you can see why wen qing has such a large older sister complex, just think about the few times we see her leave wen ning alone in the show and what he does:
This moment always gets me cause Wei Wuxian has these two men who would literally go to fucking war for him against the entire cultivation world if he simply asked them to THE POWER HE POSSESSES..
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù, 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Mò Xuányǔ/Xuē Yáng | Xuē Chéngměi, Mò Xuányǔ/Wēn Níng | Wēn Qiónglín, Mò Xuányǔ/Wēn Níng | Wēn Qiónglín/Xuē Yáng | Xuē Chéngměi, Wēn Níng | Wēn Qiónglín/Xuē Yáng | Xuē Chéngměi
Characters: Mò Xuányǔ, Wēn Níng | Wēn Qiónglín, Xuē Yáng | Xuē Chéngměi
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, xy mxy and wn living together in yi city bcs i said so, Valentine’s Day, like not really but also this is a valentines fic, Wēn Níng | Wēn Qiónglín Deserves Happiness, Wēn Níng | Wēn Qiónglín Deserves Love, Valentine’s Day Fluff, Gift Giving
Series: Part 2 of set the fire and let it burn
Summary:
Xue Yang helps Mo Xuanyu pick out a gift for Wen Ning
A wild Wen Ning appears: MDZS translation & voice recording challenge
Welcome to another installment of the MDZS translation and/or voice recording challenge series!
Today we are taking a dive into descriptive language with Wen Ning's first appearance in the novel. This challenge was originally proposed by @fwoopersongs over a discord chat. Many thanks for the suggestion!
See text below. There are no differences between the simplified and traditional versions for this paragraph.
Previous installments can be found in my pinned post. These challenges are always ongoing, so feel free to jump in at any point with your own entry. You are welcome to do this one - either the translation, the voice recording, or both!
For this challenge, I'll start off with my entry, which is under the cut with notes!
Running concurrently on Twitter.
My voice recording: On Vocaroo here
My translation:
He had a pale face with delicate features, which contained a kind of striking melancholy beauty. But because his bloodless white eyes had no pupils, and black cracks crawled up from his neck to his cheek, this melancholy beauty had taken on a terrifying, desolate cast. His wrists, peeking out from under the ragged, shredded cuffs of his robe, had the same deathly pallor as his face. Pitch-black iron manacles encircled his wrists as well as his ankles. It turned out that the ding-dang clanking sound had been him dragging his chains around.
He stilled, and everything fell into a deathly silence.
My translation notes (using traditional text):
清秀 for "delicate features"
清秀 is used to describe a "fresh beauty", and for boys, a "more feminine" or "softer" features, according to what I looked up. In the text it reads more literally as "he had a pale, delicately/softly/femininely beautiful face," which also works, but I added "features" to indicate we were still talking about his face while improving the flow.
(Refs: baike baidu | zhidao baidu with focus on boys).
tl;dr Wen Ning is attractive
俊逸 for "striking"
俊逸 seems to be a pretty archaic term, but everything I got was that it talks about an "unusual/outstanding" attractiveness. I chose "striking" as it seemed to fit best in English. This phrase also comes with ~vibes~ of being naturally talented and easygoing, but given the context, I chose not to include that here.
(Ref 1 | Ref 2 | Ref 3)
陰鬱 for "desolate cast"
This term literally translates to "gloomy," but that felt like I was describing the clouds or someone's mood, not someone's appearance. I added "cast" to specify that it was referring to appearance and to emphasize the transformation.
長袍的衣擺和袖口破碎襤褸 for "the ragged, shredded cuffs of his robe"
This translates more literally to "shattered hems and cuffs of his robe". I changed "shattered" (破碎) to "shredded" so that it applied more specifically to clothing. Additionally, I chose to use "cuffs" (袖口) only, instead of "hems (衣擺) and cuffs (袖口)", as hems refer to the bottom of the robe, and the following part of the sentence is only talking about his wrists, which would involve cuffs.
長袍的衣擺和袖口破碎襤褸,露出和臉慘白成一個顏色的手腕 for "His wrists, peeking out from under the ragged, shredded cuffs of his robe, had the same deathly pallor as his face. "
I rearranged this sentence for flow. In literal sentence construction, it says, "The shattered hems and cuffs of his robe exposed his wrists, which had the same deathly pallor as his face." This read very awkwardly to me, so I condensed it a little.
一旦靜止,一切又都歸於死寂。: "He stilled, and everything fell into a deathly silence."
There is no paragraph break in the text, but I made an editorial decision to add it and emphasize how the entire atmosphere shifted.