Do people who flame in Chinese get punished?

Knihovak·8/1/2019, 11:18:00 PM·1 votes·4,567 views

I just finished a game where a player on the losing team posted this in the chat.

Player: 傻狗东西 Player: boostedanimal Player: 说你妈成狗比 Player: 臭逼 Player: 脑残

After going into google translate, I found that the player said this:

Player: Stupid dog stuff Player: boostedanimal Player: Say your mom is a dog. Player: Stinky Player: Brain damage

Now given cultural context, referring to someone as a "dog" in Chinese is very insulting and toxic. It is like saying that someone is subhuman, the scum of the earth that crawls around in the mud and eats scraps. Then comes the one word in english: boostedanimal which again is an insult about being a subhuman entity. Third, we have an insult on one's mother. This should be self explanatory. The fourth insult "stinky" sounds childish to english speakers, but let us not forget the context of dogs, implying the stench of a street animal. Last, comes a word that translates to "Brain damage". I personally assume that this actually is a slur akin to us using the word "r%%%%%" against those with mental handicaps which would normally be a bannable offense for insult throwing and flaming like this.

So, given that League of Legends was originally created by predominately English speakers, my question is this; are there even filters in place to detect and punish flaming in another language?

11 Comments

SEKAI8/2/2019, 10:49:54 AM3 votes

Player: 傻狗东西 Player: boostedanimal Player: 说你妈成狗比 Player: 臭逼 Player: 脑残

I'm a Mandarin speaker, I can translate the sentence in their actual context:

Now I must preface, some of these words are typo which you will realise if you read Mandarin. It's a bit bothersome to explain but Mandarin is a tonal language meaning outside of base sounds there's an added dimension, where words can have the very same base sounds but differentiated by the tone; and this is on top of the fact even with the same base sound AND tone, we still have different words sharing that spot.

In essence, during oral conversation and when you read Mandarin especially on casual platforms, you are to constantly guess the other people's words since any mistake (any mispronunciation of the speaker or confusion from people from different parts of China have different accents, your internal typo when you're listen someone's verbal sentence, or someone else's keyboard typo in a chatlog) would not just be a spelling error but would straight up give you a wrong word which may or may not derail the message of the term entirely. Such problem is pretty perverse on chatlogs where people routinely make typos that make the interpretation job a lot harder than it needs to be. The auto-correct system in Chinese typing scheme is usually very extensive, but they only do so much.

We're pretty good at guessing what others are trying to say as a result from the training, let's just say.

Player: 傻狗东西

Wrong word between 啥 (what) and 傻 (stupid) that are differentiated by a tonal sound. 傻狗东西 is not technically wrong per se, but it's like wrong in a way that you look at it and feel it doesn't make that much sense; between that and 啥狗东西, as a Mandarin speaker you just know the latter was the intended line because the latter makes so much sense.

啥狗东西 means "What the fuck".

The "dog" section of the phrase has no real meaning besides showing this line is negative, like how in "what the fuck" the "fuck" doesn't carry all that much meaning itself.

Player: 说你妈成狗比

This line is hard to read without some previous context, especially since this line's grammar itself is sort of broken at first glance. You can interpret this in different ways, such as

  • "Saying "your mum" means you're a bitch"
  • "I say, your mum became a bitch"

This has to depend on the situation then and what they were trying to say.

Given the first possible interpretation, it may have been used as a counter-flame to someone else's flaming. It would still be illegal in League to counter-flame and wrong, but we at least know why.

Also, the last word in that line is also a wrong word. It's meant to be 毴 but instead typed as 比 which share the same base sound differentiated by a tone, it's a vulgar and actually a rather ancient way to refer to vagina. But 毴 is rarely actually used and is usually substitute with a milder term with similar sound during typing, as seen in this line.

Player: 臭逼

Similar as the one before, 逼 is a substitute for 毴, and is the most used substitute. It's worth noting, and the extension from the explanation of the above line that 毴 often has no special meaning besides being a catch-all insult ender in Mandarin.

So while literally phrase may mean "stinky vagina", it's actually just used to call someone/something "trash" (trash stinks, if you get what I mean).

Also I'd like to point out, not all referral to vagina is negative. For whatever reason, a very common term is 牛毴, which means "cow vagina" when interpreted literally; however instead of negative meaning, it's usually used to denote a sense of feeling impressed by something or someone and used as a compliment and general expression of awe.

Player: 脑残

The Chinese equivalent of "r%%%%%ed".

Just no.

.......

It's toxic, sure. But probably not as toxic as you might have thought it is.

It's mostly just about someone being angry and accusing someone on their team as being a boosted animal (which they made it clear by typing that bit in English) with the usual saltiness that come with it.

Still, I can't get over how we still use "r%%%%%ed" as a casual insult in Mandarin, though (which I'm equally disappointed in English but there is slighter greater conscious with trying to stop using it).

skills of luck8/1/2019, 11:19:50 PM1 votes

In short, Yes.

Marlo Stanfield8/2/2019, 11:09:36 AM1 votes

play this song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP7utU8Efow they will be so tilted trust me