I’m not sure if you’ve already been asked this or if this has already been discussed somewhere else. But I absolutely refused to believe that in CQL that Wei Wuxian calls Lan Wangji a “fuddy-duddy”. Please tell me Netflix is just terrible at translating
ah, okay, so fuddy-duddy isn’t actually the worst translation. It’s not inaccurate! Wei Wuxian is using the term 古板.
古板 | gǔ bǎn is literally “old, classic, ancient”; “board”, but it means to be old-fashioned, inflexible, stuffy, etc. fuddy-duddy does mean that! Unfortunately, this is a case where word choice makes a huge difference, and I think fuddy-duddy fails because a) it sounds absurd, and b) almost no one uses it in English.
I’ve spent some time thinking about how I would translate it, and I haven’t decided yet, but I’m leaning towards “stick-in-the-mud”. (Because stick and board!! it’s like a slant pun! that’s fun right? :D)
ON THE SUBJECT OF THE NETFLIX SUBS THOUGH. I uh. hate them. That’s my final take. I hate the netflix subs with the burning passion of a thousand suns. maybe not a thousand suns, but like. a couple. I don’t want to blame or denigrate any translator’s work because translation is hard!! But I am going to drag this one specific scene from episode 27 right now because I have the opportunity:
[ID: two stills from The Untamed drama, episode 27, Wei Wuxian speaking to Wen Qing. The subtitles read: “Washing clothes is a woman’s job. How can a man like me do that divine job?”]
Here’s the original line:
洗衣服那是别人做的事，我魏公子怎么能染指啊。
Washing clothes, that’s something for other people to do! How could I, Wei-gongzi, steal any of it from them?
WHERE. WHERE DID THE GENDER ROLES COME FROM. WHERE DID. WHERE. ;A; He was just making a joke about how it would be terrible for him to take on work he wasn’t entitled to, oh no~ how could i steal their work from them~
anyways, Wei Wuxian was wronged by this specific translation choice and those are my receipts.
