TumblrFeed

Curate, connect, and discover

Wangxain - Blog Posts

alexninn

3 years ago

Where are you Honey?

Click for better quality

Text, extensive translators note, and general remarks with a bit of meta under the read more

Text id:

Where have you gone

I’m looking for you in the night*

This night like every night

I want to still believe you.

Embrace you this one time**

this absolute last time.

lightning strike me***

I’ll be moving on at dawn

****

But where are you hiding,

I’m looking for you when it’s too late.+

Tonight as a last hope I want to finally catch you

to tell you what’s on my chest now++

to tell you all my mistakes now

to tell you how much I’m scared now+++

to tell you how many tears I’ve shed

I’m begging you

come back to drink them. °

Here there’s everything to see

Here it’s daytime you know

you can have more than just the night.°°

You won’t ever regret if you come back to sit here

where no one knows better than me

how to look at you°°°

Translator's notes:

*night in the og text is actually 'dark'.

** I'm deliberately mistranslating here, in french "embracer" means to embrace and to kiss, but commonly it just means to kiss

*** god this gave me a tough time. French is "promis juré craché" which basically means cross my heart and hope to die. The literal translation would be "I promise, swear, spit on it" and there is a kind of gradation to it. You can say promis or promis juré by themselves. It's also a bit childlike to say the three, which I think fits well the song, someone making a desperate, almost pathetic bid to get their lover closer to them. I didn't find a good equivalent in English, and I didn't want to use "cross my heart" bc I feel like it brings up images of boy scouts. What I used is what I found to be a rough equivalent in mandarin to the french version and then retranslated to English do with that what you will.

**** I deleted a full verse! But I actually have a translation for it :

I once again got fooled,

by your sugar-coated words

and your half backed promises

lulling me to sleep too early

I'm looking for you in the night

where the stench of all this sham

ends up on the boulevards,

in our hopes and without coats.

I didn't really see a point in including it and it was just more words to illustrate, but I did like the whole sugar-coated words (words with water in french) and the literal "bastard promises" haha. Let Lan Wangji be angry and resentful in his grief 2k21.

+ Literally, it's "I'm looking for you in the too late". It is also grammatically incorrect in french but it's even more awkward in English. Also in french it's just "I'm searching for you" but I liked the "looking" motif bc I thought it paralleled well with "seeing you"/looking at you at the end

++ In french it's "to tell you what's on my heart" which is what inspired the art for this specific illustration

+++ as someone remarked in the tags scared and scarred are very close in English, sometimes stuff just works out.

° Still not satisfied with the English for this. The singer for this song actually said he didn't want the lyrics for his song written down officially because he plays on homonyms a lot. Here the word used in french both means to recount a story and to count numerically. And 'boire' (drink) much like 'croire' (believe) is kind of an odd choice to end a singing phrase with? It's not really pretty, and it feels very raw, it really annoyed me that I don't think the rawness of it comes through at all in English.

°° also really stretching the og text here. In french it's "coup d'un soir" meaning literally "one night hit" but it means one night stand. @/pumpkinpaix and @/hunxi-guilai (who you should follow bc the work they do is extremely helpful and god I imagine so time-consuming and draining) both wrote a long post about the translation of 知己 zhiji in English, which you should read but I think the main idea was "the one who understands me" would be an accurate enough translation. I was actually working on this before I found those posts but I like how "looking"/"seeing" someone in English can be used to convey understanding the person (you see me for who I really am, etc). Idk I'm just fond of how "to look at you" means both in the physical sense "I want to see you" and also, no one else will know you as I do.

°°° last TN but I missed "au grand jamais" from the original text. It's just a superlative, it kind means, like never ever in any time or world or something in that spirit. But I really like that the song ends by looking.

In the spirit of things I really wanted to say a few words about the translation ha. I think maybe the first thing that I kinda miss from the french is that eddy de pretto (the singer) has a very uh, crude? way to sing. He is known for being both from a lower-class background (in french I would say from the "cité" which wordreference translates to ghetto) and homosexual. A lot of it is french "argot", which basically means french slang, but it's very difficult to translate because my knowledge of english doesn't necessarily include that much slang, and also it just doesn't hit the same haha. A lot of words are contracted, "r'viens" "j'te cherche" etc, which carry a sense of urgency.

This is maybe turning into a Lan Wangji meta post but I think a lot (or used to) about how he had to have his character growth mostly of-screen, in the years where he had to reconcile being alive and raising a son. One of my interpretations is that Lan Wangji was probably more aware of his feelings in the first place, but when we meet him (post 13 or 16 years whatever), we meet someone who has come to terms completely about who he is as a person, what he feels etc. Like this is a man who probably has lived through some of his worst-case scenarios (his home got destroyed, the person he loved died in front of him). And I'm always thinking of what it is to try to grow and reconcile your teachings while raising a kid and mourning you know? I think that's why Honey (the song) resonated with me in that light when I listened to it, just like. God man's had a rough life.

Also, I wanted to say I'm misinterpreting the point of the song, in context Honey is. Kinda complex (there's nuance), but basically the singer is talking about his partner, who's at the time of the song sleeping with someone else. Personally, I think it's unclear if the person the singer is talking about is cheating on him or if they are just in an open relationship, but the singer overtly yearns for a deeper connection for that person.

Omg not me editing a post that's already too long for people to engage with but I forgot! what the whole point of doing a TN was! It's to show ppl how much gets lost or missed on purpose between two languages that are super close. And it's like, maybe 10 sentences! And yet I some stuff I genuinely could not translate correctly. And not only I am a native french speaker living in an English-speaking country but I've done like, actual translation before. It terrifies me sometimes to think how much is lost, and how much is added, in the translation process, which is rarely examined as even being relevant. (edit edit: it was pointed out to me that it is a very active field of research haha, I meant specifically in fandom spaces it's deffo being examined in academia)

GRANDMASTER OF DEMONIC CULTIVATION (MO DAO ZU SHI)

🔹️ 𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝘾𝙍𝙐𝙀𝙇𝙏𝙔 𝙊𝙁 𝙁𝘼𝙏𝙀 [AO3] by 𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙘𝙧𝙖𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣_𝙎𝙚𝙣𝙨𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 [AO3]

𝘗𝘈𝘐𝘙𝘐𝘕𝘎: Lan Zhan/Lan Wangji x Wei Ying/Wei Wuxian 𝘛𝘈𝘎𝘚: Complete | Teen | 1 Chapter | 15.7K Words | Soulmate AU

𝘚𝘜𝘔𝘔𝘈𝘙𝘠: “Wei Ying,” he manages, a breathy croak, and peers past his eyelashes to watch those Grey eyes widen. They swirl with more emotions than he can name at the moment- emotions that he has not seen in those eyes for years, and his heart aches further as he watches the other swallow visibly, trembling hands reaching up to tentatively hold his own outstretched one, though they pass through each other like the other is made of mist.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying breathes, and the shadows under his eyes darken as his face scrunches up, looking like he’s about to cry.

𝘊𝘖𝘔𝘔𝘌𝘕𝘛𝘚: I adore all different types of soulmate au’s and have never read one like this before. The idea is honestly really tragic because you can love someone your whole life and then you only find out when they die that they were not your soulmate. I would definitely love to read more fics with this type of soulmate au.

🔹️ 𝙁𝙊𝙍𝙏𝙐𝙉𝘼𝙏𝙀 [AO3] by 𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙘𝙧𝙖𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣_𝙎𝙚𝙣𝙨𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 [AO3]

𝘚𝘜𝘔𝘔𝘈𝘙𝘠: Lan Zhan learns several things that day. He learns that his soulmate has been injured on the shoulder- that, judging by his description, they have probably been bitten by a canine of some sort. He learns that his soulmate may not be living as sheltered life as preferred, considering that fact. And he learns the name for the emotion that had sent his heart into overdrive.

Lan Zhan learns that day that he does not like Fear at all.

𝘊𝘖𝘔𝘔𝘌𝘕𝘛𝘚: I actually read this fic after The Cruelty of Fate and didn’t realize for a while it was by the same author. One of the things I like the most is we get to see more of an inside to Lan Zhan’s emotions and feelings. This fic did make me fairly emotion though, especially when we get to the siege of the Burial Mounds.

HEAVEN OFFICIAL’S BLESSING (TIAN GUAN CI FU)

🔹️ 𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝘽𝙐𝙏𝙏𝙀𝙍𝙁𝙇𝙔 𝙇𝙊𝙑𝙀𝙍𝙎 [AO3] by 𝙢𝙪𝙨𝙚𝙖𝙬𝙖𝙮 [AO3] museawayfic [Twitter]

𝘚𝘜𝘔𝘔𝘈𝘙𝘠: By seventeen, Xie Lian has accepted not having a fated partner, only to feel the connection form the day of the God-Pleasing Festival. While he can’t understand a word of what the person writes at first, following Xie Lian’s ascension, San Lang becomes his most trusted confidant. No matter how many times Xie Lian asks to meet, however, San Lang refuses.

Years later, when war finally brings them face to face, the circumstances are tragic.

Banished to the mortal realm and cut off from San Lang, Xie Lian struggles to support his parents, gradually slipping into despair. San Lang’s spirit returns to him, refusing to leave the mortal realm while Xie Lian is in it. But after only a brief happiness together, the faceless ghost who destroyed his kingdom returns, taking San Lang from him again, and Xie Lian has to trust that their connection is strong enough to bring him back.

𝘊𝘖𝘔𝘔𝘌𝘕𝘛𝘚: I really enjoyed how the difference of Xie Lian and San Lang being soul mates makes to the overall story we already know. I especially love how we get to see San Lang comforting and supporting Xie Lian when he is going through a rough time.

🔹️ 𝙊𝙇𝘿 𝙁𝙍𝙄𝙀𝙉𝘿 [AO3] by 𝙝𝙮𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙢𝙤𝙮𝙖𝙨𝙝𝙞 [Tumblr] [AO3] [Twitter]

𝘚𝘜𝘔𝘔𝘈𝘙𝘠: It had been a decade since Xie Lian passed on.

Feng Xin should’ve let the past stay in the past, but when he found out his old best friend’s house was going to be demolished after being on the market for so long with no buyers, he made a stupid decision. He actually bought the house. He knew it would come with baggage, but he didn’t realize the baggage would come in the form of ghosts.

𝘊𝘖𝘔𝘔𝘌𝘕𝘛𝘚: I had not ready any Feng Xin x Mu Qing fics until this one (even though I was mostly focused on hualian) and I actually kinda liked it. Anyways, this is an amazing modern au that did great job at keeping true to the characters. I also really enjoyed how we get to read about how Xie Lian is able to come to terms with everything that has happened to him and get his happy ending.