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I read the English translation and felt the writing ranged from adequate to tedious, and conveyed little beyond the literal meaning of the words. Certainly some

I read the English translation and felt the writing ranged from adequate to tedious, and conveyed little beyond the literal meaning of the words. Certainly some was due to skill composing English, which I assume is due to the translator. But at times there were long, dull tangents, especially (IIRC) into personal histories of characters, that had no impact on the story. I started skipping paragraphs and pages, and it took an effort to reach the end. The Cultural Revolution scenes at the beginning, however, were powerful and left a deep impression. After that, I picked up a book by Nadine Gordimer, the Nobel Prize winning author from South Africa. What a relief and pleasure - both books used the same language but entirely differently, hers was crafted so beautifully and with so much more meaning in the same number of characters. Tom Stoppard (whose embrace of serious science should make him HN's favorite playwright - for example, one famous play turns on the Second Law of Thermodynamics), describes the difference between the highly skilled and everyday writer in his play, The Real Thing: HENRY [holding a cricket bat]: Shut up and listen. This thing here, which looks like a wooden club, is actually several pieces of particular wood cunningly put together in a certain way so that the whole thing is sprung, like a dance floor. It’s for hitting cricket balls with. If you get it right, the cricket ball will travel two hundred yards in four seconds, and all you’ve done is give it a knock like knocking the top off a bottle of stout, and it makes a noise like a trout taking a fly... (He clucks his tongue to make the noise.) What we’re trying to do is to write cricket bats, so that when we throw up an idea and give it a little knock, it might... travel... (He clucks his tongue again and picks up the script.) Now, what we’ve got here is a lump of wood of roughly the same shape trying to be a cricket bat, and if you hit a ball with it, the ball will travel about ten feet and you will drop the bat and dance about shouting ‘Ouch!’ with your hands stuck into your armpits. (indicating the cricket bat) This isn’t better because someone says it’s better, or because there’s a conspiracy by the MCC to keep cudgels out of Lords. It’s better because it’s better. You don’t believe me, so I suggest you go out to bat with this [hack script] and see how you get on. ‘You’re a strange boy, Billy, how old are you?’ ‘Twenty, but I’ve lived more than you’ll ever live.’ Ooh, ouch! He drops the script and hops about with his hands in his armpits ... ‘Ouch!’

vorg 10y ago
> The Cultural Revolution scenes at the beginning, however, were powerful and left a deep impression I guess they're put at the beginning in the English translation to achieve that "Here's a foreign culture" effect. The Chinese language edition orders the chapters differently, so that those first 3 chapters on the Cultural revolution come in the middle of chapter 9 when Wang Miao talks to the astrophysicist. The Chinese edition more clearly unfolds the events as they're found out by certain main characters. The Jackie Chan movie "Who am I?" film was similarly butchered for Western audiences. The Asian edition has his character waking up with amnesia in Africa, and we spend the movie identifying with him as he finds out how he got there, via memories returning and clues. The American edition, however, begins by showing all the forgotten memories, taking away the mystery for the viewer.
- hackuser 10y ago
  Very interesting. > I guess they're put at the beginning in the English translation to achieve that "Here's a foreign culture" effect. I wouldn't assume the motive, however. Perhaps they thought English-speaking audiences are much less familiar with the abuses of the Cultural Revolution and needed more context. Perhaps they thought the scenes wouldn't pass Chinese censors or would attract too much negative attention if those scenes were featured so prominently. Perhaps ...

vorg 10y ago

> The Cultural Revolution scenes at the beginning, however, were powerful and left a deep impression I guess they're put at the beginning in the English translation to achieve that "Here's a foreign culture" effect. The Chinese language edition orders the chapters differently, so that those first 3 chapters on the Cultural revolution come in the middle of chapter 9 when Wang Miao talks to the astrophysicist. The Chinese edition more clearly unfolds the events as they're found out by certain main characters. The Jackie Chan movie "Who am I?" film was similarly butchered for Western audiences. The Asian edition has his character waking up with amnesia in Africa, and we spend the movie identifying with him as he finds out how he got there, via memories returning and clues. The American edition, however, begins by showing all the forgotten memories, taking away the mystery for the viewer.

hackuser 10y ago
Very interesting. > I guess they're put at the beginning in the English translation to achieve that "Here's a foreign culture" effect. I wouldn't assume the motive, however. Perhaps they thought English-speaking audiences are much less familiar with the abuses of the Cultural Revolution and needed more context. Perhaps they thought the scenes wouldn't pass Chinese censors or would attract too much negative attention if those scenes were featured so prominently. Perhaps ...