I'm not talking the Chinese setting. But Dou Dou, Ye Wenjie, Wang Miao, Shi Qiang, Ye Qiang, Wang Wang, Pan Han, Han Pan, Shao Lin , Shi Shao, Ye Wenxue, We Wen, Wei Cheng, Xie Shie... come on, man.
Good book, but the English version should use English names.
>wanting literature to be netflixified
YOU ARE BUGS
They might as well assign random 6 digit binary numbers as names. "Hi", said 001101 to his uncle, 100010. "Have you met 110111 and 00110?" "1110111?... Do you mean 1101111?"
> 103683e blocks your path.
thats literally what we do on this image board
>They might as well assign random 6 digit binary numbers as names. "Hi", said 001101 to his uncle, 100010. "Have you met 110111 and 00110?" "1110111?... Do you mean 1101111?"
>thats literally what we do on this image board
"1110111?... Do you mean 1101111?" would be nicknamed trips and quads.
Part of the issue may be that when we transliterate Chinese names into English we leave off the tones, when they're a core part of the pronunciation in Chinese. The difference between shī, shí, shǐ, and shì is as obvious to a Chinese speaker as the difference between bit, beat, bet, and bait is to an English speaker.
Why?
To appeal/appease/cater to the profitable western audience of course. What are you - slow, bad faith or willfully ignorant?
Isnt that such a superficial thing to do? People who want to read it will read it regardless. If someone is put off by the names then they're moronic.
Most of the content on Netflix is superficial anyways and doesn't include the depth the culture reached in 1800 and 1900's. I don't know what I'm supposed to disagree with you on here
This homie wants an abridged adaptation, not a translation.
Thank god books aren't video games and they don't "localize" them.
Someone can argue that they are localised to the realm of the internet
How great would it have been if the publisher localized the American version DEI style and made all the scientists black with traditional ghetto names.
I can already smell the controversy. Anything that gets people pissed off means more engagement which means more revenue
Read them enough and you get used to them, just like Japanese names.
I've watched anime and read manga since I was a child and I only know 5% of the characters names, referring to everyone else as "sword guy" "pink haired booba girl" etc
Japanese names are more memorable.
I read this book a few years ago and I remember there were like 3 characters (maybe more) named Zhang.
It's a story set in China and having all the characters running around called John Jane and Lucy would be moronic, not to mention that there is no tradition of renaming characters for localisation in recent literature
they don't give characters in western books Chinese names in Chinese translations
i.e. translation of lord of the flies:
雷尔夫: Lei'erfu - Ralph
小猪: Xiaozhu (meaning: little pig) - piggy
杰克·梅里度: Jieke Meilidu - Jack Merrihew
罗杰: Luojie - Roger
>they don't give characters in western books Chinese names in Chinese translations
>proceeds to list a bunch of Chinese names
those are transliterations of English names into Chinese
your strawman is equivalent to saying Zhang Hanling is an English name because it's not written in Chinese characters
I do not understand how Chinese transliteration works. The rules seem very unintuitive.
Phonetic approximation by the looks of it. Throw the moonrunes into google translate TTS.
Chinese has a stricter set of sounds available to it compared to English so phoenetic transliteration can often sound wonky
>It's a story set in China and having all the characters running around called John Jane and Lucy would be moronic
Yeah, imagine if there was a martial artist called Bruce Lee, that would just be ridiculous...
Hong Kong is British anon. At least it used to be.
That's his English name. In Cantonese he was known primarily as Lei Siulung (Li Xiaolong in Mandarin).
My Chinee name is Long Dong
Just convert the book to txt and ctrl-h all the names to whatever you want.
Its how i read shakespeare renaming all the characters to be from Sopranos or Zelda.
you fricking monster, get off my board
You want a chinese dude called Vincent Smith?
QRD on these books?
Ayyy lmao race wants to colonize Earth, hilarity ensues, humanity learn the universe is a frick, much adventure, such wow.
The xu bingbing girl is really hot in the chinese adaptation.
Hey, yellow fever not allow, gwailo.
The main problem is there's not as much connotation to Chinese names, even to eastern ears. In western lit a character called "Sebastian Montgomery III" is immediately distinct to "John Smith", and it's not just down to syllable count and commonness but class and expectation. But I've asked Chinese friends, and they can't provide equivalents. There are very few surnames in China, and none are more aristocratic or bland or villainous-sounding or [whatever] than the others. The name Li Weijie doesn't scream "everyman detective" or "corrupt old-money politician" to either audience. Asian characters (especially in print; in film you can get by easier: the main guy, the old triad boss, etc.) would be easier to remember if the author favoured more nicknames like Little/Old Something or Wei-Wei; failing that, they should pay attention to syllables and prominent letters -- Yuenmei is not easily confused with Jingzi, while Wei, Mei and Hei are.
That's true that Chinese doesn't have different names connected with class or background so much, but they do have literal meanings attached to their names with different histories, even the name Li has different versions like the most common character being 李 meaning plum but also has a connection to Laozi, being his birth name or something, while 里 instead means village, even if they're pronounced exactly the same, with even the same tone. Chinese people don't have the same issue reading names because of these character differences.
Also I haven't read Three Body Problem, in English or Chinese, but I'm assuming another problem is they didn't put tonal marks over the names which would have at least made it easier to identify different names.
Thanks for the insight. Are there Chinese first names which would be considered old-fashioned or hyper-modern? Like Archibald vs. I dunno, Vanta. Do Chinese today name their children after ancient emperors, or more often after new trends? Thanks
Honestly I don't know, I only have a basic understanding of Chinese but it seems to me the names are just randomly assorted Chinese characters that make no sense and are chosen for a laugh, for example with Li Na (famous tennis player) her name can be translated as "plum paternal grandmother", the Jinping part of Xi Jinping is kind of like "close-to (as in location) flat" and Mao Ze Dong is "tenth decimal place, swamp, east"
I assume there are connotations with some of these names, because like I said Li, while literally meaning plum, is usually connected to Laozi, I suppose it's like how westerners often use the names of biblical figures like Noah or Paul.
平 can also mean "peace", and 澤 can also mean to bless or benefit.
Also I've known a couple Xiaohongs before and I always assumed their names were 小红 which means little and red, assuming this was because they were little and red when born, but I looked it up and there was a famous author also called Xiaohong but spelt 萧红 so I'm assuming they probably shared that spelling (also I just looked up the meaning of 萧 and it's 'common artemisia' lmao)
Thanks Chanon, very interesting. Yeah, I guess with phonetics and all the tonal nuance stuff there's going to be as much "confusion" as with English names like Rich-ard/"Dick" kek, Pete being peat, (re)peat and John meaning prostitute enthusiast and toilet. I named my main antagonist/"femme fatale" type Xiaomei (for now at least) just coz I like the way it looks and sounds and it seems to be a reasonable Chinese first name; if it turns out that name could allude to a dead pop singer or echo some traitor dowager or mean "ugly flower sap" then so be it. Cheers
Yeah it's funny when you think Chinese people look at a word and infer meaning simply based on the shape of things while Latin languages are just a bunch of squiggly lines where the meaning is purely in the pronunciation, it's an extremely different approach to language.
>Xiaomei
Also a common name, though more as a nickname, because "mei" can mean younger sister, and xiao means small (assuming it's written like 小妹) so it's like saying small, little sister, kind of a nickname for a young girl and an equivalent in English might be like calling someone a "pretty lady" although of course that's a big outdated now. Not a bad name if that's what you're going for, it just might get eye rolls from Chinese authors for being a bit generic, like if a foreign author called every character "John", "Jane" and "Susan" which I've actually noticed Ishiguro likes to do even though English is his first language.
"Da Ge" means big, older brother and is what you call a might call a bigger, charismatic guy.
>Xiaomei
Hmm maybe I better rename. Can you think of any unassuming names that start with X? She reveals herself to be pretty evil (like the krikrikri girl in Audition) but it shouldn't be like "Cruella". Actually maybe generic is okay. Thanks anon
"Xin" can mean "new" or "heart", among lots of things, and is a pretty common part of someone's name
Maybe something like this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuan_Xinyue
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Yuxin_(singer)
Or others I've found with X in it
https://sg.linkedin.com/in/miao-xing-0549b8b0
https://www.rmit.edu.au/contact/staff-contacts/academic-staff/y/yu-xinghuo
There's often a unique sound in Chinese spelt with a Q, it's kind of like a CH noise with a T in front of it, the last Chinese empire was the Qing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qianlong_Emperor
(also remember the first character in Chinese is someone's last name, so Yuan Xinyue's first name is actually Xinyue)
That's amazing dude, thanks. Also jtc (I don't entirely trust google) would the pronunciation of Xiaomei be closer to "chow" or "zow"? Or even "zyow" or ~"zjhow" (like "Je m'appelle" in French)? Thanks anon, last one I promise, you're the basedest
Take everything I say with a grain of salt by the way, I'm not actually Chinese, just lived there for a while as a kid and speak very broken Chinese, so I'm intuitive on some parts but missing a lot of broader knowledge
>would the pronunciation of Xiaomei be closer to "chow" or "zow"? Or even "zyow" or ~"zjhow"
Are you asking how "xiao" specifically is pronounced?
I'm just saying it out loud to myself and at first I make a noise that's kind of like "sh" or even the "shhh" noise, except that it's more like I'm whistling, followed by "ow" like the noise in "ouch".
I don't speak French but I feel like the Je in Je m'apelle might be the closest approximation out of the options you've given me.
This is a fun resource for Chinese characters https://www.dong-chinese.com/wiki/小 because it goes into the history of certain characters with their old scripts and stuff, look up the character 黑 if you're interested in something a bit weird and unsettling, 鬼 is also an unusual, interesting one which features a lot in Chinese, used in conjunction with other words to describe pretty much anything to do with ghosts or spirits.
I looked up that resource to show you how 小 (xiao) is pronounced but to be honest I don't think it's a very good example of it since it lingers too long on the "oww" part in order to emphasise the tonal quality, but it does get the x- part right.
Pronouncing a character on its own vs how it's used in a sentence will always differ, almost like saying the letter "A" vs how it's used in a word, 小 also has the down-and-up tone which will change to a rising tone if it's followed by another down-and-up tone.
Since 小 means small and is a very common character maybe look up learning resources that use it in a sentence if you can be bothered.
And keep in mind that pronunciation changes A LOT across China according to region, where there are even different Chinese languages that say it differently, I also just checked Japanese and they say 小 as "ko"
>黑
>black; dark; evil, sinister; sinister; secret; shady; illegal
>黑人
>black person
"Black" also has those connotations in English, as in "black market" or "blacklist".
>黑
>black; dark; evil, sinister; sinister; secret; shady; illegal
>鬼
>ghost; spirit of dead; devil; demon; terrible; damnable; clever; sly; crafty
do NOT look up what 黑鬼 means
<Xiaomei> would be pronounced /ɕi̯ɑʊ̯ meJ̯/. Look on Forvo if you want to hear it.
Thanks for the site recs, very helpful
You can pretty much remember who's who if you actually read out the names in your head. Yes theyre all one syllabble one syllable and super chinese, but you can easily differentiate a Cheng from a Xi.
If a name has an obvious meaning to a speaker of the original language it makes sense to translate it. But if it's just a name, I don't see why.
>watch one clip from the TV show
>it's some chinese SETI b***h receiving an alium message basically saying "The dark forest hypothesis is real, do not fricking send anymore messages, you're lucky I received this and not someone else, I am not the norm, do not reply, do not reply"
>instantly hooked
>decide to read the book instead of the show adaptation for morons
>40% of the way through the book
>"Yang Xielie simulated a pool table and the dehydrated man rehydrated himself. Chim-chim-aroo! said the rehydrated man. The sun always comes up twicewise in this reality! The Red Queen will want to hear about this, said Yue Pingpong."
>mfw
>Good book, but
No, it's abominable.