MDZS Volume 4 Annotations

Lost in translation of Word of Honor: southern barbarians and their association with poison

In Word of Honor, Zhao Jing sometimes calls Xie Wang 小南蛮子 xiao nanmanzi - “little southern barbarian”. In the English subtitles, 南蛮 was translated simply as “barbarian”, however, the omission of “southern” not only makes Xie Wang’s ethnicity less specific but also deprives him of an important background characterization: in the Han Chinese folklore, “southern barbarians” have a long-standing association with sinister witchcraft, poison and venomous creatures.

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Here is Part 3 of my annotations of First Edition MDZS, Volume 1, pages 148 - 209

Arg. Sorry that the Vol 4 and Vol 5 MDZS are taking so long to post notes on.

Since flying through two volumes of 2Ha in absolute awe of the gorgeous translation, I’m having the hardest time getting through even Vol 4 of MDZS. I spent days wondering how to better translate 乌合之众. I fumed for too long over the choice to use “why don’t you” as the translation for 不如 —- it’s not wrong, it’s just…

I wish that 7 Seas had chosen a more experienced team to translate. I’m glad that they got someone familiar with fandom, but a lot of these word choices are killing me.

MDZS Vol 5 Annotations 5

Part 5 of 6, pages 343 - 375

Helllo again! I love these Extras.

Here are a few places where I got tripped up in my reading — all minor adjustments to vocabulary or word order or dumb clarification for my sake because something felt ambiguous in English:

They’re just melting it.

More under the cut.

Not that you need to learn more Chinese time-system / ordinal-ranking stuff, but here it is if you’re interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavenly_Stems

When I first read “bodies strewn across the ground” I freaked out thinking that I had somehow missed a MDZS Extra about some terrible massacre; then I realized that in Chinese, there is a nice distinction between flesh bodies that are probably living, 肉体, and corpses 尸体; whereas in English it’s all just “bodies.” 🙁

MDZS Masterlist.

All the Books I'm Annotating Masterlist.

I just replaced my computer because it was at 100% disk usage 90% of the time 😫

windows 10 is garbage so every time i boot up the computer i have to run command prompt and enter

net.exe stop “Windows Search”

so that the shitty goddamned search/cortana feature that i never fucking use stops running in the background taking up all my fucking disk space

Being both aviation-adjacent and LOTR-adjacent, I feel the necessity of reblogging.

Here is Part 6 of my annotations of First Edition MDZS, Volume 1, Appendix.

Chinese 🤦🏻‍♀️

Just this once, I wish they had not simplified a character. I keep mixing up the words for “old friend” vs “enemy”.

Like, really? One stroke difference?

Friends are old 古 but you want to…lick your enemy 舌?

Hi,, I hope I'm not bothering you with this and I'm sorry if my English isn't good, I hope you can understand my questions. I've been thinking about this for a while now and I tried to find information online but I found nothing.

MDZS is the first Chinese Novel I've read and I still haven't finished it yet,,but I've heard about rumors that said that MXTX is in jail, because she sold copies of her books. The rumor isn't true, however it made me wonder something,, I know China's censorship on lgbt related stuff is really heavy and that's why the donghua and drama adaptations of MDZS and other bl works are censored, but I didn't know that authors couldn't sell their novels.

So my question is,, how does MXTX earn money if she isn't allowed to sell her works? She has already finished 3 Danmei novels, and her works are really popular, they even have manhua, donghua or drama adaptations. The adaptations have earned quite a lot of money, but since she's an anonymous writer, does part of it even go to her?

To make the drama, the donghua and the manhua, producers had to ask her permission, I think. So, since the adaptations are doing well, she should get part of the profit, but how does it work? If the Chinese Government really is against lgbt themed works, shouldn't they have done something about her?

I really love her works and I hope that she earns something since she is the one that created all of them. Thanks for considering my question!!

Hi both of you and welcome to the cnovel fandom! Quick intro of the author, MXTX uses a pen name like many webnovel authors, it’s the abbreviation of Mo Xiang Tong Xiu which literally means “Ink Fragrance, Copper [Money] Stench” (墨香铜臭). Fun fact, it’s her mother who coined that name. MXTX wished to pursue a major in literature during university but her mother wanted her to graduate in economy instead while keeping writing on the side, that way she would have the fragrance of ink in one hand and the stench of money in the other.

We also know that she is fairly young, she wrote Scum Villain while she was a university student and she started working on the outline of MDZS in her final year. Tian Guan Ci Fu (Heaven Official’s Blessing) is the third book she completed and a fourth novel is/was in the works, its provisional title is “No rest for the death god” and is supposed to be a supernatural story taking place in a modern setting.

MXTX is one of the most popular webnovel authors on Jinjiang Literature City, the webnovel platform, but her popularity also comes with a great many detractors. You’ve heard some of the malicious rumours circulating in the English-speaking side of the fandom, it’s just a drop in the ocean compared to the outpouring of heated controversies in the Chinese side as the latter can have real-life consequences. There is a different nexus between the creator and the audience and the fandom culture is not the same either, it can be quite deleterious due to the tendency to report any content that one disagrees with.

Censorship in China is... ever-changing and nebulous. How severe it is depends on the medium. Nevertheless, gay literature (同志文学) does exist in China and it is distinct from danmei. I also want to nuance a bit the pervasive idea that anything lgbt is systematically and relentlessly censored in China. The reality is more complex than that and it would be dismissive of the hard-fought gains and visibility that Chinese lgbt activists have obtained these past two decades (some concrete examples: the work of the lgbt centre in Beijing or the pride festival in Shanghai). I don’t know if people are aware of this but lgbt dating apps are thriving in China, the most popular one, Blued, is also the largest lgbt social network worldwide. With that said, the official policy towards homosexuality is the three No’s: “no approval, no disapproval, no promotion”. A stance comparable to the “don’t ask, don’t tell”. It’s not explicit persecution but it manifests in the silencing of public discussion and the limiting media representation of homosexuality. In 2017, the top media regulator issued guidelines banning a number of things, this included obscene and violent content, homosexuality, superstitious pseudoscience (such as reincarnation or spirit possession). On top of that, there is also an ongoing crackdown on online pornography that gets increasingly intense. And that concerns everyone on the internet, it’s astonishing the lengths netizens will go to in order to circumvent the censorship, new slang is developed to refer obliquely to banned words, fanfics are published in image format to prevent text recognition, etc... The censorship might be increasingly prevalent but netizens push back with their resourcefulness. Pushing back is also not without significant risk. Perhaps you have heard of the case of the danmei author that received a severe jail sentence? A few Western media picked up on that and criticised the ruling that was deemed homophobic. Chinese reactions tell a slightly different story, the author's crime was not writing danmei, she was in fact accused of making a profit by illegally producing and disseminating pornographic material. I’m not too keen on the details but it seems she printed the books herself and sold them online. To some Chinese observers, the ruling was not discriminatory because she did break the law. To others, it was absurd because this law dates from an era when internet barely existed and it would have been much more laborious to mass-produce and share porn at that time. There’s a bit of truth in all these points of views. It’s also not disingenuous to say that lgbt content is more likely to be targeted than het content even if the charges are not directly lgbt-related.

Usually contracted authors of webnovel platforms have a more secure status. They get a fee from the purchase of VIP chapters as well as tips from the readers. Other sources of revenue arise when webnovels get popular enough to get the opportunity to be published through official channels or when adaptation rights are sold (I assume that the author receives a share of that deal but perhaps does not get any further financial gain from the adaptation or its merch).

To support the author, I would suggest purchasing TGCF on Jinjiang (guide) or buying the physical versions of her three novels in Chinese (shop, change to English with top-right world icon), the special boxsets of MDZS and TGCF come with tons of goodies!

Hope I could be of service and that my tirade was mildly informative ^^'

Wei Wuxian | Ep.11