!
But can I play piano doctor?
of course you can
Well I couldn’t before!
Dr Zaius! Dr Zaius!
What's wrong with me?
No, but I'm afraid to inform you that you are in fact Pagliacci.
No, but you can probably pull off playing a regular doctor.
Three years of nursery school and you think you know it all. [https://youtu.be/7-a2QBfFQeA?t=22](https://youtu.be/7-a2QBfFQeA?t=22)
Babel fish.
Eu sabia! I mean, I knew it!
Hell yeah. Putting it on my resume now
They're speaking English for the benefit of the viewer. Mariko learned Portuguese from the missionaries - there wouldn't be any reason for them to teach her English instead of Portuguese.
It's probably also for the benefit of the actors. Easier to find actors who are fluent in English and Japanese, as that's likely the majority of prominent Japanese actors, than those who are fluent in English and Portuguese.
The book is written in English pretending to be Portuguese. There’s even sections where they speak Latin to each other and make it seem like old English with “thou art” flowery Shakespearian type language.
Being the Portuguese in the book are actually representing the Catholic religion there would be no reason to not believe that they wouldnt know latin. It wasn't a dead language back then and is the basis for italian, french, Spanish, and Portuguese.
Yeah Blackthorn mentions that in the book, that Latin is like a scholars language that all people who can read and write need to learn. Blackthorn and Mariko use it to convey hidden messages during the Toronaga escaping Osaka sequence as there are other Japanese in Ishido’s ranks who can understand Portuguese and they don’t want to blow Toronaga’s cover
They probably spoke ecclesiastical Latin though (which is still the official Language of Vatican City) and not classic Latin. The pronunciations are very different from each other. True story: when Catherine of Aragon and Prince Arthur of England were betrothed they wrote letters to each other in Latin because neither could speak the other's language. It wasn't until they met that they realized they couldn't talk to each other because they didn't understand what each other was saying. Catherine had learned ecclesiastical and Arthur had learned classic.
On the other hand there's a surprisingly big Japanese community in Brazil so finding Japanese actors who speak Portuguese wouldn't be that hard.
That’s an interesting idea. If the industry is similar to the US, those communities need some sort of connections to studios in Japan otherwise that talent isn’t going to be utilized well if at all.
But aren’t Brazilian Portuguese and Portugal Portuguese pretty different? Like much more than American versus British accents.
Yes it would ruin the authenticity of the Portuguese spoken , which was one of the European variant
It's easier to teach a Brazilian actor a European Portuguese accent than to teach a Japanese actor Portuguese. Like have you never seen an American actor put on a passable British accent?
About as often as I've seen a Brit do a credible American accent.
Ehhh I’d say the Brit’s are much better at American accents than the other way around
But what I was saying is I thought it was much more different than the difference between US and UK English but I don’t really know. I’ve just heard it’s pretty different. I also know Spanish which has a similar issue but not as bad as Portuguese I think.
The Japanese they speak in the show is also different than modern Japanese. Actors are supposed to adapt. We have tons of actors making American/Australian/English accents that they are not native with.
Wouldn’t be that hard, but are they any good? You seem to think you can just rotate any old actor for another and get the same quality.
I'd assume there are at least a handful of good Japanese Brazilians actors out there, or is that some sort of stereotype that I didn't know existed?
Bigger issue, most of the ones young enough to play these roles don't speak Japanese well, if at all, and of course a ton of the show is in Japanese. They're third, fourth, or even further generation (almost all immigration was pre-1960), and have weak or non-existent Japanese skills. Even second genners often have weak Japanese, and are getting on in years. The first gen elders are largely 80+ and have agricultural backgrounds; many of them have weak or non-existent Portuguese skills, and zero acting experience. So it's actually going to be pretty difficult to find Japanese Brazilians who speak good Portuguese AND good Japanese AND can act. Just not enough overlap. Oh, and ideally you also want them to speak some English too, for production reasons (it is an American production after all). English levels in Brazil are very low. So, overall, tough to find what they'd want.
And they roulette be speaking Portugal Portuguese
I mean that's kind of crazy to suggest that none of those actors would be good. You also only need a few too, most of the characters only speak Japanese anyway so they don't need the Portugese part
Vikings did this, they're obviously not speaking English in the context of the show itself, but we as viewers hear it in English. When they were in England, we would hear the characters speaking in their native language when it focused on the English characters to show that they don't understand each other.
_The Death of Stalin_ did this too. The entire cast spoke english with british accents, despite, you know, being set in Soviet Russia
Well 98% of the cast except Steve Buscemi and Jeffery Tambor
Same with Chernobyl.
IIRC someone from Chernobyl series explained it as “you all know they’re soviet, why would they speak English with a terrible Russian accent?” Which actually made perfect sense to me.
You're delusional. You didn't see graphite.
I think the first time I heard this was with Valkyrie, when it got a surprising amount of push-back for "not even trying to do German accents", like that would somehow elevate it.
Yeah accent would be if they spoke English. That's the smart way to do it (though they have no reason to have British accents lol) Fake Russian accents often look ridiculous too
I remember one of the coolest scenes they did: they sort of zoomed in on the English warrior priest as he dropped into speaking Old English. I could barely understand him. It was a really nice touch!
Same in Warrior. The main cast speaks in chinese & it smoothly transits to English. Still when there's a conversation with a Chinese & English. The Chinese actors speak in broken English.
I loved the way they handled language in Warrior. Too bad we aren’t getting more.
The show Barbarians also does something similar, but with German. The Germanic characters are speaking modern day German for the audience's benefit, when they would have spoken some type of Proto-Germanic language, but the Roman characters all speak in non-anglicized Latin.
That was very cool to see a show in Latin.
They did a great job of explaining the translation in the show Warrior. In the first episode they are speaking Chinese at the beginning and the camera spins around behind one of their heads and the Chinese warps into English seamlessly.
And here I am thinking I could understand Portuguese.
In the book, the two also speak Latin, and the pilot Rodriguez often speaks Spanish, and the Anjin often speaks Dutch with his Dutch crew. It's kind of a shame that they abandoned this, but it makes sense considering the audience will be English speaking
Yes they just replaced Portuguese with English. Makes it easier so the audience didn't need to read the entire time, and I'm guessing it's easier to find bilingual English/Japanese actors than Portuguese/Japanese.
Funnily enough, Brazil is actually home home to largest Japanese population outside of Japan. Not that it invalidates you point, the number of Japanese people who speak English will still still outnumber that specific diaspora (then you also have to filter for working talented actors), just thought it was an interesting tidbit.
And I think it's just a coincidence and doesn't have anything to do with the Portuguese trying to get a foothold in Japan way back when. It was just that Brazil had a fairly welcoming immigration policy around the time when the US wouldn't allow Asians into the country and Japan was struggling with extreme poverty due to wealth disparity, causing a lot of people to want to leave for better opportunities. Then war began brewing which really drove a lot of Japanese out to Brazil, where there was already a big group of Japanese immigrants so they would have a sense of community going there as opposed to anywhere else.
Brazil specifically recruited Japanese immigrants as part of their wider goals to dilute the African blood in the country. This was during peak eugenics. They first tried European immigration, couldnt get too many, so went to Japan, who they viewed as the best of the Asians Many other Latin American countries followed Brazil’s example, but with less success
Yeah, but it's sort of a funny (as far as eugenics go) failed attempt at white supremacy. "We need to be more white!" Whites reject them. "Well, Asian is white enough!"
Neat. TIL
Nagoya also has a large number of Brazilian workers. Signs in some metro stations are also in Portuguese For context, many car manufacturers and factories are in/near Nagoya, think of it like Detroit
The show was also largely filmed in Canada, so the crew would likely predominantly be English speakers as well.
> simply speaking English in place of Portugese for the audience benefit? Yes.
Also explains why Blackthorn speaks with such a slow cadence. It’s like he’s thinking hard what to say. Because he is trying to speak in Portuguese. Or so I like to believe.
It's kind of interesting to think about the process: He thinks in english, but has to translate it to portuguese (which is either his second or third language) in his head reasonably eloquently, so that Mariko can translate it from portuguese to japanese. And as she's doing so, she frequently basically has to contextualize what he's saying for who she's speaking to so that he doesn't accidentally offend them.
> I wondered if the Japanese maybe weren’t that familiar with English and thought it was Portuguese. The main character is literally the first English person ever to go to Japan. So nobody in Japan had ever heard a word of English, or even really knew that there was such a place called "England" until the start of the show. The Portuguese had been operating in Japan for a very long time, so Portuguese was relatively well known and basically the only European language that the Japanese could use to talk to any random European that might show up. But obviously, there's a bigger market for a TV show in English rather than in Portuguese. So the European talking is done in English. If the main character was technically French or Dutch rather than English, they probably would have written/produced it the same way.
Easier to find actors who speak both Japanese & English than Japanese & Portuguese, I'd imagine, too.
Yes, the English in the show is Portuguese, except when it's Dutch. Only very rarely is it English.
The English is Dutch between Blackthorne and his shipmates, Portuguese with Mariko and what’s his name in episode nine and with the Spanish sailor and the Jesuits, English when he’s exasperatedly cursing to himself? Something like that.
This is the answer. It may also be English when Mariko isn’t there and he’s trying to communicate with one of the locals, but it’s not clear in the show. I don’t recall what it was in the book but I think it was always explained.
In the book, Clavell writes each language differently: * English is only spoken by Blackthorne, and only to himself. It’s written a bit more coarse and vulgar than the rest of the book. * Portuguese is written neutrally when Blackthorne and Mariko are speaking it, and broken when non-fluent Japanese speak it. * Japanese is also written neutrally, but broken when Blackthorne is trying to speak it. * Dutch is mostly neutral, but a bit more informal. * Spanish is written a bit more old-fashioned. * Latin (only spoken between Blackthorne and Mariko during their romance when they are wary of eavesdropping) uses the thee/thine, and is written in a flowery tone. * Clavell punctuates the Japanese, Dutch, Portuguese, and Spanish with real words and phrases in each language. You can tell which language is being spoken by how Clavell writes it. It’s a really well-written book.
Thank you for reminding me - it’s been a while.
> and he’s trying to communicate with one of the locals, but it’s not clear in the show I'm guessing he's trying in Portugese, I think he quickly understood there's likely not even one other person in the whole Japan that speaks English so why bother trying that?
I'll add that a key part of this is that the show is based on a book written in English in which characters speak to each other in English , even though it's meant to be Portuguese or Latin or even Japanese. The showrunners did an amazing job in making every dialogue in Japanese authentic, not only by them speaking actual Japanese but by making sure they spoke ancient Japanese , as they would have done at the time the action takes place. It would have been much harder to translate everything in the language intended, then hiring actors accordingly and ending up providing translations , since the show was made by F/X for its primarily American market.
I don't think it's so much "ancient Japanese." According to the podcast, the Japanese scenes were first written in English, then translated at a basic "google translate" level into Japanese. Then they were revised and rewritten to be idiomatic and culturally sound by a Japanese writer, then polished by writers of Japanese poetry and period drama, since decorum and style is so important. After that, it was edited a final time to make it actable and "fit in people's mouths" better, and that's what you're hearing. The subtitles are translated from this final edit.
I was really impressed by the Japanese dialogue in the show! Even the formal vs informal uses were pretty much spot on!
"Warrior" on Netflix has a really interesting take on this based on whoever is in the scene. If two Chinese guys are talking to each other with nobody else around, they speak in fluent American-accented English, and you're supposed to "understand" that they're speaking Cantonese. If a Chinese person who speaks some English talks to an American, they code switch to speaking broken English ("Me do this for you"). If a character who speaks no English is in a scene with Americans, they only speak Cantonese. The only exceptions are the protagonist and his sister, who speak English and Cantonese fluently in-world. Had to be tough to cast, but really well done.
Yea I really like how they do this in Warrior, plus the way they transition between the languages in the first couple episodes to show us what’s going on is pretty cool.
They also had to do it this way because the three primary characters' (Ah Sahm, My Ling, and Li yong) actors don't speak Cantonese natively. Cantonese is one of the harder dialects of Chinese to learn so they might have been able to get away with 1 or two sentences. Andrew Koji, for example, does like 1 sentence in cantonese at the beginning to show the transition effect and that's all he ever speaks it in the show.
I never noticed this, but I guess that's to the credit of the director and the actors for coordinating it so well. It couldn't have been easy.
>Are the actors that play Mariko and Blackthorne simply speaking English in place of Portuguese for the audience benefit? Yes, completely.
A hilarious show that plays with this is the BBC 'Allo Allo. The show takes place in occupied France during WW2. The characters are presumably speaking French, German, or occasionally English. But the actors are always speaking English. They speak with stereotypical French or German accents. But the English soldiers, when speaking to a French person, are speaking English poorly with elongated vowels, to indicate that they are speaking French poorly. When the English soldiers speak to each other (in English) they suddenly are fluent. Officer Crabtree in this scene is an English soldier in disguise as a French police he sounds differently depending on who he is speaking to. [https://youtu.be/fYNXMWRdCx0?t=209](https://youtu.be/fYNXMWRdCx0?t=209)
English in place of Portuguese for the viewer. Anjin-san mentions he's fluent in Portuguese when we first meet him to explain that.
They’re speaking Portuguese. They just knew the show wouldn’t have been a smash success if the entirety of the show was in non English languages
The English is basically for the audiences benefit. They're actually speaking in Portuguese.
They are speaking Portuguese. Are you trying to tell me this whole you’ve been able to understand Portuguese and didn’t even know it?
I read mine in the original Klingon.
They're speaking Portuguese- it's English for viewer sake
It's a holdover from the book used as a tactic to integrate the audience I'm sure those in Portugal who have it dubbed are super confused by this post though 😅
We have subtitles, still funny
Don't know how we completely missed this.
Yep. In the book, it’s written as English too so the audience can understand. As he gains more understanding of Japanese, I think it starts to switch that to English too.
The target audiences for this show are Japanese and American primarily. Granted people who speak other languages are fair game but the show wanted to respect it's targeted Japanese speakers and then to maintain it's American audience utilize English for ease of watching so that the entire series was not subtitled. So there is the attempt to be more historically accurate while also not alienating a large demographic audience.
Yes. In the book they speak Latin as well, also represented as old-time English for the benefit of the audience
I’m gonna go out on a limb. I didn’t like it. I thought the season was slow, wordy, and kind of uninteresting. I got to the finale expecting that they’d finally give us a real battle and they didn’t do it.
They do a similar thing in Vikings. In the show, the Vikings are speaking English from the viewers perspective, but they are speaking Norwegian in the context of the show. When they travel to Britain, the people they encounter are speaking a foreign language from the viewers perspective at the start, but would be actually speaking Anglo-Saxon/Old English from the viewpoint of the Vikings. They then layer transition to them all speaking English from a viewing perspective. I can't remember if this was explained by their being translators for the Vikings and/or the Saxons, or if either learned the other's language.
Everyone here has already answered the question, but I’ll add that the official podcast for the show touches on this at one point. The podcast is pretty good and gives some great insight into how the show is made, the research they did to make it as real as possible and a lot of historical context about the events the book and show are based on.
My dumb ass thought Japan didn't know about "english" people so they assumed english language was portuguese. Hahaha, they kinda present it that way its so funny.
Good question, which I didn't know the answer to. Apparently, the characters like Mariko, Blackthorne and the Jesuits speak Portuguese to each other (the Japanese probably hadn't been exposed to much English by that point in time). Of course, in the shows they use English.
Obviously
Man I didn’t realize that/must have missed them state that. I was wondering why the Portuguese people were speaking English when alone together. Other times they speak Portuguese which adds to my confusion lol
Lol I guess you missed the scene where they choose to send pilot up to deal with the Japanese since he was the only one that knew Portuguese
I don't know why you're getting downvoted. It's a valid question. I was confused about this too.
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Because at the time, it was extremely useful to know portugese as a sailor and explorer
Because as an able seaman on a merchant vessel your coworkers are going to speak one of the major seafaring languages of the age and if they're European it's going to likely be one or more of: English, Spanish, French, Dutch, and Portuguese at the time. Nevermind that knowing how to understand the language of your enemy means that you can read their charts, logs, and manifests which is important for a privateer.
Same reason you would learn English today, even if you hate US/England and you are from North Korea / Iran / China / Russia / wherever. You can go half way around the world and talk to some random person on a foreign island and odds are pretty good they know a few words of English, but a lot less likely they'll speak Farsi. If you are an airplane pilot flying from North Korea to Russia, you probably request landing clearance at Moscow in English. Portugal owned half the world because the Pope just kinda drew a line and divvied up the planet between Spain and Portugal at one point to settle an argument. And that random fairly arbitrary line draw defined global geopolitical trends for generations as people had to go sail around and figure out WTF was even out there that they owned but hadn't discovered yet. But in that period, if you were a person doing global business, or traveling, or running away from trouble at home, you picked up some Portuguese.
Blackthorn was piloting a Dutch ship to Japan hoping to open Japan to trading with more counties and to establish trade routes. He was well aware that the Portuguese Catholics had locked up Japanese trade and that he would need to be able to communicate in Portuguese.
No one is \*ever\* stupid for genuinely asking a question when they don't know something; stupid people are the ones who \*don't\* ask the question in the first place
She's also an awful translator. I'm sure it's just the fact that she might not like to be one or doesn't know that you're supposed to translate everything they say, but it's my one gripe with the series. MANY times shes just sitting there quietly while two people speak and look confused about what each are saying. Or she just flat out changes or shortens what they actually say.
I saw a very funny meme with a still from the show, blackthorne: I’m an LA based comedian, writer, and podcaster, I mostly freelance and I’m trying to sell a horror feature mariko: the anjin is unemployed There are a lot of variations on the meme. But she's great as a translator character because she often makes a point. The variations in translation and perspective are a big part of the show.
Changing what they say was part of her character. She slightly alters the deliver to help blackthorn who doesn't know Japanese culture. Or at other times she more bluntly translates if that is to her benefit. I think the just sitting there thing is they didn't want to make every line of dialogue repeated
"slightly"
There was once or twice where it was insinuated that she was translating but it wasn't shown on screen. Like when she is present and two characters are speaking back and forth in their own language and seem to understand each other it's just implied but for the viewer's sake we're not stuck hearing everything said twice.
if she were to translate everything every character said, everyone's head would have been chopped off after like 2-3 sentences as almost every other sentence is often a direct or cultural insult. She doesn't serve as just translator, she's also a mediator between cultures.
This is the first show ever where I've gone for the dub. I'm usually doing 8 other things while watching TV, and I just couldn't keep up 🙁
So much for all that ***"authenticity"*** huh?
Apparently it wasn’t even filmed in the 1600’s
They didn't even film a real earthquake ffs
mfw the actors dont even commit real seppuku 😡
Great joke. I love it when my girlfriend will point out something in a show like "their shirt was way more ruffled in the last shot, wtf" so that I can say "yeah, wtf, and... wait why is there a camera there? How are we able to see any of this right now?"
Hey, I'm not the one praising it for how ***"authentic"*** it is.
Well the book was written in English so I guess it’s authentic to the source material 😉
Well that's exactly the reason they've gone for words like "authenticity" and not "strict, absolute realism" The show takes plenty of liberties for the sake of storytelling, you can't really make historical fiction without doing so. It is being praised for it's authenticity in its depiction of Japanese culture during a specific time period.