Question Why are cultivation novels so Flowery?

I'll tell you one thing : The moon. It comes crashing into Earth. erm no I mean your rant at xianxia is at least original (even though it doesn't make sense to rant about magical stuff being magical)

 

Chinese novels use many idioms that are common knowledge over there. Also, you have to consider that most fights in Xuanhuan novels are basically two guys shouting moves from a distance...
Its like;
Random martial artist: See if you can receive my heaven towering spear without losing your arms!
Another random martial artist: Hur Hur that won´t be enough to break my three lotus yin yang shield!
Against:
Random martial artist: I´ll stab you with my spear (why am I telling him my move??)
Another random martial artist: (smartly defends without speaking)

 

Woah? does that count as insulting Chinese? dude... we're talking about the author's way of writing not the language. I mean I know that Chinese is complicated but still.

 

There are two main reasons: the first is that these kinds of poetic expressions are part of Chinese culture, so they're not out of place at all when it comes to historical settings and the like. If you want to make your story feel like it took place in Imperial China or something similar, this kind of language will make it feel more authentic. The other reason is that xianxia and xuanhuan are the direct descendants of the modern wuxia genre. And in that genre, two of the most prominent writers are Jin Yong and Liang Yusheng. Both of them wrote much like this, so you can interpret it as a continuation of the Chinese literary tradition.

The language isn't easy to translate, but it's not nearly as bad as Old English or even Shakespearean English. Most of it is perfectly understandable to modern Chinese readers, and a lot of these expressions are still in common usage. Chinese hasn't changed all that much in the last couple of thousands of years, and the writings of Sun Tzu and Confucius aren't that hard to interpret. You can compare and contrast to something like "the Tale of Genji" which was written using language nobody has spoken for hundreds of years.

The challenge with translating ye olde Chinese into English isn't the meaning since it's perfectly intelligible. The problem is that there really aren't any direct English equivalents so an accurate translation feels extremely inelegant compared to the original. For this kind of stuff, you'll have to expect to lose about 50% of the quality of the original writing in translation.

It's a lot easier to write lots of simple words than it is to write the more poetic stuff. Once you get beyond the common expressions, it's going to take quite a bit of effort to write properly.

 

Are you sure you are not reading my mind.....

 

Yea, that's why i am taking breaks from cultivation novels from time to time. Becouse RTW for example doesn't have this issue.

 

Yeah, I feel sorry for the Translators having to translate that over inflated language the author is writing just so he can make more money.

Are we both that fucked in the head?

 

Oh thanks for enlightening me. sorry for the misunderstanding.

 

Meh, its fine. I don't like Chinese anyway.

 

There's nothing over inflated about it; it's just a literary tradition that approximates speech from Imperial China. It's no different than writing about Victorian Britain and have the characters speak like Victorians.

 

Some of them are titles equivalent to today's call sign and nicknames. The white wizard, the grey wizard, Gandalf has a bunch of other aliases in elven and dwarvish. Stonewall Jackson, the Rock, Scatman, Iron Lady, First Man, Desert Fox etc. The Shroud of Turin, why not call it what it is Jesus' Death blanket/cover.

 

It is just idiom. A lot of those idioms or phrases coined from folk tales or legend. After a while, people just know the meaning behind it when they use in normal conversation. If you are Chinese or live in a culture heavily influenced by Chinese culture, like Vietnam, then it is a normal thing.

 

But there's a reason that no one speaks ancient Greek in Greece nowadays. No one would understand you.

 

Different country different culture.

 

How does that apply when Chinese readers have no trouble reading this stuff? And since historical dramas use the same kind of dialogue, Chinese viewers have no trouble listening to it either.

 

To those saying it's to pad the words for word count, that's not necessarily true (sometimes it is). Some of them are like 4 character idioms, or well established phrases, but the translation ends up needing 10 words to fully describe it properly.

It's ingrained in their culture to write in such descriptive manners, as per the classics. If they were only to use simple adjectives and adverbs, their Chinese audience will think they are lowly educated.

 

Because as the saying goes, flowers grow best where there are dead bodies. It is so flowery cause they kill each other so much.

All jokes aside, english language tends to favor short concise sentences as part of its structure. Chinese on the other hand favor long sentences. It is simply a matter of language.

But en of the day it is all about word count.

 

The chinese wants to create a chuuni genre of their own thats different from the japanese chuuni.

But seriously, its prolly about the preference of the original language on describing things translated.

 

Thank you for the TL: DR

 

Even in modern China, people often speak using idioms and proverbs. Yes, even middle school students and sometimes primary school students (based on their own vocabulary).

As for you guys saying that it's for word count, it's not. If it's for word count, then they would write it without idioms and proverbs since it would take much more characters to write out their meanings.