xah
Posts : 944 Join date : 2012-08-28 Location : Down South
| Subject: OFFICIAL COMMENT THREAD Sat Dec 19, 2015 6:26 pm | |
| Although you're allowed to post/reply to each chapter's forum thread (like other novels), this thread is the official comment thread. It will be used mainly for reviews and/or questions and other discussions. You must log in to post (register first). If your comments reveal far too many spoilers, you can enclose them in "hide" or "spoiler" tags. - Code:
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[spoiler]anyone can see the text as long as they click on it...[/spoiler] As usual, my comments are in the hide tags, so you can only see it if you ever reply to this post. They are quite entertaining (is what I like to think) and they're quite a different perspective. I'm open to discussing about events here (though if it's just a one-off event, it might be better replying to that chapter...). Review: - Quote :
- A rant about Bai Pingting.
- Spoiler:
As I have said many times before, you either really hate...get incredibly frustrated at...Chu Beijie or Bai Pingting. If you don't, at first impulse, then you have my admiration. Most of the characters in this novel are frustrated at Chu Beijie? Me, I'm terribly despise...frustrated at Bai Pingting. She is really annoying – I’ve always thought that. She thinks too highly of herself and makes herself seem pretentious, superficial, fake whatever. Even if you’re intelligent, it does not give you a reason to put your hatred in the wrong things. She doesn’t try to make things clear either, so everyone has to try and guess what she’s thinking, then hating someone if they can’t keep up. AND SHE DOESN’T THINK SHE’S WRONG!? YET, she still has so many friends, so many people who like her. Wtf?? Moral of the story, don’t become someone like Bai Pingting (well, maybe if you want to, but I probably wouldn’t want to be friends like you.) Reading about her story really makes me feel 憋气 (bieqi). It actually means “to feel suffocated” or “choke with resentment”, and literally translated, it means, “to hold back anger”. I feel all three definitions when reading about her and about comments about her. She is my least favourite character in this (I absolutely detest her). I feel really sorry for the people who like her or are close to her. Chu Beijie. He Xia. Zuiju. Hongqian. etc. Thanks to her crappy self-pity and utterly spoilt pride, they all end up suffering. Finally, I really think the author tried to justify her actions too much, literally going all wisecrack. How terrific. In general, I felt really sorry for Chu Beijie. Well, what can you do about men? I really just thought that Bai Pingting overestimated him too much (It's like humanly impossible...) He was already nice enough to love her despite his anger over his nephews... So now I wonder, are all heroines of Chinese novels like this? A painful wretch who seeks to bring pain to others, thinking that she was the only one suffering? As well as being the most perfect person in almost every possible aspect? I know that Koizumi of The Little Witch’s Sure-fire Techniques was like that all right. And are the guys they like always like this? Forgiving and forgiving and forgiving again? Letting her be as spoilt as she wants? Anyone disagree with me, anyone really disagree? I did bottle up my hatred to deliver the best possible translation I could do without being biased. My loss of innocence... I guess I can't hate her as much as I want as a translator, but my frustration does exist.
The other characters
- Spoiler:
This is the book were the meat of the plot begins to unfold. The main supporting characters (as well as some reoccurring ones) have been introduced! Chu Beijie - I didn't particularly like him at first (sorry, not my type!), but he was reeeeeallly nice in this one, so I couldn't really hate him. He was so sweet and totally bent to her will even if he had to swallow his pride. I know my mother would love this kind of guy... I think we all do? He Xia - Ah, bitter. If you like reading between the lines, you'd probably noticed that he never really grew up. He was kinda driven crazy by Chu Beijie and Pingting (by their relationship, Chu Beijie's tactics which drove him out of Gui Le, constantly being compared to them) so he is a bitterly tragic villain. He...was quite a nice guy though. Princess Yaotian - She dearly loves He Xia, but he deceives her so much. She isn't too bad of a person, but I guess you could say she fell in love for the worst guy possible. :( Gui Changqing - I praise all people who called him an old geezer! This damn old man, how daaaare you send so many people to kill my cute Pingting and Zuiju! So damn annoying! Though, he is a good official in general. Yangfeng & Ze Yin - Apart from the fact that they're a cute married couple, I don't really have an opinion. The King and Queen of Dong Lin - This was so tragic. Awww, Chu Beijie's brother, the King died. I like their final conversation and how he died with smile as well as how he left the throne to the Queen (even though she doesn't actually have the blood of the Royal House). Makes you think. Zuiju - The sharp-tongued doctor / maid. I like how she is pretty smart, but I dislike how she always seems stupid with Bai Pingting. Can't do anything about that. She is still so cute! So much more sensible than Bai Pingting herself sometimes! I feel like her journey with Pingting through the Songsen Mountains were GL fanservice. But oh well. Fanlu - I thought he would be a minor character / obstacle, but meh seems like I was wrong. He is such a pushover, and if this were heavy smut, he'd probably be the maniac who likes rape. Pfft, I kinda like his interactions with Zuiju (and his cold smirk and nonchalant expressions). Ruohan & Sen Rong - I thought these would be passerby characters, didn't think they'd appear again! Not that I really have an opinion about them...(I kinda ship them though! If BL couples could appear...) The King of Gui Le, He Su - Um, gosh, why do you like Bai Pingting!? I really wanna throw rocks at you... The Queen of Gui Le & the Le Family - I liked translating her insults. But she is so uncreative. Whelp, she's a bit of a weird. The Le Family is a bunch of plotters. I can't really do anything about them... Dongzhuo - Awww, he had a kinda special relationship with Pingting and his opinions weren't worth much in this at all. I imagine him to be kinda cute... Moran - I thought he'd end up with Zuiju when she was first introduced, but it seems like I was wrong. He doesn't really appear for a lot of this volume (I haven't really checked the rest). A-Han - Ah! I loved this!! I loved this so much, how the author brought him back in! You'd think he was just a passerby, but no! So cool! Anyway, that's my share of the characters, which characters did you like best?
Plot and Other Comments
- Spoiler:
I feel like I've already mentioned tons in the previous posts, but I'll say stuff again. There were so many different parties in this. All of them talked about Bai Pingting like usual. That annoyed me so much, but what can I do? I liked the flow, it wasn't too bad, though there were lots and lots of time skips as well as many narratives. 7/10. That's it. Haha. (got too frustrated pfft)
Translation Comments (pretty technical stuff)
- Spoiler:
In general, the writing style varied a bit. I felt like conversation in the royal or secluded residences were more refined than general speech. Book 03 gave me that impression. Later books 04-05 were a little less refined probably because of more comedic moments. Overall, the style of this volume is 120% more refined than the first. No longer lighthearted, it's dark. Even though I've been translating for several years, I have great difficulty whether to translate literally or metaphorically. I generally like to translate literally its metaphoric meaning, if that makes any sense. However, Gu Fang plays a lot of puns on both literal and metaphorical meanings, resulting in great difficulty trying to bring it into English. I generally try to strike a balance, but this may result in some of the detail being lost. The reason why one shouldn't learn Chinese(original language)/English(target language) from translations is because there's two parts to translation. The first part is understand the text in its original language and this entails having an understanding of the author's intention, writing style (the deeper ones like allusion, puns) and then the second part is trying to convey all of that into the target language. It's the creative bit where you have to pick out the right words. I do think Gu Fang requires more skill in the second part because of its particularly atmosphere, again, causing detail of the first part to be lost. Buuut....at least I have my proofreader to help out with this. Speaking of words, there's something else that's terrifyingly hard to do. Even though Chinese has tons and tons and tons of characters, and if you string them together, you can get tons and tons and tons of "words", phrases, idioms etc, only a few simple words make up a text. For example, "smile" and "laugh" ("smirk", "grin") are the same character in Chinese. Unless there are other clues, e.g. "ahaha", then perhaps it was referring to a laugh or "slant" may convey a "smirk". You could say...there are very few synonyms in Chinese. This makes it quite difficult to convey mood in English, because connotations of synonyms really help to establish atmosphere. I have a lot of trouble there. Otherwise, it seems my translation speed isn't too bad. I can comfortably translate 5000 words in four hours, and I can do about 12 hours per day as long as I have the time. Well, the quality, spelling and grammar might be crap hahaha. I'm very lazy however and would rather be translation officially so releases aren't going to be any faster... Ah, there's also something I wanted to put in my translation notes, but then thought better of it. It's about: How I translate Chinese names. The general format is "[last name] [first name]". I always try to group them so that the last name and first name as separate, so like “Bai Pingting” instead of “Bai Ping Ting”. Why do I not swap the two around, so that it is 'more English'. I'd say it's more habit than anything, because that's how they address people in both Japanese and Chinese, so after years of translating, even if I didn't like it that way at first, now I have to have it that way. However, a lot of the surnames in this novel aren’t real ones, so it can be quite hard to differentiate which characters even have one or not. Assuming proper main-minor character development, usually minor characters will not have last names, resulting in names like “Yangfeng”, "Hongqian", "Zuiju" (first name only). All three examples are compound names, indicating that they are at least higher-ranking than most in their respective fields. In other words, I don't think I've translated their names wrong at all. However, for compound names, I also take into consideration whether it will actually look good in English, for example, “Ze Yin” looks better than “Zeyin” to me. This is because there will be a tendency to pronounce his name as “zay-in”, which isn’t quite right. "He Xia" is the same ("Hexia" looks like "hex-c-ah"). At the same time, although I don’t quite like the look of “Moran” (“morrahn” is wrong, in fact "mo-runn" might be closest), but “Mo Ran” looks even more like a someone called “Mo” who ran. It’s a difficult balance. Even if you look at my own name "Ai Ling", I would not want to put it as "Ailing" or someone would be thinking, "ahh...she must be so sickly ('ailing') that her mother named her that". Also, this is something I could put in to the pdfs, but decided against it. Again, naming patterns. It is very common for parents to name their child with the same first character, and change the second, for example, "He Xia" and "He Su". Or, "Ze Yin" and "Ze Qing". As you can see, these people are all related by some sort of familial tie. This is still very common in Chinese today (for example, look at my dad, "Dian Hui" and his other 7(???) brothers that are something like "Dian Bing", "Dian Gao", "Dian Qi" etc etc. I think my grandpa was also a "Dian something"). It's just family ties huh. I didn't get the same sort of thing, but you sure get a lot who call their children similar names.... how unimaginative
Finally, I've re-attempted asking the author for permission to translate. I tried contacting the publisher before and was ignored about a year or two ago, but it seems that the author had gotten weibo sometime between then. So now she's reachable online. While there's a chance of success, there is a very high chance of failure. In the case that the author despises the thought of translations, I will have to pack up everything and disappear. You can't blame me however, nor can you do anything to keep the stuff uploaded, because it has always been in the copyright notices of the pdfs. Though maybe I'll just pretend to hate the author and translate the work anyway.
By the way, it seems indeed that there will be a drama after all. ? ? ? !!! Well, since I've translated it all, and I plan to do the doujins, I might as well do the drama when it comes out. I have no experience with subbing or anything, and I'd probably be stealing off the plate of drama subbers, but whatever! I know the story best (I think anyway). Well, I'll do it, as long as it doesn't backfire on me.
That's it! Longest review I've ever written! (Gosh, I'm shrugging too much!!) Now that I'm done with my review, what did everyone else think of it? I sell plenty of tissues and tables for people to flip over at a very cheap price of your soul! Kidding, but feel free to take them if you need it! |
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krimson
Posts : 1 Join date : 2016-02-10
| Subject: I waited so long for an update on this novel ! Fri Feb 12, 2016 3:11 am | |
| I actually thought it literally ended in volume 1 Never knowing if Chu Biejie actually found out about what really happened to his nephews. Oh and btw, I don't hate nor get annoyed with Pingting. I actually like her strong will. Beside, if she was some meek little girl who cries and wait for Biejie to love her, then I would've hated her :P The male love her because of her intellect and her backbone. I like her exactly because of that. And yes it may get frustrating at times where those two should make up already. You have to think, the story would then end and there wouldn't be 5 volumes :P Beside, how can you like how Biejie was treating her before she used her intellect to burst his bubble of thinking that he can treat her however he likes. Women need backbones to survive that type of torment ! And I feel proud of her for testing his resolve. If he continue to ignore her and she dies, then he completely deserve to feel miserable. As for the waiting on him on his birthday. You have to think, she would've got taken away nevertheless. She was just hoping he does come back like he promised then she wouldn't be miserable and unloved before she gets taken away.
In all this. I don't see a fault in Pingting, what could she had done differently? Told him about the baby so he doesn't leave? Then she sounds clingy. She already left everything behind, her friends, her home and the one person who took her in when she was young for Biejie in volume 1. What has all the others done?
Oh and yeh, Chinese are full of puns and play of words. I think that's what makes historical novels/shows hard to translate, e.g in chinese historical shows that haves poems and play of words tend to be left blank in the english sub cause it only makes sense in chinese but in english its like huh? that doesn't rhyme.... and then their titles are tend to be strange, call them uncle but technically they ain't related... its like wha ? XD I love watching Chinese drama about scholars but I feel sad that I can't understand most of the play of words they use :( |
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