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I have watched the film Ip Man 2 in English a couple of days ago and I am still confused about the meaning of a specific sentence:

I can't let the foreign devil look down on us. I can put up with him to live but can't let him insult Chinese martial arts.

Basically, the "foreign devil" is a boxer called Twister who is fighting against Ip Man. The person speaking is Master Hung.

So I know that to put up with sth/sb means to accept or tolerate something or someone, but I don't know what is meant by “to live“.

Does it mean that the person speaking can live with him but can't tolerate that he insults Chinese martial arts?

I have already looked at example sentences but “to put up with sth/sb“ has never been followed by “to + verb“.

Edit: The whole context would go like this:

I can't let the foreign devil look down on us. I can put up with him to live but can't let him insult Chinese martial arts.

Basically, the foreign devil is a boxer called Twister who is fighting against ip man. The person speaking is master hung. So master hung says: “I can't let Twister look down on us. I can put up with him to live but can't let him insult Chinese martial arts."

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  • This looks very mysterious to me. We'd need more context around the quote to know what's meant here. Commented Nov 4, 2018 at 3:18

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Master Hung (or the screenwriter) is not a native English speaker. He probably means "I can put up with his living, but..." (I can allow him to live, but ...); but the normal interpretation would be "I can put up with him in order to live, *but ..." (I can tolerate him so that he won't kill me, *but ...). {The 'but's don't make much sense that way.}

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    I agree; it looks to me like the English was poorly-translated.
    – J.R.
    Commented Nov 4, 2018 at 9:05

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