二哈和他的白猫师尊 The Husky And His White Cat ShiZun

Stars of Chaos 杀破狼

Volume 3, Notes 3/5, Pages 152 - 265

Cute trivia: in the online novel, this entire paragraph is One Sentence. 9 commas. No semi-colons.

This is (part of the reason) why it takes me 3-12 months to read a single Priest novel.

In case you don't already know, there is a lovely story about an emperor who had a male lover who fell asleep on the long, voluminous sleeve of his robe; and rather than wake the lover, the emperor just cut off his sleeve so that he could go work without bothering his sweetie. And now 断袖 "cut sleeve" is another word for "homosexual man."

I love the idiom for this situation: 投鼠忌器 "throw" "mouse" "afraid" "devices," or "afraid to throw anything at the mouse for fear of breaking the vases."

So, 蹂躏 does translate as "violated," but it also translates as "savaged" or "trampled," both of which I think fit here better.

Here, 完蛋 a little more vulgar than I like to think of it. I'm pretty sure this is a phrase you can use around elementary school kids. It means "to be done for," like "Uh oh. We've been caught."

Top: "Bat out of hell" in Chinese is 赶投胎似的 = like he's rushing to be reincarnated. (I find Western theology- based idioms disconcerting in Daoist/Buddhist- based novels. I understand that they convey the meaning most accurately, but it still weirds me out.)

Bottom: So cute! They are using food-based euphemisms. The Chinese for "eat his fill" is 吃了顿荤的 = "eat a meal with meat" ¬‿¬. And then they break the metaphor with "ended up in the wrong position" (on bottom instead of on top). And then return to the food euphemism with "nearly choked to death." Cute, yah?

xiansheng 先生 = "Teacher", in this context.

I added a （1) and a (2) because I started getting confused.

I also added unnecessary Chinese on "If you're so smart", that it started out (in the online version, anyway), as "你有注意" "If you have ideas,..."

OMG. If you go to a robust Chinese dictionary and search for the Chinese translation for "me," you will get SO MANY WORDS back.

One of those many words is 孤, which was used by feudal princes for a time? And 孤 usually means "lonely" or "solitary."

He climbed on Gu Yun's shoulder. 肩膀。

Either way, he's being carried around by Gu Yun and leaving drool marks on Gu Yun's shoulder <3

My DanMei Literary Adventure Masterpost

Stars of Chaos - All Notes Links

MDZS Vol 5 Annotations 4

Part 4 of 6, pages 193 - 267

We are now in the Extras!

I’m just here to provide a little bit of cultural clarification (ex: what it means for a gentleman to use his mouth and not his hands, and No it’s not a scandalous sexy allusion) and context (not all cabbages are just cabbages). And maybe complain about the occasional word choice and commiserate over how hard it is to translate sentence structure (Chinese feels much more flexible to me than English).

I remember back in the Firefly days, when I had to tell an acquaintance that “Mei Mei” did not mean “sweetheart” and maybe don’t call her boyfriend that. Not in public, anyway.

More under the cut.

For more about cabbages and pigs: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/好白菜都讓豬拱了

Yes, you can find places where 面面相觑 translates as “dismay,” but it’s more like “I look at you, you look at me, both of our expressions are blank and helpless (and surprised):” “What is going on with our HGJ?” “I don’t know. Do you hear anything?” “No. You?” “No. Wha?”

I don’t know. Maybe it’s the long-leaved orchids portrayed in so many Chinese paintings; maybe it’s another plant that goes by a similar name. An image search of 兰草 in Chinese is only moderately helpful. Fill in your own best background flora.

Xue Yang is definitely at least a full-height teenager by this time.

MDZS Masterlist.

All the Books I'm Annotating Masterlist.

The tiniest WangXian doodle.

the thing you need to realize about localization is that japanese and english are such vastly different languages that a straight translation is always going to be worse than the original script. nuance is going to be lost and, if you give a shit about your job, you should fill the gaps left with equivalent nuance in english. take ff6, my personal favorite localization of all time: in the original japanese cefca was memorable primarily for his manic, childish speaking style - but since english speaking styles arent nearly as expressive, woolsey adapted that by making the localized english kefka much more prone to making outright jokes. cefca/kefka is beloved in both regions as a result - hell, hes even more popular here

"More missing text!"

"Why are there extra sentences in the English version?"

there's a very simple explanation here called "pipi likes to edit" 😅

｡ﾟヽ(ﾟ´Д｀)ﾉﾟ｡ Why?!? Why?!?!!

MDZS Vol 2 Annotations, part 5

Here is Part 5 of my annotations of MDZS Volume 2, pages 280 - 318.

病案本。Case File Compendium. 😢😢😭😭😭😭😭

There are still 60-some chapters left. Meatbun can’t just do this to her characters and then just… just… lead the crying fest for 60+ chapters, right? It has to get better eventually, right?

Right?!?

😭

My new favorite passage describing a character is from ch 337 of 2Ha, describing Jiang Xi:

他的打扮永远让人觉得他在说：“我很有钱，欢迎来抢”，但是没有人抢得了他。

His style of dressing always led people to feel he was saying, “I am very rich. You are welcome to rob me,” but no was ever able to rob him.

他那张俊脸上好像也写着：“想睡我吗，我知道你想”，但没有人能睡得了他。

That handsome face of his also seemed to announce “You want to sleep with me. I know you want to,” but no one was ever able to sleep with him.

(Translations are mine. You can tell because they are very bad and don’t convey just how clever this passage is. Translating is hard!)

Wei Wuxian | Ep.11