Netizens found it hilarious, with many questioning why a Singaporean businessman spoke Malay and needed an interpreter.
“Did the show’s writers forget that Singaporeans speak English?” asked one, while another commented, “Did someone just ask ChatGPT what the national language of Singapore is and ran with it?”
Another netizen found it weird that the obviously Chinese actor spoke Malay instead of Mandarin.
“Maybe he is a Singapore citizen but born in Malaysia?” joked a netizen, while another commented, “Ahh! At last [a] Singaporean speaks their national language.”
The episode also presents the businessman’s fictional company, Beruang Holdings, as being “owned by the People’s Action Party (PAP) of Singapore”, where a representative of the Singapore Government halted the investigation.
Beruang means bear in Malay, or perhaps the scriptwriters meant to say “having money” or “rich” in Bahasa Indonesia.
Many also took issue with how the PAP was misrepresented, with a Redditor posting a lengthy response to the show’s episode.
“Clearly, someone on the team searched ‘What is the national language of Singapore’, saw that it was Malay, and based their entire assumptions on that one text line, not going a minute further to understand that Singaporeans are well-educated, speak English natively, would not need a translator in a professional and diplomatic setting, and are not, in fact, a part of Malaysia,” the netizen wrote.
Guys, chill. It is just a Hollywood drama that is fiction, right?
This story was originally published in 8Days.
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