Star Wars: The Last Jedi Trailer Translations Reveal Who Snoke Is Talking To
Thank heavens for gendered pronouns...
As the pedantic people who police your social media posts will have told you, if you don't appreciate grammar, you're literally the worst kind of people. And there's another reason to appreciate why grammar is important if you're a Star Wars fan at the minute, as it may have just revealed something about The Last Jedi.
Thanks to a poster on Reddit, it turns out that the Taiwanese subtitles from the latest The Last Jedi trailer reveal the answer to one of the most key questions that came out of the teasers.
When the trailer landed with its apparent misdirection and playful narrative teases, it was unclear who both Luke Skywalker and Snoke were talking to at key points. Snoke's opening line “When I found you, I saw raw, untamed power" is hugely different depending on who it's said to, and so is his invitation to "fulfil your destiny" later. And to a slightly lesser degree, Luke saying “this is not going to go the way you think" changes impact depending on who he's saying it to.
The Redditor has been able to identify a key part of who those subjects might be, thanks to the gendering quirk of the Taiwanese language. Rather than in English - where pronouns are gender neutral - Taiwanese uses different symbols for female and male versions of "you", so you can work out the gender of who Snoke and Luke are talking to.
Snoke's line about "raw, untamed power" refers to a female character, which could suggest he's talking to Rey (and which might fill in a huge part of her backstory), while the "fulfil your destiny" line is spoken to a male character. Kylo Ren maybe? Luke perhaps?
And Luke is saying his key line to a male character too, which suggests he's battling either Kylo Ren or Snoke again.
There is a slight caveat, of course, as the Reddit poster admits that the symbol used for male figures can actually be gender neutral (so it may have been used consciously to hide the subject). It's still an interesting discovery nonetheless.