#statistically average

What I find unacceptable is that these mistakes were allowed through into the final printing, which tells me there was insufficient, if any, review of the content, either by the translators, or by another party familiar with the original work. The production timeline feels very, very short for such a project (I cannot even begin to imagine trying to translate 32 chapters of MDZS in under four months), which maybe explains, but doesn’t excuse. I am not intimately familiar with the publishing industry, so I will refrain from speculating further, except to point in the direction of both Suika and Pengie’s threads on the matter:

If the books needed more time to be done well, then they should have allotted more time. The translators should not be bearing the brunt of the criticism. It isn’t fair to them—and it isn’t fair that the publication schedule and process set them up for failure in this way.

Pronunciation Guide:

This is perhaps my most serious grievance, and the one that’s kept me from writing this for four and a half months. I know that my reaction is personal and extreme, but I also think that it has roots in something that is both real and actionable. Forgive me, this will be harsh.

When I saw the pronunciation guides in the back of all the books, I felt physically ill.

It reads like an echo of all the times I’ve had my “difficult” language used against me, but this time packaged up as a pseudo-helpful, sightseeing brochure to make English speakers feel good about themselves when confronted with supposedly “difficult” content. They are condescending, touristy, and teach a bastardized, hyper-Americanized anglicization of my first language. The pronunciations, as they are written, sound exactly the way a classmate used to harass me by following me around, mocking my name, and pulling at the corners of his eyes. They are worse than useless.

These guides are not only disrespectful to people like me, but also disrespectful to the English speakers who put their trust in this production based on the marketing that implied there would be careful consideration of the cross-cultural challenges involved. When there was so much reassuring from the publisher that these books would be done right, that the production would be handled with respect and understanding, the inclusion of these guides was particularly insulting. Much has been made about how they are inaccurate—which they are. But what’s more egregious is their tone, their technique, their application.

Mandarin pronunciation can be challenging for English speakers. I am not contesting this. But I ask—what was the purpose of these guides? “[Mandarin] is a tonal language,” they read, “so correct pronunciation is vital to being understood!” But there is not a single further allusion to tone within the guide, and the pronunciations that follow are not, in any way, going to help a reader new to the language pronounce anything well.

Obviously, two-page pronunciation guides cannot be a substitute for language instruction—but then they should not make any pretension to be. I cannot see these guides as anything other than a way to pander to the egos of English speakers, to simplify and make palatable this language that might make them uncomfortable with its difference. These guides promise knowledge on culture that they don’t deliver, and instead mislead readers with racist caricatures of the language.

Lest this is met with responses along the lines of “but it’s hard to create a pronunciation guide” and “it makes the book more accessible”—1) of course it’s hard. So what? Doing it badly was worse than not doing it at all. 2) No, it doesn’t. Misinformation does not increase accessibility.

There was every opportunity to create something respectful and sincere. Many people have pointed out that the Pinyin system is very serviceable and consistent. If it wasn’t feasible to include a basic guide to Pinyin in the books, perhaps there could have been a space for “Additional Resources” instead, providing links or references to places where a reader could seek out that information if they wanted it. We live in a multimedia world. Several fans, including myself, have made audio pronunciation guides—something like that, more professionally produced, might have been an option. There was room to allow readers to explore and learn and put in effort to engage instead of spoon-feeding them this slapdash, half-assed bullshit.

I can believe that it was done with the best of intentions. But that doesn’t make it good.

Marketing:

This leads into my final point, which is a bit more nebulous and hard to explain, but I’ll try.

The inclusion of guides beyond a pronunciation guide and glossary was also insulting, in a different way. Why is there a need for a character guide? Can readers not be trusted to read? I might understand an inclusion in later volumes as a refresher, but it’s baffling to me that these guides are considered necessary at the outset, and it’s also frustrating to see that they contain interpretations of characterization and motivation. “The identity of certain characters may be a spoiler; use this guide with caution on your first read of the novel.” Why include it at all?

As a reader, I do not want to be told how to understand the text. The text can speak for itself without an external party setting the tone. These stories are not more complicated just because they are Chinese. Harry Potter didn’t come with an extensive list of characters and the meanings of their names. And those were books written for children.

MXTX’s works are adult books. They are adult books, but everything about their marketing in English feels like they are aimed at teens that the publishers don’t think are very smart. Yes, the stories may be culturally unfamiliar, but that doesn’t mean readers need to be hand-held with cutesy lectures. To do so feels like it says something less than flattering about the publisher’s perception of MXTX’s work and audience.

-

When the English licensing of MXTX’s works was first announced, I admit my first reaction was despair because I was so afraid of the consequences, of what unintended collateral damage the final product might generate if it fell short of a very high standard—for the translators, for MXTX, for the greater danmei genre. It’s difficult to be the first, and it’s difficult to be the first with such high stakes. And unfortunately, here we are, and it played out nearly exactly how I had predicted and hoped it would not.

I am not unbiased, and my views certainly reflect that. It is possible that some of my criticisms are excessive or unsympathetic. However, I have spent a long time thinking this over and attempting to put it all into words, and I would appreciate having my criticisms considered seriously, even if you eventually decide that you disagree with them. But I am tired and I am terribly sad that something I loved so much was handled in a way that felt so disrespectful. How can I be excited about the English releases of these books if I can hardly bear to look at the copies on my shelf? Unless a lot changes about the future installments, I cannot view any English licensing announcements with anything but bitter disappointment. I have no trust left to give, and no heart to spare.

anglophone fandom goes fucking wild for 知己, from "omg and they were soulmates" jokes to screaming about netflix's summary for the untamed:

In a magical world of inter-clan rivalry, two soulmates face treacherous schemes and uncover a dark mystery linked to a tragic event in the past.

not gonna lie it was only funny the first few times haha yes indeed these two omg ~soulmates~ how did they get this past censorship etc etc. but now? i just find it aggravating. on particularly bad days, i have to put the internet down gently or I'll start crying.

look. i get it. there is a delight in seeing what feels like a daring flaunt of government restrictions, especially when it's something close to your heart, something close to your personhood. get wrecked, wangxian too gay for the censors etc. we cannot be suppressed. or, perhaps in more familiar terms, "we're here, we're queer, get used to it."

there's a flavor to the way a lot of these offhand comments and jokes about gay couples somehow "getting through" censorship in BL cdramas that makes me flinch when I see them. it's hard to pinpoint and describe--but maybe it's the lack of fear. chinese governmental censorship of the media is. not a joke, you know? there can be severe consequences for crossing the state. do you remember the case of tianyi? do you remember the disappearance of fan bingbing? do you remember li wenliang?

do you remember this post?

what troubles me about 知己 and "soulmates" in particular is how it's often held up as some kind of evidence of how brazen and cheeky the media in question is being--to the point where sometimes people will claim or imply that translating 知己 as anything other than "soulmates" is somehow queer erasure. that 知己 in the contexts of both CQL and SHL carried explicit romantic intent and to not encode that romantic tone within the english translation/subtitle would be, idk, the equivalent of calling wangxian and wenzhou galpals or whatever.

im. okay. im gonna be real with you right now. this just isn't fucking true. moreover, i find this kind of attitude to be such a shallow, one-dimensional approach to the politics of queerness in text, especially in the contexts we're dealing with here. this kind of rhetoric runs adjacent to painfully recent, american-centric chronically online discussions on representation and visibility in pop culture/media that I often find lack complexity and compassion. it feels intensely tied to the american culture of gay pride, the notion that being loudly, explicitly out is the best or only way to embody queer progress and that to do otherwise is, on some level, a betrayal. this isn't even a new conversation. here's a piece that appeared in salon from 1999 in which the author talks about his own misgivings about the culture and focus on pride. it's dated, certainly, but i can't pretend i'm not like. kinda depressed about the fact that so many of his points feel acutely relevant to me, almost exactly 22 years later.

you cannot measure chinese media with the same standards you might measure US (or UK or whatever) media because they are produced within very different cultural, political and historical contexts. being queer in the US or being POC in the US does not automatically give you a privileged understanding of the issues that surround the chinese media industry! i am fucking chinese-american and i had to do a lot of fucking personal work just to understand what little I do right now because it would be ridiculous to say that my heritage somehow gives me perfect access to the whole picture.

i don't. usually like to talk about my academic qualifications--most of the time I see people flexing on that front, I remain highly suspicious because well. look, I also have a college degree in Something Or Other and i was Not Impressed with like 80% of my peers. i know exactly how little you need to do to get a degree at a good, private university in the states. but I think it's tangential to my point, so: I come from an academic background that gave me access to a lot of knowledge and modes of thought which make me uniquely suited to talking about these sorts of subjects, and despite all of that, i still don't feel comfortable outright passing judgment on the majority of issues surrounding danmei fandom/media/etc. it fucking boggles my mind that there are some of you out here really trying to position yourselves as moral arbiters of something most of you can't even grasp in its original language, much less its rich cultural context. you may have noticed that my stance on almost everything is "it's complicated! here's what I believe i understand" so tbh the hubris on display is quite frankly astounding. my irritation with the "soulmates" effect is just a minor facet of *gestures* everything.

i know that the language i'm using is not particularly gentle. i hope you can understand and forgive me for having some ugly, vicious emotions after an ugly, vicious two years, both within fandom and without. i am not trying to punish anyone. i'm just. you know. running really low on good faith and patience.

i ultimately can't blame people for latching onto the soulmates translation--it's compelling, it feels unexpectedly explicit, and it was provided by "official sources" (oof). this is more an entreaty to spend a little more time thinking about some assumptions you may be holding or to reconsider your stances on a few things. maybe you'll ultimately disagree with me--that's fine. i don't want people to agree with me just because I said it, I want people to agree with me because they considered my words and judged them to be sound. but the fact still remains that 知己 isn't revolutionary or even particularly daring. you could call it capitulation and even that wouldn't be inaccurate. it is a socially acceptable way to label an intimate bond between two men in stories, platonic or otherwise. of course they're 知己. it's not the use of 知己 itself that makes an onscreen relationship more or less explicitly romantic but the context of the rest of their interactions. 知己 has multiple valences, and to pretend or assume that the romantic one is the only relevant reading of it is an oversimplification that I feel devalues both the depth of the term itself and, more broadly, love that does not take a romantic form. at its core, 知己 is about intimacy--in many shapes and at many levels.

before i continue, please read @hunxi-guilai's post about 知己 and how it can vary in meaning and gravity depending on context. I'm gonna quote the paragraphs that are particularly relevant to my points here because no offense, i don't trust anyone to read anything or put in the effort to meet me halfway anymore.

first:

People seem shocked when 知己 zhiji is a term dropped in casual conversation or daily dialogue, and they really shouldn’t be; it is as weighty or as casual as someone makes it in the moment. It is a living, breathing word that is actively employed in vernacular vocabularies, not some ancient artifact only pulled out and dusted off for the most significant/dramatic of occasions.

and second:

In the 《天涯客》 audiodrama, Zhou Zishu calls Wen Kexing a zhiji just for noticing that he’s sunning himself on the street (because Wen Kexing is the only one who sees through Zhou Zishu’s disguise at that moment, and doesn’t take him for a beggar). At that point, they haven’t even exchanged a single word, and Zhou Zishu remarks to himself that he hadn’t thought to meet a 知己 zhiji. He makes no more of it than that–just the acknowledgement oh, someone understood me, before moving on with his day.

i think problems arise for a few reasons.

1) a lot of people just do not understand translation from a practical standpoint, which I blame on a combination of flawed education systems and a failure to apply critical reasoning to situations involving translation. i think this is definitely a problem in the US specifically--that's the public education system I grew up in and have personal experience with, and I can say that with a fair amount of confidence. because of this, I see a lot (and i mean a lot) of people insisting on one-to-one translations of terms, concepts, etc. there is a lot of concern with "accuracy" and "what's the correct/proper translation for x then". if you read my last series of posts on translation that i linked up at the beginning of this post, you may have noticed that trend and my frustrations with it. this is less an issue with "poor" or "bad" translations themselves, but with how people have learned (or perhaps, not learned) to interact with translations.

2) a related issue to point 1 is that beyond not understanding the basic complications inherent to all translation is the subsequent (predictable) lack of understanding regarding different types of translation and how different branches of translation will prioritize different things entirely and implement completely different techniques. literary translation is very different from legal translation, which is very different from subtitling for mass market release, which is different from academic translation, which is different from comics translation, which is different from video game localization, which is different from machine translation, which is different from live interpretation etc. etc. etc. this is a problem not only for laypeople but also for professionals who work in translation industries that have little to no interaction with other types of translation. a professional legal translator isn't automatically qualified to talk shit to me about literary translation (and vice-versa) because we have fundamentally different goals, philosophies, and concerns. furthermore, translation as a trade vs translation as an art require different knowledge bases and skills--I'm a terrible medical interpreter, but an excellent literary translator.

3) so put these two gaps in general knowledge together, combine them with an explosively growing fandom, two languages that are notoriously difficult to translate between, the unfortunate political snarl surrounding the source material, then add a dash of tumblr-twitter university-flavored social justice rhetoric, a heaping metric fuckton spoonful of sinophobia, and you get the unfortunate, "知己 EQUALS SOULMATE IF YOU DO ANYTHING ELSE IT'S BOWING TO CENSORSHIP STOP ERASING QUEERNESS FROM MEDIA" take.

is this a (somewhat unkind) hyperbolic representation? i mean, yeah. but please remember, this take also manifests in things like "then what's the proper translation for 知己 [or any other complicated term]?" and "but 知己 is a way of getting around the censors by implying romance, right?" and "well, how do you keep the original [romantic] meaning of 知己 in translation then?" and "omg they really said soulmates" and "CQL/SHL said SOULMATE RIGHTS" and "wangxian/wenzhou are soulmates 😭😭😭😭" and, as i've stated, my least favorite: "CQL/SHL said fuck the censors they're soulmates".

these are fairly innocent on their own--like I said, despite the very serious digression i took up there, I get it. I understand the impulses, I understand why it's fun, but when it piles up and gets repeated over and over, it starts to wear. just. please think twice before idk, hinging entire premises on the misconception that two characters are "canonical soulmates" or making yet another fucking censorship joke or hot take that i personally have to see. stop using chinese state-sponsored censorship as a prop in your bids for internet clout and/or self-absorbed political agendas projected onto fictional characters.

okay.

with that said, i guess now it's time for some more regularly scheduled cyan programming: obsessive opinions about translation choices.

besides often finding online fandom's current preoccupation with explicitly stated queer representation simplistic and uncompassionate or whatever, I also, for petty, personal reasons, just think it's just such an unbelievably boring and unimaginative way to engage with language and literature--with the power of things that are left unsaid, with subtext and subtlety! yes, there is great power and value in explicit statements, but there is also power in the implicit. the wholesale dismissal of anything less than open declarations results in, i think, some pretty hollow takes (and some seriously lackluster writing).

so what are the artistic reasons for why I don't want to see "soulmate" for 知己 anymore?

as hunxi explained in her post, 知己 is a term that changes meaning and gravity depending on context and situational usage. just as it can be used with great significance, it can also be a totally casual thing. taking into account the tendency for fandom at large to think of translation as a one-to-one equivalency, when you consistently translate 知己 into "soulmate" you end up with... issues.

i think this is specifically due to its immutable register--"soulmate" is an inherently weighty term, something that is not true for 知己. furthermore, "soulmate" is likely to carry a romantic connotation in english, which, once again, is not true for 知己. this leads to, I think, a lot of misunderstanding and analytical mistakes when discussing both CQL and SHL, because even if people do understand that it's not an exact translation, there's still a persistent belief that 知己, like soulmate, is inherently weighty and sometimes almost explicitly romantic.

let's talk about CQL and SHL to illustrate my point. that's why most of you are here, isn't it?

CQL first. ep 25. the godforsaken iconic 知己 exchange.

[ID: screenshot from episode 25 of the untamed during the 知己 conversation. lan wangji and wei wuxian face each other in profile. there are no words onscreen. /end ID]

this bitch.

here is the original dialogue:

LWJ: 你把我当成什么人？ WWX: 我曾经把你当作我毕生知己 LWJ: 現在仍是

there are numerous translations of these lines--both netflix and youtube (as of 15 june 2021) render 知己 as "confidant": netflix:

LWJ: Who do you take me for? WWX: I once treated you as my lifelong confidant. LWJ: I still am.

youtube:

LWJ: who do you take me for? WWX: I had once taken you as my whole-life confidant. LWJ: Still, I am.

however, the version that I know most people latch onto/are familiar with is the one where wei wuxian's line is subtitled as something like, "I once saw you as my soulmate of this lifetime". if I remember correctly, the WeTV subs originally had this, as did netflix. the episode description of 25 on wikipedia notes that "Wei WuXian answers that he used to treat Lan WangJi as a soulmate." other instances of 知己 are also now rendered as "confidant" (or "true friend" in one instance), but you can see some of the original translations in screenshots collected in this tweet from december 2019.

on the off-chance that the tweet is moved/deleted, here is a screenshot of the images in question:

[ID: four screenshots from the untamed with different pieces of dialogue that include the term "soulmate". /end ID]

top row, left to right are from episodes 7 and 25. the bottom row is two moments from episode 43, in case anyone is insane like me cares. yes i did pull that almost entirely from memory rip my brain storage space

if I were forced to keep soulmate for at least one instance, i would pick the bottom right scene in 43, where wei wuxian remarks: "人生得一知己, 足矣." // "to have a 知己 in one's lifetime, that is enough". unless i'm forgetting another instance, i would argue that this is wei wuxian's weightiest use of the term throughout the entire series: this is in the present-day arc (so after *handwaves* all that trauma), lan wangji just stood beside him publicly and declared his loyalty on the steps of jinlin tai in front of the most prominent figures in their sphere, we're getting close to the resolution of the plot, and wei wuxian has just learned about lan wangji's punishment, aka the depths of his devotion. to go a little deeper, this is a quote from 20th century poet lu xun and is written in an elevated register. putting aside that this is a 20th century literary reference in fantasy ancient china (but then again: there's really no point in trying to "accurately" date CQL. you may as well try to "accurately" date game of thrones), i think the register is meaningful because wei wuxian moves between registers depending on context, but in everyday speech, is most likely to sit comfortably in a colloquial range. an elevated register carries significance for him, unlike lan wangji for whom this is the norm. (yet again: see hunxi's post on linguistic register in CQL for the rundown on that)

this is in stark contrast to the moment in episode 7 depicted in the top left image. wei wuxian and lan wangji have just presented the yin iron to lan xichen and lan qiren and explained their little adventure at the cold springs. wei wuxian speculates on how everything is connected and lan xichen confirms his reasoning and adds, "Wangji, when you asked me before, I couldn't reveal the truth to you." wei wuxian, realizing that he and lan wangji have had the same thoughts about the situation, goes, "哟，知己啊", which basically means "hey, we're 知己!" if i really wanted to capture the tone of this little interjection, i would say the mood is closest to something like: "yo, we totally vibe/we're on the same wavelength/you get me/samesies!" etc etc. this is about as casual as you can get--it's literally just 知己, prefaced by a particle that's roughly equivalent to "hey/yo/oh!" and followed by an auxiliary particle to express a mild sense of enthusiasm.

you can make an argument to use "soulmates" again in this situation. after all, it's not unusual to hyperbolize semi-ironically in english-- "yo, we're totally soulmates" or "hey, soulmate alert" etc. I don't think these specific (exaggerated) examples are appropriate for CQL for obvious reasons, but i think that, in a vacuum, subtitling this as, "hey, it's like we're soulmates" could work.

HOWEVER, as I said before, im now anti-soulmate and I Would Prefer Not To, so let's explore that.

as established, 知己 can naturally vary in gravity, while I personally don't feel that soulmate does. so in order to keep the "soulmate" translation, I think you have to create a reading of tone that's not exactly true to the character in the moment. if someone says, in a situation like this, "yo, it's like we're soulmates", it's understood that there's an irony to it. they're exaggerating for effect, etc. this isn't necessarily OOC for wei wuxian in general, but I don't think it's true to what's happening in this specific scene and more importantly, to the purpose of the 知己 motif throughout CQL. I believe that 知己 is being used earnestly, if lightly.

the 知己 motif is a CQL-only choice; it is not present in the mdzs novel. the use of 知己/知己-adjacent dialogue (i.e. dialogue concerning familiarity, recognition, understanding, insiders vs outsiders) over the course of the story is one of the ways that I think CQL was trying to illustrate a subtextual relationship that would be accepted by the censors. because it is a motif, I understand why we would want to translate the term with some degree of consistency in order to preserve its purpose.

i believe this hinges on the way that 知己 can naturally vary in tonal weight from very light to very heavy: it's anything from "hey! we vibe" to "you are the only one who truly understands me". to use "soulmate" as a blunt, one-to-one equivalence is a) bad because of my earlier points about how translation is never a one-to-one etc. and b) not to my taste specifically because "soulmate" lacks this natural fluidity, so even if you can make interesting artistic choices by varying the sincerity of how "soulmate" is used (as i showed a few paragraphs up), I think this has a subtle but profound effect on the way wangxian's relationship is presented.

CQL wangxian are quite different from mdzs wangxian in a number of ways, but what's relevant here is how their relationship has a much more fated/meant-to-be flavor to it in CQL rather than in mdzs. from the beginning, CQL emphasizes their special connection, even if neither of them has fully come to terms with those feelings. wangxian's first moonlit duel is way more of a big deal in CQL than in mdzs, for example. other examples include: their tagteam adventure in the cold springs with lan yi; their symbolic forehead ribbon marriage; the lantern scene; meeting songxiao and emphasizing their special connection; the emotional farewell in the rain; i could go on. this is a very different relationship to wangxian in the novel, in which wei wuxian is really so caught up in his own problems before his death that the bulk of wangxian's relationship is actually built up and reciprocated during the present-day arc instead. which i prefer!!!! but that's neither here nor there.

"but cyan!" i hear you saying, "surely that means that soulmate is a good translation? what is a soulmate if not a fated/meant-to-be person??" to which i say, HERE'S MY REBUTTAL: to use "soulmate" as a catch-all translation for 知己 changes the axis upon which the relationship moves. instead of gravity, it becomes sincerity. and this, I think, is not a good reflection of what 知己 (and related dialogue) is meant to convey throughout CQL.

one of the personality traits of wei wuxian that CQL doubles down on is how seriously he takes the important things, regardless of what kind of outer demeanor he presents. jiang yanli says to jiang cheng within the first few episodes that "you know that a'xian never fools around when it matters". that doesn't mean he doesn't have fun! he still buys the 天子笑 liquor when he goes to fetch the invitation from caiyi after all. he likes to mess around, he likes to play tricks and he is blessed with a light heart. but we see over and over again, even as a schoolboy, that he is sincere and heartfelt about important things. once again: see the lantern scene.

to me, I think this is enough reason to step back from trying to use the "soulmate" translation because it necessitates that kind of hyperbolic/ironic tone in english in that moment in episode 7, when I think it's actually narratively salient that wei wuxian is being earnest. this is especially important for one of the first uses of 知己 in the story. 知己 grows heavier with each subsequent use as CQL progresses: it goes from something casual to something much more significant, but I don't believe it's ever used ironically--as i said, i believe the thematic axis is gravity. if we confine ourselves to using "soulmate" as a one-to-one translation for 知己, we inevitably hit snags because the terms just do not function the same way.

"well, ok cyan, then what the hell are you proposing we do instead" you all fucking ask me because heaven forbid i complain about anything without providing an itemized list of proposed solutions

after thinking about it for a really long time, i think my preferred solution is actually fairly simple--instead of trying to translate 知己 as a rigid, one-word noun, just... translate what it means.

if you don't already know, the two characters that make up 知己 are 知 "to know" and 己 "self". so someone who is 知己 can literally be described as "one who knows me". i think that to know and to understand are both english verbs that have the same natural weight variance as 知己. you can, completely sincerely, say both "oh yeah, I know her," and "but i know her" for very different effect. i think that with some work and thought, you could come up with subtitles that not only circumvent the problem of reinforcing one-to-one translation tendencies and the misconceptions that those tend to breed, but also preserve the intended thematic throughline and are an acceptable length for actual subtitle timing and encoding.

this post is already way too fucking long, but in for a penny in for my entire life savings i guess: one of the considerations of subtitles that tends to get ignored or forgotten, especially in fansub territory, is timing and relative length. good subtitles must both convey meaning well and convey it in a length that an average viewer can absorb and understand in the time that it is onscreen. fansubs play fast and loose with this because there's no concern over the idea of capturing and/or maintaining an audience. for the most part, fansubs are for people who are already fans. plus, there's (theoretically) no money/profit involved. for media corporations, this is going to be a much bigger concern--capturing and maintaining an audience is critical to profit. and we all know how much people hate subtitles generally anyways (especially in anglophone countries :)), so they had better be a) clear and b) easy to access if you want to keep your viewers.

this is a significant challenge for chinese -> english subtitles because of the way the languages work. i talk about this at length in my post on lan wangji's speech patterns and the difficulties associated with rendering them into english. if you'd like to see an example in action, here's a screenshot of my aegisub workspace for the SHL special ending easter egg subtitles:

[ID: screenshot of the subtitling program aegisub, displaying a segment of an episode. in the CPS column, a few lines are pale to medium red. the line displayed is "Will Senior please offer critique!" for 请前辈指点 /end ID]

honestly, not too bad! my worst character per second (CPS) ratio is 23CPS, which is the first line.

but look at this screenshot from my aegisub workspace for HIStory3: Trap, episode 1:

[ID: screenshot of the subtitling program aegisub, displaying a segment of an episode. in the CPS column, several lines are medium to bright red. the line on display is "Another division says they can snatch him away, so they just snatch him," for 别的单位说抢就抢 /end ID]

god the hilarity of seeing HOW LONG the english is compared to the mandarin. if you look at the numbers, you may notice that i have a 49CPS and also a 39CPS line right next to each other. that is Bad! this was a personal project, so I was unconcerned. however, this would be unacceptable for official, mainstream release subtitles.

netflix's guidelines for english subtitles are publicly available online. if you scroll down to the sections on reading speed for english subtitles for foreign language source material (II.17), you will see that netflix's standard for adult programs is 20CPS. and i hope by now it's clear why that can be such a bitterly challenging metric to meet in a show like CQL.

this is not to defend the netflix subtitles. or the wetv ones. they're absolutely fucking abysmal, even by the standards laid out in the netflix style guide. I could pick through the document and point out every way in which I believe the CQL subtitles laughably fail to meet the standards (and the infuriating consequences thereof), but that's another post for sure. there is some leeway for "industry requirements" but I'm getting real tired of this excuse when it's clear that the real problem is a) the people in charge of the subtitles simply don't care enough/don't pay enough for good subtitles and b) subtitling/specialized translation isn't really considered a serious, difficult art that requires creative skill to be done well. it's truly fucking enraging.

what i'm trying to do by really driving down on all of these minute details is to hopefully (!!) prompt people into shifting their paradigms re: translation/subtitling and more fully understand how simple misconceptions driven by singular translation choices can ripple out into complex and unexpected forms, harmful or not. i am well aware that the amount of thought, time, energy etc. that I've put into this One Translation Choice is completely unfeasible as a mainstream standard. it's obviously ridiculous! but I think there is a middle ground somewhere that wouldn't have caused so much unintentional damage. "soulmates" is the tip of the goddamn iceberg. (every time i see a one-character name, i feel another piece of my soul crumble away)

for CQL specifically, I've gone back and forth between whether I would prefer using "to know" or "to understand" as the fulcrum of the 知己 translation, and I... think..... I would go with "to know". at least right now. there are a few reasons for that tentative choice, one of which is simply that "know" is only four characters while "understand" is ten. the other is that, after messing around with both in each scenario, I think "know" ultimately flows better sonically.

i'm only going to break down the exchange in episode 25 because i'm exhausted, but here:

ep 25:

LWJ: 你把我当成什么人？ WWX: 我曾经把你当作 [new line] 我毕生知己 LWJ: 現在仍是

there are actually a couple things with this exchange I want to talk about in addition to 知己. first: the way that lan wangji's first line is subtitled: "who do you take me for?"

this is a poor translation because it has absolutely the wrong tone in english. "who/what do you take me for?" is an idiomatic, rhetorical question, that's usually followed by something derogatory. one of the more common forms you'll see is "what do you take me for, an idiot?" it's not appropriate for this serious, vulnerable question that lan wangji is posing.

a much better translation, in my opinion, would be "who am I to you?" which also has some pretty specific connotations in english. it doesn't have to be romantic, but it does often appear in romantic scenarios where someone wants to know where they stand in relation to another. this, i think, gets you the hint of romantic intention that feels appropriate in this scene without the heavy-handedness of "soulmates", and also just. more accurately reflects lan wangji's intentions.

(an aside: i speculate that the reason we got "who do you take me for" is because the chinese sentence structure more or less literally translates to something like "you have taken me for/regarded me as/made me into what kind of person?". depending on tone, you can use it in the same way as "who do you take me for" in english, but unfortunately, that's not what's happening here. it seems like a very unsurprising mistake for a machine translation.)

so the 知己 line. this one is HARD because it's long! and the subtitles split right before 毕生知己 because wei wuxian pauses. I think the power of the line rests in keeping the answer wholly after the pause. the original was, I think, "I once saw you as [pause, new subtitle line] my soulmate of this lifetime."

ugh!! it's so awkward and weird, ESPECIALLY following a "who do you take me for" GOD. here's my proposal:

I once thought you were someone [pause] who would know me for a lifetime.

it's long!! yes it's long, but we have a little wiggle room because there's a lot of heavy silences during this exchange, so we might actually be able to make the CPS limit. or almost. what the fuck ever. I could shorten it further by just saying "I once thought you [pause] would know me for a lifetime" but this is the wrong form of answer for the question "who am I to you?" so I think it's worthwhile to keep "were someone" despite how many characters it adds.

and lan wangji's final response (yes, I have thoughts on this too): we have both "I still am" and "Still, I am". I feel strongly that "Still, I am" is better than "I still am" because lan wangji being lan wangji is using a more formal construction. the 仍 character he's using for "still" is usually literary. putting "still" at the front of the sentence creates a more elevated tone in english, and emphasizes it, which more closely reflects lan wangji's intention.

NOW HOWEVER, if we are going with my dialogue proposals, I would say that we should change this to "Still, I do" because the relevant part of "someone who would know me for a lifetime" is the knowing and the implication in that is "i don't know if you know me right now" or "i don't know if you will actually know me forever" or "you knew me once, and i thought it would be forever, but now I'm not so sure". so i feel that lan wangji's response should be to that implied uncertainty, even if it shifts the grammar a little. I do still know you. I know you right now.

putting it all together, my proposed dialogue would look like this:

LWJ: Who am I to you? WWX: I once thought you were someone [new line] who would know me for a lifetime. LWJ: Still, I do.

DO YOU SEE WHY I THINK THIS IS BETTER THAN SOULMATES. what's powerful about this scene is what isn't being said! it's the tone! it's the fucking reaching out and trying to cling to someone you're afraid you're in the process of losing. fucks sake. what is more intimate than really knowing a person? i hate everything. soulmates my ASS.

all right, let's pivot to SHL, which presents a different set of challenges with its use of 知己. there are two exchanges involving 知己 that I think are particularly noteworthy: once in ep8, the moment we all remember when wen kexing says it, and once in ep30, when jin-wang says he had always thought zhou zishu was his 知己.

in these two lines in SHL, there is an emphasis on 知己's function as a title/role, whereas in CQL I think there's more room to bend the structure of the dialogue around 知己 without losing sight of its original purpose. both of the lines in SHL use 知己 in direct contrast to another, lesser term: in wen kexing's case, he's saying, "you only think of me as a friend? after all this? but I think of you as 知己". jin-wang, on the other hand, is saying, "I always thought you were my 知己, but it seems you're nothing more than an ordinary person". it's much harder here to try and retain the punch of the parallel structure of these moments without the use of a shorter, one-to-one translation: "friend" vs "someone who understands me", and "someone who understands me" vs "ordinary person"--they're such unequal length that I think the overall structure starts to get clunky, especially in episode 30 when it's all said at once. the mandarin has an elegance because each term is two characters: 朋友 (friend)，庸人 (mediocre/ordinary person)，知己

since i never met a translation challenge i didn't charge at headfirst screaming, let's give this a shot. why the hell not.

here's my problem with using "soulmates"--even though I think it does work in episode 8, it really doesn't in episode 30. i think the reason the moment in episode 30 produces such a visceral recoil is because it's using a term that's perfectly appropriate in the social context, but still feels like a desecration because of how that term has been given a different meaning through the rest of the show. as it is right now, the translation "soulmates" feels like a distraction from the intensity of the moment because it doesn't really fit--again, it's the romantic connotations of soulmate that are making things difficult. jin-wang very obviously does NOT mean 知己 in a romantic context (though that can be a valid and fun dynamic to play with in fic etc.) this is a much closer to a patron-minister manifestation of the 知己 relationship, and it centers around ideals, politics, shared vision etc. (for background on this aspect of 知己, please avail yourself of one of hunxi's posts if you're unfamiliar with it idk look, hunxi just has a lot of backlog i can conveniently cite ok)

when I read "soulmate" on the screen it took me right out of the moment--it's such an out-of-place term for the situation! i think it diminishes jin-wang's charisma a lot because it sounds so... laughable?? idk. in any case, jin-wang is beiyuan's ex and I Would Llike To See It

so what i'm looking for is a one-to-one translation that can work in both scenarios, and after a lot of thought on this front, the best I've been able to come up with in english is "kindred spirit". if I were forced to give a general one-to-one translation of 知己 for all-purpose use, this is what I would choose as well. but again, it's far from perfect. I would just prefer it over "soulmates" or "bosom friend" or what the fuck ever as a catch-all.

anyways, episode 8:

WKX: 你怎么不问我当你是什么？ ZZS: 管你当我是什么 ... WKX: 是 知己

YT subs:

WKX: Why don't you ask me what I think of you? ZZS: I don't care. ... WKX: You're my soulmate.

my proposed alteration:

WKX: Why aren't you asking how I think of you? ZZS: Who cares how you think of me. ... WKX: I think of you as [new line] my kindred spirit.

episode 30:

JW: 孤王还一直以为 [new line] 你是我的知己 [new line] 原来 [new line] 你也只是个庸人而已

YT subs:

JW: I always think [new line] you are my soul mate. [new line] But it turns out [new line] that you're no more than an ordinary person.

my proposed alteration:

JW: This lonely prince had always thought [new line] that you were my kindred spirit [new line] But it seems [new line] you were nothing more than another ordinary person.

i... want to do explanations of my choices, but I really am running on nothing but fumes at this point. the only thing I want to mention, I think, is the prince's use of 孤王 as a pronoun. most of the time, when speaking with zhou zishu, he refers to himself as either 本王 or simply, 我. i did a quick check, and i'm fairly confident that 孤王 carries the connotation of solitude/loneliness. it's not an uncommon pronoun (for royalty), but I think it's important that he switches to this one in this moment when he laments that he and zhou zishu aren't what he had once hoped they could be.

if I were translating only for myself, I would probably still try to somehow work with "someone who understands me" because I think that just hits harder than "kindred spirit". so like, "I think of you as someone who understands me" and "This lonely prince had always thought that you were someone who understood me", that kind of thing. i think it gets more precisely at the core of what makes 知己 such an important concept in SHL. but i did think it was worthwhile to show how one might translate 知己 in a different context while restricted to a one-to-one term, just as proof of concept. we can have better subtitles that still meet style guidelines. yes, this is fueled by my own bitterness and spite. im fucking tired of the excuses for piss-poor subtitles when the problem clearly is one of value, not possibility.

so where does this leave us, at the end of approximately 7k (yikes)? i... talked about a lot of things, so if you made it all the way to the end, congrats and thanks for sticking with it. i've been trying to figure out how to end this post since i started it, and I haven't found a good answer, but I'll try.

in early 2013, I met a lesbian activist from china at a conference. she was there with a small delegation, maybe about five young queer people, who worked in beijing, or maybe shanghai--it's been a long time, and I don't remember most of the details. what I do remember was that I was anxious, that I still didn't feel comfortable with a label, and that I was at least half-convinced I was faking whatever queer mishmash of feelings I had going on. and I remember that these were the first queer people from china i had ever knowingly met. they talked about the work they were doing, their own coming out experiences, the antagonism and support they'd received--the woman I spoke to mentioned that they had a lesbian print magazine publication, and I naively asked after the presentation if there was any way they could mail it to someone overseas (me) who was interested in reading it. she hesitated somewhat apologetically and said, "well, no, not really. it's still an illegal publication, you see. we can't distribute like that." this was nearly six years before the webnovelist tianyi was sentenced to a decade in prison for printing and distributing her BL work.

in august 2020, about a year after CQL aired, the organizers of shanghai pride announced that they were halting all activities indefinitely after 11 years. new laws instated early this year on self-publishing are increasing restrictions on free speech.

something a little closer to home: you remember 227 right? do you remember some of the cold, callous reactions to the news? like this one? what about the incessant trickle of hot twitter takes that all seem to start with "I know censorship is bad, but"?

at the end of the day, perhaps this is just my sad, tired entreaty once again to think more about how you interact with stories in translation, how complex the act of translation can be. before you blithely make jokes about chinese media censorship and how shows "get around it" based solely on your view through the small and cloudy window of low-quality subtitles, i ask you again to take a moment to reflect. before you tweet a thread about how even though censorship is bad, it forces creativity and produces interesting art, all while holding up misinterpretations of those subtitles as evidence--look, i don't give a fuck. the hays code produced interesting cinema too. many terrible things produce interesting art.

on a more personal note: before you start a fucking dissection of a language you don't understand on my personal vent post, before you barge into someone's askbox with this entitled attitude about language, before you ask any of us to act as your personal tour guide without doing us the basic courtesy of a five second google search, before you try to impose culturally ignorant moral judgments on the text, just. take a minute.

this post is as much a summary of my feelings on 知己 and translation as it is a messy, bitter reaction to the straws that are this close to breaking the camel's back. how many times must i reiterate that translation is not and never will be uncomplicated and bloodless before you all stop demanding easy, simple answers? stop asking me to exploit a culture I barely feel belongs to me for your fanfiction. stop asking me to gut myself to make your media more palatable.

i don't have a coherent thesis for this post. i don't want to have a debate. make your own post if you want to have a discussion because I really don't.

as i sit here staring at all the places where I revised my words to be softer, where i put a disclaimer asking for forgiveness, i debate undoing it all and speaking as harshly as i feel. why should i have to disclaim my emotions every time I have them? why should I have to make everyone comfortable when I have been trying with every fucking fiber of my goodwill to be gentle this whole time, only to be backstabbed, insulted, used, talked over, dismissed? must even my anger be eloquent to be valued? what do i need to be forgiven for?

For context, we are referencing two connected instances: the conflict described in these two threads (here and here), and when @/jelenedra tweeted about giving Jewish practices to the Lans. Regarding the latter, we felt that it tread into the territory of cultural erasure, and that it came from a person who had already disrespected diaspora’s work and input.

Context

The Lans have their own religious and cultural practices, rooted both in the cultural history of China and the genre of xianxia. Superimposing a different religious practice onto the Lans amidst other researched, canonical or culturally accurate details felt as if something important of ours was being overwritten for another’s personal satisfaction. Because canon is so intrinsically tied to real cultural, historical, and religious practices, replacing those practices in a canon setting fic feels like erasure. While MDZS is a fantasy novel, the religious practices contained therein are not. This was uncomfortable for many of us, and we wanted to point it out and have it resolved amicably. We were hoping for a discussion or exchange as there are many parallels and points of relation between Chinese and Jewish cultures, but that did not turn out quite as expected.

What happened next felt like a long game of outrage telephone that resulted in a confusion of issues that deflected responsibility, distracted from the origin of the conflict, and swept our concern under the rug.

Specifically, we are concerned about how these two incidents are part of what we feel is a repeated, widespread pattern of the devaluing of Chinese fans’ work and concerns within this fandom. This recent round of discourse is just one of many instances where we have found ourselves in a position of feeling spoken over within a space that is nominally ours. Regardless of what the telephone game was actually about, the way it played out revealed something about how issues are prioritized.

Background

MDZS is one of the first and largest franchises of cmedia that has become popular and easily accessible outside of China. Moreover, it’s a piece of queer Chinese media that is easily accessible to those of us overseas. For many non-Chinese fans, this is the first piece of cmedia they have connected with, and it’s serving as their introduction to a culture previously opaque to them. What perhaps is less obvious is that for many Chinese diaspora fans, this is also the first piece of cmedia THEY have connected with, found community with, seen themselves in.

Many, many of us have a fraught relationship with our heritage, our language—we often suffer from a sense of alienation, both from our families and from our surrounding peers. For our families, our command of the language and culture is often considered superficial, clunky, childish. Often, connecting with our culture is framed as a mandatory academic duty, and such an approach often fosters resentment towards our own heritage. For our non-Chinese peers, our culture is seen as exotic and strange and other, something shiny and interesting to observe, while we, trapped in the middle, find ourselves uprooted and adrift.

MDZS holds an incredibly important place in many diaspora’s hearts. Speaking for myself, this is literally the first time in my life I have felt motivated and excited about my own native tongue. It's the first time I have felt genuine hope that I might one day be able to speak and read it without fear and self-doubt. It is also the first time that so many people have expressed interest in learning from me, in hearing my thoughts and opinions about my culture.

This past year and a half in fandom has been an incredible experience. I know that I am not alone in this. So many diaspora I have spoken to just in the last week have expressed similar sentiments about the place MDZS holds in their lives. It is a precious thing to us, both because we love the story itself, and because it represents a lifeline to a heritage that’s never felt fully ours to grasp.

It’s wonderful to feel like we are able to welcome our friends into our home and show them all these things that have been so formative to our identities, and to be received with such enthusiasm and interest. Introducing this to non-Chinese friends and fans has also been an opportunity to bridge gaps and be humanized in a way that has been especially important in a year where yellow peril fear mongering has been at an all-time high.  

History

However, MDZS’ rise in popularity among non-Chinese audiences has also come with certain difficulties. It is natural to want to take a story you love and make it your own: that’s what transformative fandom is all about. It is also natural that misunderstandings and unintentional missteps might happen when you aren’t familiar with the ins and outs of the culture and political history of the story in question. This is understandable and forgivable—perfection is impossible, even for ourselves.

We hope for consideration and respect when we give our knowledge freely and when we raise the issue of our own discomfort with certain statements or actions regarding our culture. Please remember that what is an isolated incident to you might be a pattern of growing microaggressions to us. In non-Asian spaces, Asian diaspora are often lumped together under one umbrella. In the west, a lot of Chinese diaspora attach themselves to Korean and Japanese media in order to feel some semblance of connection to a media which approximates our cultures because there are cultural similarities. This is the first time we've collectively found community around something that is actually ours, so the specificities matter.

There is a bitterness about being Asian diaspora and a misery in having to put up a united front about racial issues. Enmity towards one group becomes a danger to all of us, all while our own conflicted histories with one another continue to pass trauma down through the generations. Many of us don’t even watch anime in front of our grandparents because of that lingering cultural antipathy. When the distinctions between our cultures are muddled, it feels once again like that very fraught history is flattened and forgotten.

Without the lived experience of it, it’s hard to understand how pervasive the contradictory web of anti-Asian and, more specifically, anti-Chinese racial aggressions are and how insidious its effects are. The conflation of China the political entity (as perceived and presented by the US and Europe) with its people, culture, and diaspora results in an exhausting litany of criticism levied like a bludgeon, often by people who don’t understand the complicated nature of a situation against those of us who do.

There is often a frankly stunning lack of self-awareness re: cultural biases and blind spots when it comes to discussions of MDZS, particularly moral ones. There are countless righteous claims and hot takes on certain aspects of the story, its author, and the characters that are so clearly rooted in a Euroamerican political and moral framework that does not reflect Chinese cultural realities and experiences. Some of these takes have become so widespread they are essentially accepted as fanon.

This is a pattern of behavior within the fandom. It is not limited to any specific group, nor does it even exclude ourselves—we are, after all, not a monolith, and we should not be placed on pedestals to have our differing opinions weaponized against one another in fandom squabbles. We are not flawless in our own understandings and approaches, and we would appreciate it if others would remember this before using any of us as ultimate authorities to settle a personal score.

It is difficult not to be disheartened when enthusiastic interest crosses the line into entitled demand and when transformative work crosses into erasure, especially when the reactions to our raised concerns have so frequently been dismissive and hostile. The overwhelming cultural and emotional labor we bring to the table is often taken advantage of and then criticized in bad faith. We are bombarded with racist aggressions, micro and macro, and then met with ridicule and annoyance when we push back. Worse, we sometimes face accusations of hostility that force us to apologize, back down, and let the matter go.

When we bring up our issues, it usually seems to come with the expectation that there are other issues that should be addressed before we can address ours. It feels like it’s never really the time to talk about Asian issues.

On the internet and in fandom spaces, Western-coded media, politics and perspectives are assumed to be general knowledge and experience that everyone knows and has. It feels like a double standard that we are expected to know the ins and outs of western politics and to engage on these terms, but most non-Chinese have not even the slightest grasp of the sort of politics that are at play within our communities. We end up feeling used for our specialized knowledge and cultural background and then dismissed when our opinions and problems are inconvenient.

As the culture represented in MDZS is not a culture that most non-Chinese fans are familiar with, we’d like to remind you that you do not get to decide which parts of it are or are not important. While sharing this space with Chinese diaspora who have a close connection to the work and the painful history that goes along with being diaspora, we ask that you be mindful of listening to our concerns.

Cultural erasure is tied to a lot of intense historical and generational trauma for us that maybe isn't immediately evident: the horrors of the Pacific theatre, the far-reaching consequences of colonization, racial tensions both among ourselves and with non-Chinese etc. These are not minor or simple things, and when we talk about our issues within fandom, this is often what underlies them. This is one of the first and only places many of us have been able to find community to discuss our unique issues without feeling as if we’re speaking out of turn.

With the HK protests, COVID, the anti-Chinese platforms of the US election etc., anti-Chinese sentiment has been at the forefront of the global news cycle for some time now, and it is with complete sincerity that we emphasize once again how important MDZS fandom has been as a haven for humanizing and valuing Chinese people through cultural exchange.

Experiencing racial aggression within that space stings, not just because it’s a space we love, but because it feels like we’ve been swimming in rapidly rising racial aggression for over a year at this point.

Feelings

This is a difficult topic to broach at the best of times, and these are not the best of times. Many of us have a wariness of rocking the boat instilled in us from our upbringings, and it is not uncommon for us to feel like we should be grateful that people want to engage with something of ours at all. When we do decide to speak up, we’ve learned that there is a not insignificant chance that we’ll be turned on and trampled over because what we’ve said is inconvenient or uncomfortable. When it is already so difficult to speak up, we end up second-guessing and gaslighting ourselves into wondering whether there really was a problem at all.

We’d like to be able to share what we know about our culture and have our knowledge and experience be taken seriously and treated with courtesy. This is a beautiful, rich world built with the history of our ancestors, one that we too are trying to connect with. When we find it in ourselves to speak up about it, we would appreciate being met with consideration instead of hostility.

We don't have the luxury of stepping away from our culture when we get tired of it. We don't get to put it down and walk away when it’s difficult. But if you're not Chinese or Chinese diaspora, you get to put this book down—we'd like to kindly request that you put it down gently because of how much it matters to all of us in this fandom, regardless of heritage.

What we are asking for is reflection and thoughtfulness as we continue to engage with this work and with one another, especially with regards to how Chinese issues are positioned. When we raise issues of our own discomfort, please take a moment to reflect before reacting defensively or trying to shut us down for spoiling the fun—don’t deprioritize our concerns, especially in a fandom for a piece of Chinese media. We promise most of us are not trying to start shit for the sake of a fight. Most of the time, all we want is acknowledgement and a genuine attempt at understanding.

Our hope with this statement is to encourage more openness and understanding between diaspora and non-Chinese fans while we navigate this place that we’re sharing. Please remember that for many of us, MDZS is far more intense than a typical fandom experience. Remember that the knowledge we have and research we do is freely and happily given, and that it costs us both materially and emotionally. Please don’t take that for granted. Remember too that sometimes the reason for our discomfort may not be immediately evident to you: what seems culturally neutral and harmless might touch upon specific loaded issues for us. We ask for patience, and we ask for sincerity as we try to communicate with one another.

We are writing this because there’s a collective sense of imposed silence—that every time the newest round of discourse crops up, we often feel as if we’re walking away having created no meaningful change, and nursing new wounds that we’ll never get to address. But without speaking up about it, this is a cycle that will keep repeating.

This is not meant to shame or guilt the fandom into throwing themselves at our feet, either to thank us or beg for forgiveness—far from that. We’re just your friends and your fellow fans. We are happy to have you here, and we’re happy to create and share and play together. We just ask to be respected and heard.

Thank you. Thank you for listening. Several of us will be stepping back from twitter for a while. We’ll see you when we get back. ❤️

* A final addendum: here are two articles with solid practical advice on writing stories regarding a culture other than your own.

Cultural Appropriation for the Worried Writer: Some Practical Advice

Cultural Appropriation: Some More Practical Advice

regardless of my identity, I have formally studied a lot of things: literary translation, media analysis, the politics of oppression, film critique, religious studies, philosophy, four foreign languages etc. and that is all knowledge that I had to work for, and work hard for. I do have a certain measure of authority on all of these subjects over a layperson (to varying degrees), and there are going to be times when i will be more correct than someone who disagrees with me -- but I’ve also absolutely experienced people talking over that specialized knowledge because of who I am, which is, to be clear. extremely infuriating and hurtful. like, i have cried so much about it in the last 18 months. people see my racial and cultural identity before they see anything else, which is understandable to a degree, but upsetting when it becomes the basis for how my work is judged, whether positive or negative. i don’t want you to trust me blindly because i’m abc. I want to you to trust me because you have examined my work critically and judged it to be trustworthy!

so i guess this is getting into the strongly disagree part of the answer: i’ve been speaking a lot with other diaspora fans lately, and it’s been simultaneously hugely relieving and also really saddening. relieving because oh thank god someone else Gets It, and saddening because pretty much all of us, no matter what kind of diaspo we are (north american, european, SEA, taiwanese etc), we’ve all experienced a lot of pressure in this fandom, from non-Chinese, Chinese, and other diaspora fans alike. we’re all acutely aware that we are not modao’s intended audience because being diaspora vs being “from the mainland” or whatever, are actually quite different things, but modao still feels close to home. even if it was not written FOR us it is still familiar to us.

and, because so many of us are multilingual and multicultural, we end up being the bridge between the “actual” chinese fandom and the english-speaking fandom, which is largely made up of non-chinese. (sidenote: I hate it when people say things about being “actually” any identity because it’s almost always for the exact reason you brought up: to use heritage as street cred. it’s like damn, being “actually” chinese doesn’t make ur opinions any less rank. sure you might be “actually” chinese, but do you have basic reading comprehension and literary criticism skills? no? ok then sit your ass back down) many of us are most comfortable in english! so we produce our content in english! but we also DO often have a somewhat privileged access to the culture that underlies mdzs and can explain it in a language that other non-Chinese fans can understand. so it’s not surprising that people flock to us for answers to their cultural questions. and like. if we think we know the answer, it’s natural for us to try and help. this is fandom! we’re here to have fun and find community! and it is definitely a little bit nice to have my culture treated as something desirable for once instead of just like. a weird exotic curiosity that no one really cares too deeply about. and, since a lot of us are able to do things that non-Chinese fans can’t (research in chinese, for example. ask family members for help and more information etc.) we end up just having more information to share.

I think this sometimes results in a tendency for fandom at large to put heritage/diaspo fans on pedestals and tout them as authorities (or use our conflicting viewpoints as ammunition in fandom drama) when the diaspo in question have repeatedly stated that they should not be taken as authorities on something -- and then, once you reach critical mass, your reputation starts to precede you, and I think there’s a lot of misconceptions of how a lot of diaspo act in this fandom simply because of that phenomenon. most of us know that we’re not ultimate arbiters of some kind of cultural gateway, and it can be very tiring both to be treated as such when we insist we are not, and then punished by other people who assume that we acted like we were.

i don’t think there’s a benefit in trying to keep en fandom and cn fandom totally separate, and I also think it’s unfair to consider the cn fandom the “real” fandom. i think that way lies deeper misunderstandings, gatekeeping, etc. i think we can definitely acknowledge the differences between them, but i think trying to make meaningful connections between fandom circles is really valuable! i don’t think i’ve ever made it a secret that modao is my first cmedia fandom? so it’s also the first time i’ve had reason to interact with chinese fandom, which has been super enlightening and interesting! i’ve made some super cool friends and learned a lot about how fandom works in china, how it’s similar and how it differs from the fandom i’m familiar with.

and then, kind of circling back around, there’s also a bit of a sense like, okay, so if diaspo don’t belong in the CN fandom, but we can’t talk about our own culture with some degree of confidence in EN fandom, then like..... where do we go...? if we see EN fandom doing something that contradicts our cultural knowledge, do we just. not say anything? do we not count unless we’ve already ingratiated ourselves to CN fandom? that’s probably where the core of my strong disagreement comes from, because criticism of diaspora fans as like, acting above their station so to speak, feels just like a tired continuation of the same shit we’ve had to deal with for our whole lives, being told we’re not good enough for anywhere and that we should just be quiet and keep our heads down and get over it. that our opinions, despite coming from a unique perspective with a unique relationship to the subject in question, are less valid or real than “actual” chinese people, you know? and sometimes i see that and im like lmfao just sneer at me for being jook-sing and leave then if you’re so eager to think of me as lesser.

so yeah, basically im of a few minds: true! diaspora fans don’t get to throw their weight around just because they’re diaspo. they don’t get carte blanche to act like bullies or try to shape the fandom to their own personal liking and crusade against people who disagree with them. they don’t get to pretend their heritage makes them superior to everyone else, and i think western diaspora especially need to be careful when asserting any kind of moral lens over the text to acknowledge that we have our own biases to interrogate. i am not immune.meme etc. on the other hand, this vein of criticism tends to put all diaspo in a bit of a double-bind, and also, however unintentionally, plays into the general, continuous trend of dismissing diaspora for being diaspora, and i’m really not about that. i don’t think that’s the motivation behind opinions like this, but i do think that when the basis for the argument hinges on the idea that diaspora are not “real” chinese, no matter how much I too have beef with certain diaspora fans, the argument needs to be revisited. 

(ko-fi)

rough transcript (brackets indicate things i didn’t say but wanted to add as a note, or laughs lol):

hello everyone! okay, so I’m going to make an attempt to do some basic pinyin, I guess, a basic pinyin post? so the goal is by the end you should be able to hopefully! look at basic pinyin or any pinyin word and get a general sense of how it might sound. this is not comprehensive, and you shouldn’t take it as such,  but i hope you might be able to get a good foundation out of it? I don’t know, just for sort of, a basic general overview.

I’ll use some MDZS words or names or whatever to I guess keep it fun as examples? But the rules should be generally applicable across the board. This is geared towards native English speakers because that’s what I am. I am not a linguist, just a layperson, so I’m going to be explaining like a layperson.

So, this is pinyin with cyan! chinese school with cyan. horrible, I thought i escaped this [laugh] oh, all those horrible saturdays. [all sounds will be read with first tone unless otherwise indicated]

okay, so, I’m going to do the basic vowels first. there are five so it’s: a o e i u ü

so I’ll do that a — oh wait, no there’s six, oh gosh! okay. bad start! so there are SIX basic vowels: a o e i u ü

so i’ll do that one more time: a o e i u ü

so there’s actually a seventh vowel sound, but we can get to that in a minute. it’s not included in the orthography.

so ü is usually the hardest for native english speakers since it doesn’t exist in english, but a friend of mine recently explained it really well. so if you say “ee” just like, “ee” like in creek or something like that, then shape your lips as if you’re saying “oo”.  so if you speak french or german, it might be easier for you, those are just the two languages I’m familiar with. the ü is the same as the ü in german, like in die Tür, in french it’s just like you know, la lune, mur, etc.

basically say “ee” then move your lips until it looks like you’re saying “oo” — eeeeeüüüü or you can do the opposite, you can say “oo” then move your tongue as if it’s saying “ee” so: ooooüüüüüü. ü. and that’s basically it.

so now i’m going to do the initial consonants. that’s all the vowels. but the initial consonants, the consonants, or the consonant sounds that can start words, there are… well there’s not that many, but I’ll go through them really quick. there is an order, and every consonant is associated, every initial consonant is associated with a natural vowel sound and they come in groups. the order that i learned them in is this:

b p m f • d t n l g k h • j q x • z c s zh ch sh r

[repeated slower]

b(o) p(o) m(o) f(o) • d(e) t(e) n(e) l(e) g(e) k(e) h(e) • j(i) q(i) x(i) • z(i) c(i) s(i) zh(i) ch(i) sh(i) r(i)

I think the official one [the official order, i mean] might have the z c s and the zh ch sh r switched, but it doesn’t really matter they’re both in the same group. so you’ll notice that there are only four naturally associated vowels: o e i and ï [not sure if this is technically the right way to write it, but it’s convenient for illustrative purposes here].

so ï is the one that’s with the z c s, zh ch sh r group. I also think this is a pretty hard vowel to pronounce for english speakers, but i don’t really have a handy way of explaining it. i’ll try though!

so for things like the z c s sounds: say “sss” like you would in english. “ssss” then change your lips to the way you say “ee” and then vocalize without moving your tongue. so you can also produce this sound without changing your lip shape, but doing so will kind of force it, or make it easier to find I think. so ssssssi. sssssi. so that was me doing the whole process with saying ssss and then moving my lips and then vocalizing. but i can also do it with my lips rounded. “si”. that’s me with lips rounded, but having the lips wide like that helps i think

[or you can just vocalize “zzzzz” like in “buzz” or “jazz”. that zzzzzz sound gives you the vowel you want. that probably would’ve been an easier way to explain it haha.]

for the zh ch sh r sounds, to get that, you can say “juh” like how you would say j, a j sound in english, so it’s “juh” but dont’ say the “uh” just stick to the “j”. so that’s the zh sound. “zhii” just like hold it. then ch sh r. I don’t know, I think that’s pretty intuitive once you get those.

in terms of the consonants that i think that are difficult, they are d, j q x and z maybe? so i’ll go over them.

so d taps the palate in english, “duh”, “duh”. the d sound, it taps further back on the little bump [on the roof of your mouth] there, but it taps on the teeth in chinese. I think it’s a non-aspirated t sound? so say “tuh” but then instead of having that breath, just take that out. “de”. it’s a non-aspirated t, it taps in the same spot. so that’s the d, the “de” sound.

j q x, it’s the same sort of things, if you stretch your lips, I think i helps to move it into the right space. so instead of “juh” it’s “ji”. “ji”. “ji ji ji ji”. “qi”, “xi”. the q has the “ch” sound, but instead of sitting so far in the front, it sits a little further back [in the mouth]. instead of “ch” which is the ch, it’s “qi”, which is moving further back. and same with “xi”. instead of “sh” it’s “x”. i don’t know if that helps [laugh]. but instead of “sh” it’s “x”. so “xi”.

again, instead of “ch” it’s “q” and instead of “sh” it’s “x” [laugh]

[I forgot to talk about z oops. it’s basically a combination of d and z in english: “dz”. like the end of “hands”. that “dz” sound.]

okay, so, you can start a word with any of the vowels, any of them can be initials, but some of them will change orthography when they’re at the start of a word. so i think it’s pretty intuitive, but a o e all stay the same. but the “i” sound, the i, turns into a y, the “u”, the u, turns into a w, and the “ü”, the ü turns into yu. so “yu”.

okay, so that’s all the initials! that’s it! that’s not too bad.

okay, so now I’m going to start doing the finals, like the ends of words. you can end any word with any of the vowels, but I’m going to include them anyways because it’s in the table. i just copied this table from wikipedia because it’s i think pretty intuitive and clearly stated. they show both how the sound would be written as a full word and how it would be spelled when it was attached to an initial. so basically what i just talked about regarding changing orthography when you start a word with vowels, things like that.

[link to table in wikipedia]

okay starting with the first row, I’m pretty sure this is ï. the i sound that i said was difficult:

[row 1]

so I’m going to do that again. I’m going to do each one twice and then we’re going to move onto the second row.

[row 1 repeated, each sound twice]

okay, now the second row:

[row 2]

so we’re going to do the same thing again, twice each:

[row 2 repeated, each sound twice]

okay, and the third row:

[row 3]

and again, twice each:

[row 3 repeated, each sound twice]

and then the final row:

[row 4]

and then one more time, twice each:

[row 4 repeated, each sound twice]

okay so that’s it, that’s all the finals I think.

so I think -(i)un/yun is probably one of the harder sounds, the -un with the y at the beginning, the -iun? “yun”, with the umlaut. I don’t really know how to explain how to pronounce that one, but you know it’s the… yun [laugh]

okay so a note on u vs ü. when a word begins with j q x or y, and it’s followed by a u, it’s automatically be pronounced as ü even though it will not be marked. so here are some examples.

names like Ā’Yuàn: yuàn. it’s a ü sound automatically, and it’s not marked in the orthography. or Yú Zǐyuān. yú zǐ yuān. same thing. and then with something like in hánguāng-jūn, jūn, the j the “ji” combined with the -un becomes “jun” like the “yun” sound. or Jīn Zixuān. Xuān. Xuān. it’s the ü sound.

so an example of the same final spellings but with different initials. like the yuàn in ā’yuàn — you can see it automatically changes to an ü pronunciation, but spelled the same way the -uan ending, but you have a different starting consonant that’s not one of the exceptions, so “le” — so in luànzàng gǎng. luàn. it’s “u”. luàn. and then for like yú, yú zǐyuān, yú, instead of the ü, in jīn rúlán, rú, rú, it’s the “u” sound, and they’re marked the same way.

okay! yeah that’s pretty much it. that’s like all the basic sounds in chinese, I’m pretty sure. [laugh] it’s not actually that hard. i mean, it’s obviously hard, but there’s not as many sounds as you expect, or it’s less complex than you might think.

so obviously now we have to deal with tones. i know this is the one that everybody finds really scary, but i actually i know it’s easy for me to say because i’m a native speaker, but i actually think they’re very intuitive and easy to hear, as tones go. it’s gonna be fine. anyways, we’re gonna get through it.

here is how i remember tones: I do it with a cadence. and i literally sometimes have to go through this cadence on words when i’m not sure how to identify what tone they are. this is how i learned it, my grandmother taught me this, you know, i mean, it’s very standard, but:

ā á ǎ à

or hummed it’s: ¯ ´ ˇ `

and then I’ll do it again:

ā á ǎ à

¯ ´ ˇ `

so yeah, i really do sing it sometimes when i’m trying to figure out or remember what tone mark goes on something, I go dūh dúh dǔh dùh [laugh] over and over again until i figure it out.

and yeah, that’s it! they’re pretty intuitive, they follow the path of the tone, or the shape of the tone markers. so you can see the ā is flat, the á goes up, the ǎ goes down and then up, ǎ, and then à, the fourth one, just goes down.

so whenever you’re writing a tone mark on a word, they always go on the last vowel UNLESS there’s an a or e present. those always take precedence. I’ll spell out a couple of examples in the text.

[EXAMPLES: hào not haò and méi not meí, but jiù]

[laugh]

so i will go over, um… okay, i think my dad’s having a meeting downstairs, so maybe you’ll hear him in the background, but okay, the last thing i will go over a couple of sandhi rules, just a few! this isn’t all of them, i think there might be five? but i’m just going to do the three that are most relevant or the most commonly seen I think, or the ones that I think about that will trip you up most likely, i think, when you’re pronouncing things.

so the one that everybody knows, or the one that everybody teaches first, i think is the two third tones in a row will cause the first third tone to turn into a second tone. so for example, in Yílíng Lǎozǔ. “Láozǔ”. the two characters by themselves are lǎo and zǔ, but because they’re right next to each other, it becomes láo, second tone, “láozǔ”. [NOTE: the pinyin will still be spelled as lǎozǔ. you will just automatically read it aloud as láozǔ] so instead of “lǎo zǔ”, it’s “láozǔ”.

and then, the second thing that a third tone does is that a third tone that is followed by anything that is not a third tone drops to a thing that is called a low tone, I know i said there are only four, but this is… here’s an example. [there is also the soft tone, which is kind of the absence of tone, but I’m not going to talk about it here haha] in liǎnfāng-zūn, jin guangyao’s title.

liǎnfāng-zūn, you can kinda hear it doesn’t really rise again at the liǎn, liǎn, liǎn, by itself it goes down up, like a valley, but when it’s followed by the rest of the title, liǎnfāng-zūn, it just kinda sits at the bottom and then jumps back up. liǎnfāng-zūn, liǎnfāng-zūn, it just kind of sits at the bottom as opposed to coming back up, so it’s still. it still follows the same curve, it just doesn’t quite come back up i think

i actually had to look that one up, because I was like. oh is that real? i hadn’t noticed it.

but the third tone on its own is just the third tone, so for example, in xuē yáng’s courtesy name, xuē chéngměi, měi, you can hear it there, it comes back up—oh birds!

so xuē chéngměi, měi. dǔh. [laugh]

[LOL I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT THE THIRD SANDHI RULE I WAS GONNA TALK ABOUT. you can read about it in the link to sandhi rules i’m going to post at the end of the post.]

so yeah, that’s pretty much it actually! hooray! I’m sure, I mean, chinese is a whole language, so it’s complicated, this won’t really get you to a point where you can read pinyin entirely, but i think those are like the basic rules that i use when i’m reading pinyin, but of course, i’ve been reading pinyin for a really long time, that was the primary way i engaged with chinese text for many many years because i was illiterate! i’m still pretty illiterate, but that’s okay. i’m getting better! but yeah, so like i said, this isn’t comprehensive. if it was horribly confusing, if there was stuff in it that just didn’t make any sense, you can ask me questions! I will try to answer them. my brother’s coming home today, and i’ve been using his desk to record because his room has been empty, so i’ll have to figure out something else. but for now, um, yeah!

okay, bye. :)

/end transcript

okay!! so here are the promised links:

tone sandhi rules

very useful interactive table where you can click on sounds to hear them read aloud! (linked to me by @nerd-bastard​ thank you so much!)

obviously the wikipedia page is very good, though it’s a little dense

@tonyglowheart​ sent me a thread of someone reading out mxtx names on twitter here! the reader has a different accent than i do (they say they sound like they’re from the northern mainland. i would guess my accent is probably closer to something near shanghai? since I learned pronunciation from my grandmother, and then of course tempered by my american upbringing)

I would probably recommend going back to the other pronunciation posts I made to see a variation of sounds written out with different tones? i feel like that would be helpful!

anyways WOO thanks for your patience, it’s been a minute. brain’s doing kinda oomf these days, but we’re gonna make it :’) state of the world is. something.