Posted on by Lone Crane

The Blue Whisper, Mermen, and Ashes of Love

Recently I’ve started watching a couple xianxia romance dramas and have a few things to say about them. I started with Ashes of Love, which I never got around to watching back when it first came out. I like Yang Zi but hadn’t watched any of her dramas (meaning I liked her cause she’s pretty lol) but I’m a bit hyped for Immortal Samsara (whenever that’s coming out), so I thought I’d watch Ashes of Love first. Then I decided to give The Blue Whisper a chance. I’d seen a lot of tweets about it recently but I’m usually not into these kinds of shows to be honest, so I just went on. Anyway, I did give it a shot and I’m already hooked.

So let me talk about The Blue Whisper first, since I like it a lot more. The acting is too hammy in Ashes of Lovel; not a fan of the cutesy voices and everyone has their acting dialed up to eleven. Especially that celestial realm empress. Looks like her eyes are going to pop out of her head. Back it down a few notches, fellas.

The Blue Whisper is more to my taste. I have no idea where the English title comes from because the Chinese title has nothing to do with that. Maybe it will become clear later. The Chinese title is 驭鲛记之与君初相识, which I would translate as A Tale of Merman Taming: When I first Met You. 驭 (yu) means to control or to drive, as in drive a carriage or control an animal. Ride dragons. Control swords (sword kinesis). In the drama they use the word 馴 (xun) to talk about taming the merman, and tame is precisely what it means. So the “control” in the title to me has a more domineering feel to it than “tame”, which fits the tone of the drama, in my opinion.

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Posted on by Lone Crane

A Buyer’s Guide to Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Romance of the Three Kingdoms is one of the classic Chinese novels, and there have been several translations of it into English. Below I go through each one and note the differences between them, and then I provide an excerpt of the same section from each translation for comparison.

C.H. Brewitt-Taylor, Tuttle Publishing, 2002

Romance of the Three Kingdoms, 1925, trans. C.H. Brewitt-Taylor. UNABRIDGED

Supplementary Materials: Introduction by sinologist Robert E. Hegel
Chinese Romanization: Wade-Giles
Current Edition: Tuttle Publishing, 2002, 2 volumes.

Brewitt-Taylor’s translation is the oldest one here and is written in an older, higher-register style. The Wade-Giles romanization of names might be less familiar to younger readers and might be harder to get the hang than the standard pinyin used now. The online version listed below changes the Wade-Giles to pinyin. A decent translation, though there are some mistranslations here and there, such as calling the dagger Wang Yun gives Cao Cao a “sword” (how could he conceal a sword on his person?) and calling it “seven precious” (七寶, the latter word means jewel here, not precious).

Moss Roberts, University of California Press, 2004

Three Kingdoms, 1991, trans. Moss Roberts. UNABRIDGED

Supplementary Materials: Afterword by Moss Roberts, Character list, terms/titles list, ~100 pages of notes, Chronology of main events. FLP edition also has illustrations for each chapter.
Chinese Romanization: Hanyu Pinyin
Current Edition: Univ. of California Press, 2004, 2 volumes.
Foreign Language Press, 1995, 4-volume box set (mass market paperback size). – includes illustrations for each chapter.

Moss Roberts’ translation is about as “definitive” of a translation as you could want, in my opinion. He has more notes than anyone else, including some which offer comments from Mao Zonggang and Mao Lun, the influential Qing dynasty commentators on the novel. Roberts’ translation also follows the original syntax more closely than any of the other translators. For example, in the excerpt below, his is the only translation that briefly hides Cao Cao’s identity as the one who claps until Wang Yun spots him. This is how it is written in Chinese. Those other translators just come right out and name him, spoiling this little bit of mini suspense.

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