Does anyone here feel strange when you see the translators translate 丹 (I guess) as dan, as in medicine pill, knowing that the pinyin dan without the tones is more commonly associated with (at least for me) 蛋, which means egg?
English isn't that diverse, what do you want them to put? Not a translator, but I do like the study of languages. And word games
It's not that I want them to change it, it's just that it felt weird for me a lot of the times when I read "dan" as in medicine because my mind automatically equates it to "dan" as in egg, so I'm just picturing the immortal people sallow I got hundreds and thousands of eggs and it feels weird to me
Those two words just have very similar pronunciation. To distinguish between them by hearing, you must be very well in hearing and speaking Chinese (I can't do that myself)
That's the problem, they don't sound similar. Dan as in egg is written with the pinyin Dàn while Dan as in medicine thingy is written Dān. The line thing on top shows tone or something, with the medicine thing pronounced flat or something and the egg one going sharper or something. Sorry, can't really explain well, so they should sound at least quite distinctive. My problem is (and this is separate from this topic), that I can speak and understand at a relatively fluent level, but I can't read or write. The thing is, if I say "I ate a dan" Without the tone thing on top of the 'a', then you can either see it as "I ate an egg" Or "I ate a medicine thingy" So it makes the legendary pills or whatever they talk about seem a bit silly because I tend to think it's the former over the latter (I read it as Dàn, can barely remember how to pronounce Dān), so it seems funny reading it as legendary egg But I do suck at Chinese so it might just be me...
Ugh, the struggle that non-tonal-language-speaking people will never understand. Without the tone, the Thai words for "near" and "far" look exactly the same. As a foreigner trying to say the words, they might as well be exactly the same anyway, because there's no way I'm going to be able to distinguish my neutral tone and falling tone without making a silly head bob.
This is a good example of why pinyin should be kept to a minimum in translations. Direct translations may lose a lot of the elegance of the original wording, but pinyin is meaningless unless the reader is already familiar with Chinese. To make matters worse, the words also blend together more than romanizations like romanji, and the syllables aren't even pronounced the way they look in English. I'm not even sure how people who don't know Mandarin differentiate between words like xi, shi, and qi.
Eggs are good for you, so both are the same. Truth being told, I would like to see a novel where people would eat eggs instead of pills, etc. And stealthily intruding the bird's nest, careful not to be found, for they knew, they wouldn't end up well. After more than a few minutes of silence and anxiety refilled faces, they reached the final room. The bird's nest. Creeping up, they decided to go all together, grab as many eggs as they could and run the heck out of there. Soon after they would be either filthy rich, or a few dozen times more powerful, for it was the egg's property on this cultivation world. Those without eggs were doomed to be forever weak, while if you sold one, you would have enough money to support you and your family for a few years. A lucrative business, but the risks weren't small. Still, those that decided upon such a path, would either succeed, or die trying. And so they rushed towards that nest, towards their gold mine. Reaching it they felt exhilarated, amazed even that it was this easy. Never before in their life had they found something going in their way like that. It felt weird, but in any case they didn't dare to let up their vigilance. Grabbing all of the eggs and putting them in a bag they quickly left. Yet as always, what would go right at the beginning, would normally end up in a disaster. The egg's mother came back. It wasn't as though they didn't expect such a development. Even though the mother shouldn't have came back till many hours later, they knew better than to hope for good luck. Having agreed to a previous plan in case of such a thing, they pulled out an extreme treasure, a supreme decoy. It was a reusable treasure that they had pilled up all of the money they had gotten in their entire lives to buy. A shadow suddenly flashing in front of them, dashing towards the mother. It was the decoy. At the moment that shadow appeared, the mother felt strangely intoxicated into following it, fighting, tearing it up. It was the adventurers chance to escape with all the treasures. Yet as the huge bird of a mother got distracted, she managed to pull her attention back. The opening was there, and they took advantage of it, yet seeing the situation develop like that, they knew they had no time to dilly dally. Madly running through the complex dungeon, they managed to outrun the mother using various of traps they had set along the way. They thought they weren't going to make it, yet here they were. But at the end, it was all just a thought. As they neared towards the exit, having lost the bird, they met another team of adventurers. They truly had no thing such as good luck. A bitter fight broke between the 2 parties. One trying to protect, one trying to steal. Such actions were deeply frowned upon, were illegal, yet it was fine... provided there weren't any conclusive evidence of your crime. The adventurers party trying to steal the eggs at the end weren't strong enough; the fight had ended up with the advantage on the defending side. Yet in the eyes of many, it was only a kid's fight, for there were many praying upon them, waiting for them to get exhausted. It was such the lunacy that those eggs raised. The key to cultivation, the key to success and power. EGGS!
Hm? They're completely different tones though? I think most Chinese readers would never think of "egg" when reading "pill" because we don't exactly read using pinyin. Besides, chinese is filled with homophones, so we're all used to it. The best English analogy would be... "One day I was walking through the forest, and a bear came crashing out of the bushes." vs. "One day I was walking through the forest, and a bare came crashing out of the bushes." Reading "bear" as "bare" ..... I don't think anyone would do that in English.
I thought it was a thread about how contraceptive pills affect egg in the ovary I guess I was way off.. Translating is a lot more difficult than it looks. I would cut them some slack Nice points although also by @yuzuki
Perfect World ... Though I think maybe it's just the protagonist that would eat eggs instead of pills.
How would I find it strange...? I don't know Chinese, hence I can't compare raw and translation. If I knew Chinese, I wouldn't read the translations in the first place. ... The amount of people that bothe with reading translations and can read the raws is really small, you know?