The question is in the title. I've been reading various translated novels and manhwas/webtoons for a long time, and recently I noticed a strange uptick in this term in the past couple of months. Beforehand, I've barely if ever seen it used, even in its original meaning, but now I just keep running into stories where gods, transcenders, spirits, and all kinds of other supernatural beings are called "constellations". Why though? Is this another one of those strange translation conventions (like how women in Chinese fiction are "fairies" and every celestial object, be it a planet or a comet, a "star"), or did some smash hit story popularize it and now everyone's copying the term?
I imagine the apparent popularity of Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint had something do with it. Or maybe it originated somewhere else and ORV just happened to be an early adopter of the trend.
The Chinese one is supposed to be a common description of beauty in their language, but I doubt there are traditional words for things like transcenders, so it probably just caught on. The only novel I've read with the terms is Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint though.
Like otaku31 said it's probably cause of orv... same way Solo leveling gave rise to a boom in those dungeons solo types. They squeeze in the solo leveling vibes wherever they could XD
I just want to say for the record translating star (星) into star isn't a "strange" translation convention. Meteors (流星) are falling stars, planet (行星) means moving star, "actual stars" are fixed stars(定星) (they don't move unlike planets), and so on. This is the original terminology even in English. So then "star" becomes a shorthand for all celestial bodies, because that's what it is in the original language. Now, obviously the translations could localize the names. If you know a planet is a planet there's generally no reason to call it a star. But I'm just saying this isn't some unrelated terminology or mistranslation. As for Constellation, I don't know about that since I don't know Korean. But it wouldn't surprise me if they're called Constellation in the original language as well.
I also saw it for the first time in Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint a few years ago, though that might not have been the originator. It might just be a common translation term. I think when a translation becomes popular, it sometimes sets a standard for translating a specific term.
These two are examples of mistranslations. In the first, 仙女 can sort of mean fairy, but it gives off the wrong connotation. Basically any time you see it used like this means that the translator is just translating words and not putting any care into what the meaning is, and how the reader is supposed to interpret it. A more accurate reading would be "angel" or "goddess". In comparison, 星 does mean star, but only on the surface level. The same character is applied to every object you can see in the night sky: so all of planets, and comets, and actual stars. A good translation should be using the proper English term for all of these instead of calling all of them stars.
It didn't use the word constellations, but I think it may have been the first novel where gods are shown to watch players in a tower/Tutorial/apocalypse. They react to what the mc does and sometimes rewards them and bestows power. ORV is the novel that really went to town with the whole Constellations thing.
... It makes sense anyway, since constellations are typically gods/demigods/heroes who ended up in the sky and watch down over us. If you need a blanket term for "powerful beings that don't directly interfere but watch and guide you", knowing that they're not necessarily (all) gods or good, Constellation is pretty appropriate. Might as well ask why the term "Undead" suddenly caught on in fiction after Bram Stoker's Dracula. It was a popular enough novel and an apt term.
??? Last I checked, Solo Leveling is just the first one to make it big outside Asia, which lead to more people bringing over similar series, with basic components having been in Korean series for quite a while before that one came around.