Discussion Do all Chinese authors fail in math?

Discussion in 'Novel General' started by moneng85, Aug 17, 2020.

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  1. moneng85

    moneng85 Well-Known Member

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    Disregarding Chinese novel templates like china nambah wan, Japanese hatred, Everyone in china can use kungfu, Our dictatorship system is the best, Our 4000 years culture is unbeatable Nationalism, Why is it that most Chinese novels i have read, have numbers that doesnt add up?
    May be its a mistake in the first place to have chosen xianxia novels to read about and complain, and also useless as its the author own imagination and they earn tons of money from it
    But seriously, Their math sucks, 1 + 1 = 1 billion times power, and the enemy's genius of ten thousand years only have a power level of 992.332.424.423
    my own power can slice through 100km ONLY
    my other body is only 60 billion miles long and so on
     
  2. Effugium

    Effugium [Investigator], Praise Shigure-sama

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    ??? never seen these
     
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  3. Deleted member 155674

    Deleted member 155674 Guest

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    Well, they aim high
    [​IMG]
     
  4. Isabelle

    Isabelle Always in love with potatoes (⁠◍⁠•⁠ᴗ⁠•⁠◍⁠)⁠✧⁠*⁠。

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    I like to think that it is one of the privileges of writing, you know? It's something impossible in real life and sometimes even in graphic representation, so is amazing how can exist in words~~

    You can try to have fun imagining, because actually thinking about it will take away half of the fun about reading novels lol :blobmelt:
     
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  5. oblueknighto

    oblueknighto Blue Person

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    Uhh maybe you should stop reading those ridiculous novels. Not all Chinese authors are like that. If you don't like ridiculous numbers then stop reading any novels which have more than 1000 chapters. Those are especially prone to power inflation.
     
  6. Bakaturq

    Bakaturq Tell me, what do you see?

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    Well, math belongs to the left side of the brain that deals with logic.
    Writers primarily use the right side of brain that deals with creativity.
    Maybe their creativity sucks because they cannot multi-task left and right side at the same time, which is also why their number logic also suffers as a result :p
     
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  7. Amaruna Myu

    Amaruna Myu ugly squid dokja (●´∀`●)

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    how dare you doubt a Chinese person's math standard! its time to torch you!:blobhero:

    jk my math genes only lasted till age 16 (the authors much be really old:blobpeek:)
     
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  8. slightofhand

    slightofhand Well-Known Member

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    There are two problems with the way Chinese numbers are translated.

    The first problem is that the number is often not meant literally but rather as an example of a large or uncountable. Its like saying about a flock of birds, 'Theres like a million of them!' Unfortunately this is often translated literally so the numbers make no sense.

    Second problem is that numbers are often mistranslated or possible written incorrectly by the author. I often see things translated as 1 million when it should be 100,000 and so forth.
     
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  9. Meloman

    Meloman My dog is lazier than me

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    Well I personally don’t mind the billion exaggerations, as when a number is larger than I can count I just subconsciously ignore it. But what bothers me more are numbers in sentences that go: she was seven or eight years old this year; or there were three or four people in the room. Err there were either 3 or 4, just pick one... or is it that there was half a corpse? A ghost? Can a ghost be counted as half a person?
     
  10. Anonymousse

    Anonymousse Sour, sweet & spicy reviewer

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    Its might be not bc they suck at math. But thats the results of words count. Gotta made a sentence long enough (til millions, billions, eons, etc) til they forgot to do the math. Famous author that i knew do this kind of mistakes til this day: I eat tomatoes.
     
  11. Amplify

    Amplify Well-Known Member

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    This here is the correct answer, you can stop the thread here as anyone else is talking out of their ass. Have asked translators about this before, and all the "everything in 50,000km was destroyed by the attack" and similar stuff turns out to be almost 100% always because the Chinese author isn't writing an exact number, but rather because of some word/phrase thing they use that roughly means "a BigMcLargeHuge number!" (think of a fisherman telling tall tales, where he spreads his arms wide and says "The one that got away was THIIIIIIIIIS big!" and you have the rough meaning of it) where you use your own imagination to fill in the blanks, but it doesn't translate well so translators just say fuck it and invent a reasonable-ish sounding number to put in, which usually ends up making Chinese authors look like they're terrible at maths.

    There's a few rare exceptions where the author did specify an exact number (usually measuring distances and rarely height in "Li" (Wikipedia)) in which case the translator just converts it into Kilometers, and a few times where lengths of time gets mentioned in which case you get a mixed bag of quarters of an hour + "breaths of time" + incense sticks, which you just have to learn to decipher which the author was using from the clue(s) left in the translation. I find the breaths of time tend to work out to roughly 9 seconds each, and the incense sticks are between 10 minutes and an hour depending on the author. That's after years of reading Chinese novels and looking for clues, your mileage may vary.
     
    Last edited: Aug 17, 2020
  12. OverlordPotato

    OverlordPotato Well-Known Member

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    What makes me bewildered is when they describe techniques/spirit manifestations/avatars/body transformations when the sizes go nuts. Take this common scenario:
    "MC transformed into a 1 km long body". The nearby cultivators can still see him and his expressions clearly. It's stupid, because even if they actually crane their necks at absurd angles, it should be still impossible.
    It makes me go like- Bruh, wtf? Have you even seen how long a kilometer is? Try going out of the house and check for once.
     
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  13. Bryce

    Bryce Well-Known Member

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    Eh, suspension of brain processes in charge of logic is the first thing you do when you read chinese novels with cultivation elements. Handwavy explanation woukd be something along the lines of the nearby audiences being cultivators with similar strength levels and so has the capacity to 'see' these ridiculous numbers and process the resulting impossibilities (i e. no they aren't literally seeing with their eyes, but they 'see' with whatever cultivation bullshit that powers up their senses to superhuman levels of clarity and reaction)
     
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  14. Cosmic_

    Cosmic_ [Novel Addict] [Lazy Writer] [Meh Editor]

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    If you're referring to the exaggeration and crazy levels/scale of numbers as well as the inconsistency of them in CN web novels especially in cultivation stories than its just a result of the genre, medium, and industry.

    The fact is that xianxia is a genre that often thrives on power escalation, power wank, and wish-fullfilment. Large and unrealistic numbers are to be expected. Exaggeration is expected. If you're going against heaven, might as well go against people's simple understandings of mathematics and scale.

    Web novels especially CN cultivation novels are serials so they're release chapter by chapter and often most things are written as they go. Add this with the paid by word count of the industry, the lengthy meaningless filler aspect of the genre, and all the problems that it involves like chapters being rushed, plot points and facts not being planned or recorded, filler, series being drawn out, and the general quality drops and author fatigue, you are bounded to get a disorganized and inconsistent mess.

    Then you also got to realize that trouble with numbers and scale is actually really common with authors and people in general. Most people are disorganized and don't bother remembering numbers. Most people haven't developed a eye for scale because it's very situational in everyday life unless it's a big part of your job. Larger scales are also lost to people including people having trouble grasping different metrics and the relationship of numbers and math. Hell, most people don't grasp the nature of volume and mass or can eye the weight of different objects or know what a ton actual looks like or understand logarithmic the or scale of exponentially growth. A big number is synoymn for super big, doesn't matter if the numbers add up or if its reality is not accurate.

    I see many authors not grasp basic human growth development like a baby's stages of development despite having the internet at their fingertips. These are just the nature and flaws of people and writers. They then get amplified when you're in a competitive, demanding, and stressful industry.
     
    Last edited: Aug 17, 2020
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  15. Meloman

    Meloman My dog is lazier than me

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    Equally weird is that it takes an hour (mind you in ancient setting an hour means 120 minutes) to walk from her/his courtyard to the “main hall”... I mean how large is that residence? Or how short their legs? Even a four year old can walk good three kilometers in 60minutes...
     
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  16. phobos

    phobos Well-Known Member

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    well there is other stuff like caves with serveral 100 square km of free space or city walls 42km high etc
     
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  17. Bakaturq

    Bakaturq Tell me, what do you see?

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    Cultivators have enhanced senses
     
  18. Bakaturq

    Bakaturq Tell me, what do you see?

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    You must also remember, even minor households seemed to have their base set on top of cliffs high up inthe sky. Take for example ling jian zhun spirit blade master cn anime
     
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  19. Alairia

    Alairia Well-Known Member

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    Holy shit, what kind of CN novels y'all reading, enlighten me
     
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  20. redanxela

    redanxela Well-Known Member

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    Well the numbers are so exaggerated I have tend to automatically filter them and include something my brain can comprehend. The annoying one though, is when author gives promises like "the situation is ten thousand times more terrifying than you can assume" or like "your imagination of his strength is a hundred thousand time weaker than he actually is!"
    And boom, when the final big reveal Happens, it isn't even as bad as I thought; MC runs around randomly for 10 chapters, and it's resolved. Then I'm like, WTF!! This isn't our promise come on!!
     
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