The Husky And His White Cat ShiZun, Volume TWO 2 二

Links are updated!

I finally connected and updated links between my Notes pages for Stars of Chaos!

Stars of Chaos - All The Notes List

All The Seven Seas Books Masterlist

I hope you enjoy them and find them useful.

And let me know if anyone wants an Audio Guide to the names, like I did for Erha.

:)

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.

There was a young man from Peru

Whose limericks stopped at line two

I recently started keeping a list of all the ways I hear/read Chinese people say "death / dying". This has got to be the most artistic rendition of that question that I have seen to date :)

Chinese 🤦🏻‍♀️

Just this once, I wish they had not simplified a character. I keep mixing up the words for “old friend” vs “enemy”.

Like, really? One stroke difference?

Friends are old 古 but you want to…lick your enemy 舌?

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”

And here are the deleted scenes from Your Name Engraved Herein, with English subs!

https://youtu.be/djLcuhiZHd0

So, in Chinese, idioms are often allusions to historical events or short metaphors to vividly describe a situation. They pack a ton of meaning and imagery into 4 little words. They’re awesome. They add color and depth to the language, and show that the speaker/writer is highly educated.

So, in Chinese, using idioms makes you sound very smart.

In English, using idioms does not make you sound very smart. It may make you sound cute and funny and colloquial, and in the right context it can work very well, but when you hear, say, “let the cat out of the bag,” you don’t think “Wow. That person is such an intellectual.”

Admittedly, some idioms are relatively culture-neutral, like “call it a day” or “read the room” or “see the light.” I’d say that those are fine to use in translations. They don’t evoke cowboys or baseball players or midwestern farmers or anything else unique to English-speaking culture like that.

However, I feel that culture-heavy English/American idioms should be avoided in translations, especially of Chinese wuxia/xianxia novels. No one in XianXia-land knows American boxing — why the heck would someone be “down for the count?” Sword Cultivators don’t hang out a lot with fowl farmers — where would they have picked up the usage of “gander” as slang for “to look?”

Idioms are hard. Be careful.

I found some useful information (and a lot of similarly-obsessed fans) about Your Name Engraved Herein on this Reddit page. In case you want just a little more content, a little bit of analysis, here it is!

https://www.reddit.com/r/boyslove/comments/kjk1ga/seven_secrets_you_need_to_know_about_your_name/