Lan Zhan Going From 😠 To 😊 When Around Wei Ying.

(insp)

There was a young man from Peru

Whose limericks stopped at line two

Stars of Chaos 杀破狼

by Priest, translated by Seven Seas

Notes & Annotations List (by me)

I am truly impressed that Seven Seas had this translated. Major kudos to the translators. Maybe it’s just me and my not-advanced Chinese reading level, but I find the writing style of Stars/Priest-in-general to be extremely …. Juicy. Rich. Savory: if there is a 4-word phrase concisely describing something elaborately and with deep historical context, Priest will use that phrase. If Priest can refer to Character A in a manner that immediately conveys Character B's feelings and emotions about that Character A, she will use that reference style instead of any simple name or pronoun.

Sadly, none of those idioms or reference styles translate well into English.

For me, reading Priest in Chinese is like reading an epic story off a wall mural in an ancient temple, but add jewels and engravings and some filigree in precious metals, and maybe leave some imperial armor and weapons lying around to trip over while trying to decipher some crazy-long sentence punctuated only with commas, no periods or semicolons or even long dashes in sight. It's amazing, but sometimes exhausting, and especially exhausting if I finally puzzle my way through a truly difficult passage only to realize "Ah. Chang Geng is theorizing about the potential short vs long-term consequences of different types of monetary policy. Sarcastically."

Anyway, here are some notes. A few are literal translations that you would have gotten two sentences later; a few are of wordplay that I really enjoyed but which didn't survive translation. A fair number are translations that you could have looked up in the glossary, but, really, who wants to spend their time looking up "shifu" vs "shishu" for a minor unnamed character?

The more important notes are fun cultural references, and some really tricky translations that I tripped over so badly that I had to go back to the original and figure out how to explain in English.

(After reading Vol 2:) AND it looks like Priest edited and changed her work just a little bit for print translation, but I love her (pirated) online version so much that I really really want you to know what I read and how much I love it. So I added a few sentence back in.

Volume 1 (Volumes 2 and 3 and 4 below the cut)

Notes 1, pages 12 - 81

Notes 2, pages 86 - 146

Notes 3, pages 148 - 202

Notes 4, pages 203 - 245

Notes 5, pages 249 - 281

Notes 6, pages 288 - 414

Notes 7, pages 415 - end

Volume 2

Notes 1, pages 21 - 46

Notes 2, pages 48 - 62

Notes 3, pages 63 - 87

Notes 4, pages 90 - 144

Notes 5, pages 153 - 237

Notes 6, pages 263 - 333

Notes 7, pages 339 - 366

Notes 8, pages 370 - end

Volume 3

Notes 1, pages 1 - 84

Notes 2, pages 97 - 151

Notes 3, pages 152 - 265

Notes 4, pages 267 - 350

Notes 5, pages 358 - end

Volume 4

Only 24 notes for the entire book! All right here :)

Back to the Masterlist of all the books I'm making notes on.

“I named this cat Lan Zhan. Why? Because...whenever I say to him ‘Lan Zhan, it’s haishi*.’”

*haishi (亥时) - between 9pm and 11pm

(douyin)

A music box cover of Saye / Run Wild (撒野) by 凱瑟喵, theme song of the novel of the same name

It’s accurate.

Watching Guardian like:

I know. I already made one like that.

But it's funny.

Who does this picture belong to, please? I found it in my early MDZS searches, and it’s brought me joy every day so far 🥰

Congratulations to WYB for being Chanel brand ambassador, a long time collaboration. It is, as it should be.

Cr: 星川的绿

The Husky and His White Cat ShiZun v1

(English 7Seas version) Notes 1 of 2

I finished book 1 of the Seven Seas' 2Ha! (Pronounced "er-ha" or "R-Ha", for those of you who don't actually speak Chinese ;p)

It was great. The translation is smooth and easy to read, and I feel like it conveys the story really well.

As I prepare to hand this book over to my non-Chinese friends, I do have a few notes.

(Audio recordings and book-note images under the cut)

1 ) Go ahead and skim through the Name Guide, Pronunciation Guide, and Glossary. In addition, here are how the names are supposed to sound:

2) Next! Book images for Pages 1-182.

So, I think the translators did a great job on this.

Even so, there are a few places where I think my background may differ from that of the translators, so the tone of a word or phrase felt wrong to me even though it was technically correct.

And I like how they kept the Chinese for a lot of words that don't translate well, but they didn't always put footnotes for those words or names, so I penciled a few in.

I hope this makes your reading experience even more enjoyable!

So, a rant and a request for advice before I begin my dreadfully important hunt/research:

I’ve been loving the WeComics app, originally for reading Mo Dao Zu Shi in English (before I improved and trusted my Chinese), then for a bunch of other Chinese and translated-from-Chinese manhua. I’ve barely been on tumblr recently because I’ve been head-over-heels in love with 化龙记.

And then I noticed that 化龙记 is also in English on the app as “Tale of Dragon Morph”, so I open it up and, Lo and Behold, there is more/new chapter-header art! And so many more panels that help explain the flow of the plot — it makes sense now!

But as I read the English version, I notice that it’s Missing Scenes. Useful, important scenes that help with Character Development and Logical Flow.

What’s up with these manhua? Why are there different missing scenes in each language? Is it just WeComics?

Is there a manhua app out there that is Complete?!?!?

Help!!!

—————————-

Grumpy follow-up: WeComics is being taken over by WebNovel, which doesn’t appear to have Any manhua at All 😠.

And KuaiKanManHua is typically censored. No cute images of one character washing another’s back, no super-useful panels showing how the protagonist escapes his lecherous captor’s bedroom. Nope.

Sigh. I will keep searching.