hey op, I know you didn’t have malicious intent when you wrote this, and that it is A Joke, but it touches a nerve related to the ongoing casual racism that I keep seeing in this fandom. I slept on this because I didn’t want to respond in reflexive anger, but I decided it was still worth addressing.
while this response is prompted by this post, it is broadly applicable to tendencies in MDZS/CQL fandom that I’ve wanted to talk about for a while. I’m not going to mince my words, but I will also make every attempt to avoid ad hominem attacks.
* do not under any circumstance harass or dogpile op because of my opinions. that kind of behavior is enormously disrespectful to both op and myself. it’s not woke, it’s cruelty for self-aggrandizement. don’t fucking do it. thanks. *
I am very frustrated that many people in this fandom adhere to translations incredibly literally, rigidly, and incorrectly. I’m tired of reading jokes and meta and other assorted takes that hinge on specific translation choices made by one or two people as if they are objectively correct. if you interact with a work through translation, you must take that into account when making statements about it. a translation and a source text are inherently different works, and both derision and praise of the creator(s)/the canon without acknowledgement of this inevitable gap of knowledge is a ridiculous way to approach media, even as a joke. applied inconsistently, it magnifies personal biases and miscommunication.
i will only talk about two misinterpretations (deliberate or not) in the original post, one that does no real harm, and one that I think does.
Headshaker: Nie Huaisang 1000% planned this and I’m not even mad. … The exact opposite energy of Jin Guangyao’s title as in he literally pointed to the other guy saying idk man ask him about it. … Very Funny when you explore the possibilities of 10 years of head shaking as a sect leader.
“Headshaker” is a translation by exiled rebels which has caught on in larger EN fandom, but it is not a literal translation, unlike the other titles/nicknames listed. what people actually call him is the idiom 一问三不知, literally, “one question, three ‘i don’t know’s”. I actually think “Headshaker” isn’t a bad translation for such a difficult moniker, as the literal translation is awkward and, lacking the context and flow of the original language, loses its humor and impact. this is explained in the translator’s notes on chapter 21 of exiled rebels’ translation.
this is pretty harmless because the final results are comparable in meaning. however, the literalness of it shows either a lack of awareness or an intentional disregard for context in order to make a joke. I’ve seen this attitude applied in many instances where it changes interpretations significantly with greater consequences.
Zewu-Jun (Brilliance Overgrowth Lord/Lord of Munificent Waters): I am In Pain. … Why. Why is Lan Xichen called that. He’s a Good Person. You could’ve called him Anything and THAT’S what you came up with?!?!! Literal translation Lord of Damp Overgrown Weeds??!!!??!!!!! I Don’t Care if it sounds better with context, I am FILLED with sheer murderous RAGE and I WILL lose my MIND. … Lan Qiren I Am Coming For You.
泽 has multiple meanings. it’s evident just in the two translations that are listed: “Brilliance Overgrowth Lord” and “Lord of Munificent Waters”. the dictionary I use has it listed as pool/pond, lustre, damp, favor/beneficence. I suspect the translators got “brilliance” from lustre and “munificent waters” from either a combination of pool/pond and favor/beneficence, or a looser interpretation of 芜 in context. in my opinion, neither translation is satisfactory, but that’s neither here nor there.
in english, we don’t really have a simple word for free-growing wild flora that isn’t “weeds”, which has an inherently negative connotation in modern society. to respond to something I saw in the notes, 芜 does not describe “pond scum” (which is also inherently a value judgment and largely a result of water pollution due to modern agricultural practices), and it does not describe the weeds that you have to pull up in your garden. usually, 芜, as it is meant here, refers to land that is out of human cultivation, or wild, unchecked plant growth. this is just a moment where two languages don’t mesh.
modern chinese does not function the way a lot of people think. one character is not equivalent to one word. characters are more often morphemes which take on different meanings depending on context. this isn’t really the place to explain that further, but if anyone wants to ask for elaboration, feel free. (i am not a linguist, however.)
the temptation that many english speakers have to directly and literally translate names and titles character by character has roots in the historical exoticization and othering of chinese culture and people. my maternal grandmother’s given name was 兰君 | lán jūn. if you translated that directly, it comes out to something like “Honored Orchid”. (you may notice that the “jun” is the same as in the mdzs titles.) my given name is just 优 | yōu, directly translated to mean “Excellent”. but calling either of us like that, or discussing our names based on that information alone isn’t really any better than all the “Delicate Peony”s and “Fragrant Jasmine”s you find in white fantasies of china as some kind of mystical, distant land with strange and different people. you would not be able to see the cultural reference my grandmother’s name makes when viewed alongside her sisters’ names. you would not be able to see how my name and my brother’s name form a pair, nor how my whole name is also a pun on an idiom as a wish for my well-being and happiness wrapped up in two ordinary characters. you wouldn’t be able to tell how unintentionally hilarious my brother’s name is because history is not my mother’s strong suit.
it is impossible to talk about chinese in atomized, literal pieces as if that could convey meaning because the language is so deeply reliant on context by its very nature, so I felt insulted when you said you didn’t care if it sounded better with context. it’s one thing to say, “i know this sounds better in context, but I find this funny” and another to say, “context doesn’t matter”. I understand that this was said flippantly and without ill intent for humor’s sake, but I’d also like you to understand why it was so hurtful.
because of that statement, the rest of the paragraph reads like mockery of the name through a lens of willful ignorance. it especially angers me because it comes at the end of a post that already betrayed a lack of consideration and cultural literacy in a number of ways. i won’t nitpick at them here because that’s not the point, nor do i really blame you for them.
it stings personally because people have and do treat my surname like a joke or curiosity in english. this has happened my whole life. a classmate of mine mocked my name for years and followed me and my friends around pulling at the corners of his eyes. i don’t really think he meant much harm either, but you can see why that doesn’t change the consequences.
making fun of a name in a foreign language because it sounds ugly or clumsy when deliberately translated poorly, with the express intent of exaggerating its failings, is, I think, a racist act, if not qualified or contextualized in some way. this is especially true of chinese in an english context because of the way anti-chinese racism has historically manifested. even a simple, “wow that’s an unfortunate translation lol” would suffice. I acknowledge that the degree of my anger and hurt stems from personal reasons, but the core of it does not.
if this were a post with like, a hundred notes or something, I might not have bothered, but the fact that it has almost two thousand notes with little to no criticism–in many cases, there are comments that compound the misunderstandings–feels admittedly, really fucking awful actually! that after so many people reading this post, not one of them raised any issue besides trivial fact-checking or suggestions for alternate translations.
ultimately, my anger is not really directed at you or at the people in the notes. you weren’t trying to hurt anyone, and you and everyone else were having fun. this post is, in the end, just a series of unintentional microaggressions. but because anti-chinese racism (in wealthy english-speaking countries) so often comes in the form of constant, repeated microaggressions that always feel a little too trivial to address, it tends to slide into a weird liminal space where it is often not discussed at all and therefore compounds into something much more insidious without anyone noticing.
my experience is not universal, and I am not an arbiter of what it means to be chinese in an english-speaking society. however, that doesn’t change the way I feel, nor does it invalidate my points. i’m not looking for an apology, but I am asking you and everyone reading this to be mindful about the way they discuss and joke about MDZS and CQL as english-speaking fandom continues to grow. i don’t think you’re a bad person, and even if you eventually conclude that you disagree with what I’ve said, I still wouldn’t. the same goes for everyone in the notes–I do not wish to hurt you or embarrass anybody over this. I would just like my points to be given a fair and serious consideration despite the levity of the original post’s content.
(op, apologies in advance, I will probably reblog this a few times because I feel very strongly about this.)
