Thank you @three–rings for the thorough and informative posts. I haven’t really read the other translations so it’s fascinating to see the differences of interpretations and word choices and how they affect the reader. I’d like to provide a translator’s point of view on the hardships of conveying tone and interpreting the context.
First and foremost, every translation is a subjective interpretation. My translation follows my own understanding of the original text, of the characters, of the context. That’s one key aspect that makes Chinese so complex to translate, it’s a language that relies heavily on the ability to perceive the contextual clues in order to understand the implicit meaning.
Unlike English which is a more precise language, Chinese commonly expresses with a single word a wide range of meanings that can even be contradictory.
In chapter 111, while Wei Wuxian is begging for mercy during sex, he says “你厉害，你太厉害了”. That’s the line that was translated as “you’re too much, you’re way too much” (ExR) and something along the lines of “you’re good, you’re too good” (chiaki_himura for the google doc) or “you’re amazing, you’re the best” (myself). If you break down the sentence, the literal meaning is “you are 厉害, you are too 厉害”. It’s this word, 厉害, that is the source of divergence between the different translations. Here are the dictionary definitions given by MDBG:
So nine meanings and one noticeably different than the others. It’s not like there is a consensus either, Fanyi Baidu doesn’t even have that last one:
In a vacuum, these are all valid translations of the word. If you had only “你厉害” to go by, you could understand it as “you’re merciless/harsh/unbearable/great”. That’s why when someone asks for help to translate a bit of Chinese, the first question that’s going to be raised is “What’s the context?” The ability to understand the context is something that is honed by practising the language and can’t be obtained from a glance at a dictionary. 厉害 is used fundamentally to convey a high degree of intensity. It can be negative if it’s about a person’s temperament or positive if it’s related to their skills. The positive meaning is also more frequent in everyday and colloquial speech, you can exclaim “厉害!” or “Awesome!” in praise of something or someone.
To me, it was in that positive sense that Wei Wuxian used the word within the context of that scene. He also used that same word a bit earlier when he was waxing lyrical about Lan Wangji, “How can such a gorgeous beauty play the guqin so well, have such proper penmanship, possess such strong spiritual energy, be endowed with such high cultivation base and even be so 厉害 in bed?”. That one is pretty much unambiguous. There’s other instances of the word like for example in chapter 38 where it’s Lan Jingyi proclaiming that Hanguang-Jun is amazing. Hence my choice of translation.
Chinese language permits to use words in parsimony. Dropping the subject or the verb in a sentence is commonly done without that affecting the comprehension because it’s understandable from the context.
In writing, you can make oblique references and not expound on the action of who does what exactly. In chapter 111, Lan Wangji muffles Wei Wuxian to stop his teasing. It was alternatively translated as a kiss or a hand covering his mouth or left vague. The original Chinese is just that, he “blocked his mouth”. (The audio drama makes it a kiss.)
Similarly, in the Taiwan extra, Wei Wuxian taunts Lan Wangji into using the silencing spell on him to prevent him from being overly rowdy during their nighttime activities. Lan Wangji then “seals” his mouth. As I was reading it for the first time, I thought that he did use the silencing spell but no, Wei Wuxian starts rambling again less than a paragraph later. I had missed the contextual clues that Lan Wangji had leant towards Wei Wuxian to seal his mouth, meaning that he had shut him up with a kiss again.
I’m fairly certain that this kind of bare-bones and oblique descriptions wouldn’t be ambiguous to the average Chinese reader with the intuitive linguistic and cultural awareness that can only be ingrained through immersion. (I’m leaving aside cases of more figurative descriptions that are subject to interpretation) When translating in English, you would feel the need to overtranslate for the sake of clarity.
Tone not being conveyed properly and leading to misinterpretations is something that’s been bothering me… Not only the playful banter from the sex scenes but also some forms of speech with sarcasm or rhetorical questions that I see taken at face value. For example, at one point, Wen Ning addresses Jin Ling by his courtesy name, Jin Rulan. Jin Ling snubs him and asks “Who’s that?’. He’s being scornful, he does know that it’s his own name but refuses to answer it. (Because it sounds too sissy according to MXTX. Yes, that’s from the boy who named his dog Fairy. Though he probably also has complicated feelings over this courtesy name because of the person who chose it)
I try to pay special attention to the speech of the characters when I translate. Wei Wuxian is this voluble talker who frequently uses in Chinese sentence-final particles when he speaks. (Lan Wangji pretty much never does) These are Chinese characters that don’t carry actual meanings but are used to express the speaker’s attitude and to nuance to what is stated. Some are used for emphasis, to make a statement obvious, to soften what is said, etc… They’re often left untranslated in English because there is seldom an equivalent so some information on the speaker’s intent ends up being lost.
These definitions don’t even cover the whole range of expressiveness that can be conveyed with these particles, they’re very versatile. When Wei Wuxian goes “Lan Zhan a”, it sounds much more enthusiastic than a normal “Lan Zhan”. Or surprised or flustered depending on the context.
Finally, I’d also like to mention that there are clues in the bath scene in chapter 95 that Lan Wangji sobered up before the heavy petting. His speech pattern is different when drunk. But that’s perhaps a discussion for another day. The audio drama also makes it clearer with the tone of his voice. I really can’t recommend enough the audio drama, the voice acting adds so much to the comprehension of the original text with the intonations used. (Even though the audio drama isn’t explicit, you can tell that Wei Wuxian is unabashedly teasing and is having the time of his life during their first time together…)
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