So, it's been a long time since i read a series like To Be A Virtuous Wife and i want to read novel that was similar to it, so i check the recommended novel in TBAVW page and the Top recommended is some novel i've never seen before, it's called Eight Treasures Trosseau. To be honest, it's been a year or so since i've last read ancient imperial harem chinese novel, the latest one i've read is Doomed To Be A Cannon Fodder from years ago, so when i try to read ETT i'm so lost with so many chinese terms that was not translated like wang ye, feifei, wang fei, etc... i don't remember if TBAVW have a lot of non-translated chinese terms but i remember manage to read all of it in a single read. The terms was so many, so confusing, and so annoying to the point after reaching chapter 21 i decided to drop it. This novel have the honor of the first novel i've drop not because the story or character is shit, but because the untranslated terms is extremely annoying. So, my question is how do all of you manage to the read novel with an untranslated terms without getting a headache? Also should the translator translate the confusing term instead of leaving it hanging like that and only put footnotes? Should i resume reading ETT?
Sadly your best bet is Google translate When you tell people they are causing a problem by living pinyin or romaji behind they treat you like some terrorist. It defeats the purpose if a reader needs a language dictionary to read a translation https://forum.novelupdates.com/thre...and-why-does-he-have-a-gong-and-a-wang.58780/ Some are not so obvious eg borrowed English or rather Engrish eg "High Tension" It was in Sevens WN High Tension =/= High Tension https://injapan.gaijinpot.com/uncategorized/2013/05/21/high-tension/
It's an add-on for Firefox. It allows you to replace words or text fragments with other words or text fragments.
I recommend just pushing through and continuing to read using the provided glossary/footnotes if you’re still interested. A lot of the terms would be even more annoying translated because there is no English equivalent. They would just add too many extra words or would take away from the subtleties of the Chinese text. For example, translating “benwang” to “this prince” might work, but it sounds awkward if you translate “dasao” to “elder brother’s wife” when characters are just addressing each other. Or if they translated “Lu shi” to “Ms. Lu”, it’s not a completely accurate translation because “Lu shi” means that Lu is the maiden name of a married woman. If you can’t tell, I’m a big fan of both TBAVW and ETT and it was hard when I first started reading, but I got used to it eventually.
Just gloss over it. You won't lose a whole lot by not knowing the exact rank/title of whoever is trying to screw the mc over for the 5th time anyway. If you actually want to know the fine details, well, just keep reading novels with those terms, at some point you'll simply have learned what they mean from context/translator notes (or atleast that's how it was for me), and when you learn what they mean it won't be more of a bother than stuff like senpai/sensei or hyung/noona in japanese/korean works, and your brain should just automatically translate it.
The target audience is people already familiar with these terms so it's likely they do it on purpose. You could try convince the translator but that'll take time and effort. Most translators are amateurs doing this as a hobby either way so they might just ignore you.
I kinda treat it like learning new words (or new language). My memory is decent enough, so I get used to the words the more I see them. Now I'm very familiar with those terms you speak of and more, so I can easily read a novel like that as if it were in English. English is also a foreign language to me, so it also took some getting used to to read in it. It practically makes no difference to me if I add a hundred more terms only. If I like a novel I get pretty determined to read it, so I never gave up learning the words (I first stumbled upon them in Virtuous wife, too lol). I don't think I ever felt frustrated with the task. It just slowed down my reading a bit, but as soon as I remembered them, I was back at my usual speed. In any case, don't force yourself if you don't feel like it. There are still plenty of other novels.
The thing with japan or korean novel is that it only have 2-3 untranslatable terms so i'm quite okay with it. But when it reach more than 30 untranslatable word is the moment i've began to melt down LMAO...
Yeah, that's mostly due to the fact that in japanese/korean works they mostly keep stuff untranslated to keep the ''feel'' of it being japanese/korean, but for chinese, it's fairly often cuz there simply is no real translation for the word (kinda talking out my ass since i don't actually know chinese, but that's what every translator i've seen do it says). Like, especially in historical novels, most of the untranslated words would be court ranks, which obviously wouldnt really have a translation, since we didn't have that system anywhere else. If you read a modern story, it would be more limited to stuff like the japanese/korean thing. As i said, just skim the untranslated stuff if you really get overwhelmed, since it aint really important, especially if you're reading a romance and not, say, a strategy/court intrigue novel.
I think I've just adjusted to it. I usually switch between reading several novels in a time period, and some translators tend to put footnotes for nearly every pinyin word. I eventually came to understand the terms through those footnotes and the context in which those terms were used. I personally prefer the pinyin though because it gives it more of an Asian feel for me. I also prefer romaji for some Japanese things, notably the honorifics. Some translators (including for official translation of Japanese media and writings) will use Mr. instead of -san, which I don't think necessarily fits all situations. You might call a classmate Tanaka-san, but in English, it's really weird to call your classmate Mr. Tanaka. I think there's other ways of translating to avoid using honorifics, but a lot of people are doing it as a hobby (and for Japanese, are major weeaboos who already know about the honorifics anyway), so it's more work than really required. Also, I randomly looked at a chapter (11) of ETT. Doesn't really look that bad for me. If I have trouble with the terms, I usually have one tab on the chapter at the translation notes (i.e. the part where it says what each term means) and another tab for just reading the story. I think some of it could be translated into English instead of using the pinyin. Side Note: I highly recommend switching to the Firefox mobile browser because (1) you can use addons, and (2) it doesn't have Google Chrome's stupid feature which doesn't allow you to take screenshots incognito. You'll be able to use ad blockers like uBlock Origin. The FoxReplace addon may work on the Firefox mobile, but I've never really tried it.
Sadly, the actual easiest way to manage these is to actually learn Chinese and to read it in the original. The problem with rendering titles and the like into pinyin is that it strips out the words from the phrases and only give the sound of the words to the reader. The sound of the words has almost nothing to do with the actual meaning so you're forced to use rote memorization. If you're reading in Chinese, you have full access to the original words, and these will tell you a lot about the titles even if you're unfamiliar with them. Ideally, I think that translators should just get rid of the pinyin transliterations because they're basically meaningless to most readers, and because there are going to be just tons of them in a particular book. Sure that loses some of the cultural flavor from the story, but this kind of story is going to have a ton anyways so losing a bit isn't a huge deal. Making it more readable is a much more important goal, and it's a very worthwhile tradeoff. Besides, the precise phrases a character uses aren't all that important unless they're using verbiage that's inappropriate for their status or the status of the person they're speaking to. And when these situations arise, the text itself will usually bring up the discrepancy. This is one of the reasons why I'd say that Chinese (especially ye olde Chinese) is harder to translate than Japanese. At first glance Japanese uses a completely different sentence structure so it looks much more difficult to render into English. The problem is that while it isn't that hard to translate the meaning of Chinese sentences and paragraphs, it's very difficult to do so well, and it's even harder to write it in a way that resembles the flow of the original. There are tons of hard decisions to make and a mistake with any of these can make your translation fall flat. I'd imagine that it'd be a somewhat similar story if a novel was written in ye olde Japanese, but that doesn't really happen; especially not if we're talking about webnovels.
lol, that is so true, I need a translation of a translation. Unfortunately, when you don't read Chinese, you're at the mercy of the translators. I would start creating my own glossary if the translators haven't done one already. Maybe you can copy and paste the chapters into Word and to Find and Replace if you don't have firefox. However, not all translators are snobby. Please do give them the benefit of the doubt. Some translators do care, so you can try asking nicely. Ease of understanding should be the number one rule for any translators. wangye is brother of the emperor, therefore a prince. wangfei is wife of wangye. wang is emperor or royalty, male only fei denotes royal concubine or royal wife depending on the word before fei. If it's feizi then it's concubine, but only for the royal house hold and never for the aristocrats or commoners. Not sure what feifei means without context.
Haha I run a translation website: Asianhobbyist.com and hire translators so I know that not all are snobby.