Stars Of Chaos 杀破狼

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.

Tags

stars of chaos sha po lang seven seas notes priest annotations book annotations translations

The Husky and His White Cat ShiZun, volume TWO 2 二

(The one with the very pale cover)

(English 7Seas version) Notes 4 of 4

Pages 366-end

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

(Dude! Xianxia world! You can’t turn lights on and off - you have to light them or put them out! 😝)

More under the cut.

Back to the Masterlist.

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weishenmewwx

9 months ago

皮皮/pipi is one of priest's nicknames!

having a preference is totally understandable! i just think it's maybe a little unreasonable to accuse the 7s translators of missing/deleting sentences/paragraphs when they've stated upfront that the manuscripts that they're working from are different from what's been posted online. after all, it's not like they can go and arbitrarily add in the stuff that pipi deemed extraneous enough to delete while polishing her manuscript. 😅

I will fix my typed-annotations right now. Thank you!

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weishenmewwx

4 years ago

So during my second time watching Jiang Cheng walk across what I now know is a random mountain to meet Wen Qing, all I could think about was Wei Wuxian, Wen Qing, and Wen Ning’s plan and the fact that they must have been following him, like:

Wen Qing: should he really be walking across that field?

Wei Wuxian: I don’t know, I thought he would follow the path

Wen Ning: should we stop it now so he doesn’t trip and fall?

Wei Wuxian: naw let’s wait a bit, he needs to think it’s difficult

Wen Ning: is this a good place? can I ring the gong now?

Wei Wuxian: I think it’s good. wen qing?

Wen Qing: yeah yeah it’s fine. ring the stupid gong - I’ll lead him to a better spot

Wen Qing: I’m not going to wear the hat

Wei Wuxian: c’mon, you need to wear the hat

Wen Ning: yeah, wear the hat, a-jie

Wen Qing: he’s wearing a blindfold! he won’t be able to see my face anyway

Wei Wuxian: but what if he takes off the blindfold? what then, hmm? the hat is key

Wen Ning: yeah a-jie, the hat is key

Wen Qing: uuuuugh fine I’ll wear the hat

2K notes View Post

weishenmewwx

2 years ago

MDZS Vol 2 Annotations, part 1

I finished annotating my copy of MDZS, Volume 2!

First off, I think the translations are perfectly wonderful and I am forever grateful that Seven Seas has given us the ability to share this story with a wider group of friends. With that, I went into Vol 2 trying to pretend that I did not speak Chinese, had little to no knowledge of Chinese culture.

Any time I saw something that didn't flow well to my North American brain or that didn't feel like what I remembered feeling when I read the Chinese version, I made a note. I love this story, and I don't expect my non-Chinese friends to remember the 5+ different things that Lan Xichen is called, or what in the world "shishu" is, so I made a lot of notes. Here they are:

MDZS Vol 2, Annotations Part 1, pages 1 - 86 (I tried to include the page number in each photo).