Episode 18 done and uploaded to subscene, sent to dramacool. Next ep next weekend. :)
Non-spoiler translation notes for episode 18:
There were a few lines in conversations in this episode that made no sense in the original, so the translation doesn't make sense either. This show has had that a few times, and I have checked with native speakers and they are as confused as me, so I'm taking no responsibility!! I do rather enjoy how sometimes the characters just seem to have a wild moment and say any old thing.
And now some idiom fun:
At minute 13:53 a character says 别到时候脑袋上长出了一片草原了你还在上面敝步呢. There's a saying in Chinese that when you get cheated hard you are wearing a green hat, and so this character is saying the person he's speaking to has been cheated on so hard that he's got a whole grassland on his head. In fact he also says "are you still walking on it?".
It didn't really make sense when you don't know the idiom, so I had to go with 'cheated so hard that it's too late to get out' instead. I feel bad removing idioms from the text, but without being able to find an alternative or explain them to most of the audience I feel it would just make those moments hard to understand!
At 26:48 a character quotes the idiom 女大不中留 - "a grown daughter cannot be kept unmarried for long". I kept the line but made it clear it was a saying (as it felt an odd thing to say otherwise), had to lengthen the time the text was on screen for that one as the English text was much longer than the Chinese.
At 33:22 a character quotes half of an idiom. He says 强极则辱,情深不寿 which is the first half of this idiom:
情深不寿，强极则辱；谦谦君子，温润如玉
The meaning is "Extreme strength leads to humiliation, a deep love will last, a humble gentlemen will be as gentle as jade."
The meaning seems to be that forcing anything will not lead to satisfaction, that only a deep understanding works, and that one should be as 'indifferent as jade' (transcendent perhaps?) in order to truly reach a state of eternal life and satisfaction. I'm not totally clear on it, so that's only my uneducated understanding.
End of idioms! I think there was one more in this episode, but it was fairly normal and easy to find an equivalent for.
Also please excuse my incredibly unromantic translation of the song lyrics. I'd run out of energy at that point and can't be bothered to get all poetic and write them into something fitting. So 'strangely practical' it is!
Episode 17 done and uploaded to subscene, sent to dramacool. Next ep next weekend :)
Episode 17 Non-spoiler Translation Notes:
There is a sentence at 21 minutes in, which is a word-pun/meme that I couldn't replicate. A character says 我想静静 which translates to 'I want some silence/quiet' but can also translate to 'I miss Jing Jing.' So the jokey answer to this is 'Who's Jing Jing?'. This is what his friend says, and I needed to find an equivalent to show his reply was jokey, without changing the meaning too much of the exchange.
I went for:
Character A: I need some quiet. Character B: Are you capable of being quiet?!
I figured that matched with the character's personality, and the level of his friend's reply joke. Not high-art, but will do in a pinch!
Why are the female characters in most of the Chinese dramas so ridiculous?? No, I'm genuinely curious 🧐 Every…
Funnily enough, although I normally feel this, in this case having watched the series through I actually don't mind the characters and their ages in this one. The FL did feel pasted in initially, because she was not in the original books, but her character being pushy and stubborn and young kind of works for her role - she'd never be able to do anything otherwise as her dad was so incredibly overbearing. So she had to be an extreme to stand up to that, and had to be young to get away with it! I guess she grew on me, as I struggled with her initially but having watched the show I am okay with her!
Episode 15 is done, uploaded to subscene and sent to dramacool. Half way there!! This week I have a holiday to visit family, so I hope to release the next ep next weekend but it depends a little on my time. Fingers crossed I can release on Sunday as usual.
Episode 14 done and posted to subscene, sent to dramacool. :) Next episode next weekend.
Also some non-spoiler notes for this episode:
At 12mins 10 seconds one of the characters says '美女' when addressing a receptionist. It translates as 'beautiful woman' and really there isn't any other way of looking at it, no other accurate translated option. But the whole exchange completely doesn't work for that word, he's not really flirting, or getting anything from her other than the norm, and it felt so odd to just have 'Hi pretty lady' there and then just a normal rest of the exchange. So I've used 'Miss' in this case.
A character also references Sun Wukong - the Monkey King, and in context he's implying that there's no way he can be expected to satisfy the ridiculous requests he's being given, like some kind of mythological hero.
Also there's some English in this episode and I subtitled it, as I was struggling to understand some of it, so using the Chinese subs to work out what was actually being said was helpful and figured it would be for all English-speaking watchers too. And I learnt that 'losing your pants / underpants' is a phrase in English to mean losing everything (in gambling or something) but I only knew 'lose the shirt off your back' so that one took me by surprise! Maybe it's an Americanism? (I checked online and people do know it, i always check when literal translations come out weird!)
Thank you :) since you are subbing this drama .. you have done a lot .... & Since whenever you're done subbing…
It's funny I watched him in more recent dramas and then realised it was him in Vigilantes ages ago which I loved! I need to rewatch that one, he was so good in it.
Thank you :) since you are subbing this drama .. you have done a lot .... & Since whenever you're done subbing…
That sounds like a good idea, wait and then binge it!! You're so welcome, I can't wait for you to get to see it, and by the time you get to it I might have noticed and fixed any errors I made in earlier episodes lol. Thank you for all the love and motivation <3
Episode 13 done and posted to subscene, and sent to dramacool. :) Next episode next weekend!
(Also a non-spoilery translation note for this episode: One of the characters mentions Wu Zhuang Yuan, and as far as I know she's referencing a character from a Kung Fu movie, so in context she was basically implying the person she's talking about is too violent.)
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Non-spoiler translation notes for episode 18:
There were a few lines in conversations in this episode that made no sense in the original, so the translation doesn't make sense either. This show has had that a few times, and I have checked with native speakers and they are as confused as me, so I'm taking no responsibility!! I do rather enjoy how sometimes the characters just seem to have a wild moment and say any old thing.
And now some idiom fun:
At minute 13:53 a character says 别到时候脑袋上长出了一片草原了你还在上面敝步呢. There's a saying in Chinese that when you get cheated hard you are wearing a green hat, and so this character is saying the person he's speaking to has been cheated on so hard that he's got a whole grassland on his head. In fact he also says "are you still walking on it?".
It didn't really make sense when you don't know the idiom, so I had to go with 'cheated so hard that it's too late to get out' instead. I feel bad removing idioms from the text, but without being able to find an alternative or explain them to most of the audience I feel it would just make those moments hard to understand!
At 26:48 a character quotes the idiom 女大不中留 - "a grown daughter cannot be kept unmarried for long". I kept the line but made it clear it was a saying (as it felt an odd thing to say otherwise), had to lengthen the time the text was on screen for that one as the English text was much longer than the Chinese.
At 33:22 a character quotes half of an idiom. He says 强极则辱,情深不寿 which is the first half of this idiom:
情深不寿，强极则辱；谦谦君子，温润如玉
The meaning is "Extreme strength leads to humiliation, a deep love will last, a humble gentlemen will be as gentle as jade."
The meaning seems to be that forcing anything will not lead to satisfaction, that only a deep understanding works, and that one should be as 'indifferent as jade' (transcendent perhaps?) in order to truly reach a state of eternal life and satisfaction. I'm not totally clear on it, so that's only my uneducated understanding.
End of idioms! I think there was one more in this episode, but it was fairly normal and easy to find an equivalent for.
Also please excuse my incredibly unromantic translation of the song lyrics. I'd run out of energy at that point and can't be bothered to get all poetic and write them into something fitting. So 'strangely practical' it is!
Episode 17 Non-spoiler Translation Notes:
There is a sentence at 21 minutes in, which is a word-pun/meme that I couldn't replicate. A character says 我想静静 which translates to 'I want some silence/quiet' but can also translate to 'I miss Jing Jing.' So the jokey answer to this is 'Who's Jing Jing?'. This is what his friend says, and I needed to find an equivalent to show his reply was jokey, without changing the meaning too much of the exchange.
I went for:
Character A: I need some quiet.
Character B: Are you capable of being quiet?!
I figured that matched with the character's personality, and the level of his friend's reply joke. Not high-art, but will do in a pinch!
Also some non-spoiler notes for this episode:
At 12mins 10 seconds one of the characters says '美女' when addressing a receptionist. It translates as 'beautiful woman' and really there isn't any other way of looking at it, no other accurate translated option. But the whole exchange completely doesn't work for that word, he's not really flirting, or getting anything from her other than the norm, and it felt so odd to just have 'Hi pretty lady' there and then just a normal rest of the exchange. So I've used 'Miss' in this case.
A character also references Sun Wukong - the Monkey King, and in context he's implying that there's no way he can be expected to satisfy the ridiculous requests he's being given, like some kind of mythological hero.
Also there's some English in this episode and I subtitled it, as I was struggling to understand some of it, so using the Chinese subs to work out what was actually being said was helpful and figured it would be for all English-speaking watchers too. And I learnt that 'losing your pants / underpants' is a phrase in English to mean losing everything (in gambling or something) but I only knew 'lose the shirt off your back' so that one took me by surprise! Maybe it's an Americanism? (I checked online and people do know it, i always check when literal translations come out weird!)
(Also a non-spoilery translation note for this episode: One of the characters mentions Wu Zhuang Yuan, and as far as I know she's referencing a character from a Kung Fu movie, so in context she was basically implying the person she's talking about is too violent.)