#all my xiǎo shāshǒu are really just chaos gremlins

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I am determined to make a clip of every single instance of Zhang Linghe doing math on The Truth S2. Like this one from ep 3-2 where everyone acknowledges after the last ep he's definitely their math guy.

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The Truth subtitle files

The Truth/Let's Start Reasoning season 2 is an amazing show, but I think we can all agree the English subtitles are a mess?

Because I wanted them for myself, and I'm always happy to share, here are some very slightly cleaned up subtitle files. You're welcome to download and use these files or edit them yourself as you see fit. (And I'll continue to add new ones as the eps air.)

For clarity, I'm no translator. My Mandarin is barely above toddler level. All I've done here, for the most part, is fix names. There's several places where names are translated literally causing confusion. king for Wang, shellfish/shellpot/scallop for Bei Guo, minibus for Xiao Ba, and so on. Plus the many variations of push for any instance of 推 Tuī.

I did take liberties in a few places. In ep 8 there's two NPCs called Tui AI and Tui Ai (推AI and 推爱) and for English reading clarity I rendered Tui Ai as Tui Mou since there's several instances where they seem to be saying 推某 (Tuī mǒu) so I just went with it.

In a very few rare instances I slightly restructured a sentence. So definitely not fixing for accuracy here, just clarity for following along if you don't understand any Mandarin or simply find the machine translated subtitles in the chaos that is this show even more confusing.

There's a text file in with the subtitle file downloads explaining how to use them if you don't already know. I'm in the US and watching via YouTube, so these files are for those specific videos. If you want to further edit the files, any text editor should do (but I recommend Notepad++).

Again I pretty much only fixed names, and left most the wild weird artifacts of machine translation. Because honestly I find it adds an enjoyable surreal quality to the show. I only wanted to be able to follow who was being referred in the show without having to rewind and listen to what they were saying when the subtitles failed at their job. ETA - there are now two folders at the link, one with files with mostly just fixed names, and one where I've fully edited some files in an attempt to make all of it more coherent. But again I'm not translator (still I think it's better than Tencent gave us on Youtube).

But really sometimes the subtitles are so good they are bad, right?

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The lights go out in The Truth and well...

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This tiny bit from ep 7 of the The Truth S2 is a fine example of how every time the lights go out on that show Liu Yuning gloms on to someone, but very specifically how in almost every single episode he ends up holding Zhang Linghe's hand.

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I don't even have words for goth Dilraba. Back in the day we used to get goth magazines from europe and this is somehow the pure distillation of everything we used to dream about.

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I am so over the moon about the styling for ep 8 of The Truth S2. Look what they did to my beautiful princess, Dilraba! Glorious queen of space! Fantastic, campy, scifi at it's absolute best.

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The Truth S2, this show is just chaos gremlins from beginning to end, and I love every minute of it. But really Dilraba torturing Zhang Linghe when they are all in the dark is for sure one of the high points.

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A tiny spoiler for one the many complicated reveals in ep 4-1 of S2 of The Truth, but out of context it's just very cute. Also I truly feel the writers where just entertaining themselves with the possibilities of things like this.

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This line in S2 of The Truth ep 4-2 could easily be translated as protect me, daddy and I've seen it that way in some clips. I like it that way but I've stuck with the more likely translation here in the context of the show. Sigh. It's still cute as all get out. Literally this show has me thinking kinds of, uh, interesting thoughts about LYN and ZLH. 🤷

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I know I keep begging you all to watch S2 of The Truth. But look, I haven't even seen this episode yet and I can already tell you it's going to be so worth your time. LOOK AT THESE GREMLINS.

And really even the show knows what it's doing. The caption this from the official show weibo:

#Zhang Linghe acts like a spoiled child to Liu Yuning# #Zhang Linghe makes Liu Yuning unable to do anything# The smart butler robot Xiao He [Zhang Linghe], after receiving the command from Xiao Ning [Liu Yuning], turned on the "melancholy male god" mode, and the words "Master, you can go to eat" directly melted Ning's heart

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I'm sure I've talked too much about how The Truth S2 made me ship ZLH and LYN, but I certainly have talked enough about Zhou Keyu's insane 'notice me senpai' energy with Bai Yu. Like here in ep 3-2.

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One of the pure chaos things that I love about The Truth S2 is how they keep making them play children's games, like the turnip squats, or this round of "cockfighting" in ep 3-1.

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This clip from ep 1-2 of S2 of The Truth kills me every time. Tall boys can't believe they can't reach things. Too high? Impossible! How could it be!?!??😂

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Okay. I need to sit down for a minute. Whew. Am I ready for this episode of The Truth? The mask is... a lot.

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No spoilers for the final episode of The Truth S2, just this very important clip, once more in an attempt to compel everyone to watch this bonkers show.

If you're not watching you're missing the opportunity to see Dilraba be both clever and a chaos gremlin. To see Liu Yuning, sing and be charming and ridiculously scared of the dark. To see Zhou Keyu plan an insane game of 'notice me, senpai' with Bai Yu. To see Zhang Linghe solve complex math problems. And most importantly, to see Zhang Linghe in this clip.