This Is Most Affirming Thing I’ve Ever Read.

a word on translation

(just to get this off my chest so I can 问心无愧 going forward)

I’ve been doing a lot of translating for the CQL/The Untamed fandom lately, and while it continues to baffle me that people seem to enjoy the rambling that comes with it, I do want to talk a bit about what goes through my head whenever I translate, just so people know what parameters I’m constantly juggling when I make these choices

this post is partially a disclaimer and partially a PSA, but if you’ve ever had any questions about the reliability of a translation/translator (it’s me. I’m the unreliable translator.), I encourage you read on!

(it does get long, but you already knew that, coming from me)

Keep reading

Stars of Chaos 杀破狼

Vol 2, Notes 7, pages 339 - 366.

Another eight notes...

The idiom for "too late" in Chinese is 黄花菜都凉了 "The Yellow Lilly (chrysanthemum? Yellow lily?) dish is already cold", which I had to look up.

Apparently, there was a time and place in ancient China where, when the fancy nobles would throw a banquet, they would serve 黄花菜 as the final dish. If you delayed attending so long that the 黄花菜 was already cold, then you had completely missed the banquet. You were too late.

牲口 is, technically, "draught animal" or "beast of burden," but I'm pretty sure what Priest means here is "those cold-blooded war beasts."

top: I think of it as two separate, unrelated, consecutive actions.

bottom: 铁膝飞足, iron knees flying feet, is so easy to read in Chinese. (This is the first time I've ever seen the word "poleyns.")

top: "young and inexperienced" in Chinese here is 初出茅庐, "first time out of the thatched cottage."

初出茅庐 is the coolest little idiom. So, in the Three Kingdoms period, there was a scholar called Zhuge Liang. Liu Bei, leader of the Shu Han, begged Zhuge Liang to become his advisor and, after three visits, Zhuge Liang agreed. This was the first time that Zhuge Liang accepted such an advisory position, and the "first time" that he left his thatched cottage (it was wartime. There was a lot of travel involved with advising a king/warlord).

Anyway, Zhuge Liang was a genius and immediately won a lot of battles through superior strategy.

next: for "dig in his heels before the capital," I feel like that could be more clearly written as "hold the capital."

next: regarding "unsalvageable situation," he's talking about his relationship with the emperor.

last: "No eggs remain when the nest overturns" is a common idiom, 覆巢之下无完卵。 We're all in it together.

"running to the market" 赶集 is a way to describe how things are noisy and busy and people are running back and forth (not bright and merry with people buying gifts for each other).

I think... the indescribable smell is the mix of gunpowder and blood...

If you don't know already, the Origin Myth for Where Humans Come From is that the half-snake goddess Nuwa made humans out of clay :)

I'm not sure why, but in English I thought that one of the Western soldiers was laughing; but in Chinese it's really clear that none of the soldiers are laughing.

Four more...

My DanMei Literary Adventure Masterpost

Stars of Chaos - All Notes Links

杀破狼 Stars of Chaos

My Seven Seas translation live-blog has begun!

(It accompanies my Occasional Yelling Into the Void live-blog of my Chinese re-read of 杀破狼.)

Note #1:

The appendixes are Awesome. Really well done for cultural and world-specific context.

If you don’t know the story yet, I suggest Skipping the Character Guide until at least the end of the first arc (too many spoilers)(just finish the Prologue), and skip the Location Guide (too boring).

Start with the Name Guide on page 434.

People on this website will really see others enjoy the complexity of an epic novel full of political intrigue longer than the entire LOTR trilogy featuring a canon gay couple who literally defy death to end up together and they’ll say “these fetishistic sickos only like the novel over the idol drama censored adaptation because of the existence of those, like four sex scenes and one dub-con kiss”. 

Quick Links

latest state of the hunxi: here

current project: PL translations

masterlists:

linguistic meta

historical/worldbuilding/cultural meta

moment-specific meta

thematic meta

character meta

other links

chaos sideblog / hunxi-after-hours: here

ko-fi: here

please wait outside the one meter line

eat when you need, but don’t waste the food

please don’t bring in any external food

works/construction in progress

sichuan style hot&spicy chicken dish

marinated wheat gluten with peanuts and black fungus

watch your step/be careful not to slip

ethnic park

please contact with our salesperson before trying it on

detection dog/sniffer dog

i can’t say this one is wrong……

if only priest wrote fanfic, i would totally eat it up 🥹

the 7s translators for spl and guardian have mentioned pipi editing the manuscript for physical eng publication before tho! this would explain why there's so much discrepancy between the online pirated version you're reading and the official eng print

https://x[.]com/lily_ocho/status/1560892610570379270

https://x[.]com/yuka_cchii/status/1696468355836764257

AH! Thank you!! That makes sense.

I rather prefer the online pirated version, probably since I lived in that book for, like, ❤️a year❤️, but I guess that makes sense.

I'll slow the complaining in my annotations, I guess. Sigh. Priest, this is all your fault. 🥰

(Is "pipi" = Priest?)

MDZS Vol 3 Annotations, part 1

Here is Part 1 of my annotations of MDZS Volume 3, pages 1-90. I hope it helps improve your reading experience!

(It's mostly cultural annotations and reminders of appropriately-untranslated words, with a few re-translations of really thorny sentences that I admit have no good translation.) (And a few places I re-translated to take out the fanciness. WWX, especially, usually speaks in a very simple, colloquial manner.)

what if i told you that a lot of “Americanized” versions of foods were actually the product of immigrant experiences and are not “bastardized versions”

The Husky and His White Cat ShiZun v1

(English 7Seas version) Notes 2 of 2

Here are more notes from vol.1 of 2Ha!

Let's start it all off with a quick silly note.

In Chapter 1, the translators found a bunch of different words for "dog" - cur, mongrel, etc - whereas in Chinese it all was just phrases with the one word 狗。I thought it was a great translation.

Whereas here in Ch (page 184ish), the translators chose the one word "screw" while in Chinese we had all sorts of different euphemisms conveying various degrees of affection and marital harmony.

It's cute.

Here's another note on Language Use. 师尊/师父 as "Master" vs as "Teacher." Yes, the English term "master" fits as "the person who is very much higher in rank and teaches you stuff," but I feel like the Chinese ShiZun/ShiFu conveys a lot more obligation than "master." It's much closer to "teacher" or "father" than it is to "slave-holder."

(More notes and photos under the cut...)

It's the teacher's duty to make sure that their students are learning well. A teacher's reputation rests entirely upon their students' character and accomplishments. Students are supposed to trust their teacher as they would their own parent, and teachers are supposed to honor and live up to that trust.

Anyway, that's why on page 307 I crossed out "master" and wrote in "teacher," instead. Chu Wanning saw it as his duty to raise Mo Ran right, and if Mo Ran turned out wrong, it must have been Chu Wanning's fault. Yeah.

Anyway, here we are. Volume 1, page 184 - end.