The Husky And His White Cat ShiZun, Volume FOUR 四

MDZS Vol 5 Annotations 1

Part 1 of 6, pages 1 - 45

I finished it! All of the Seven Seas English translation of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation / MDZS / 魔道祖师！ I don’t know if I’m happy or sad. I think I need to listen to the ♥️Audio Drama♥️ again.

This volume flowed a lot more smoothly than Volume 4, but there are still a few places I tripped and had to look back at the Chinese. Here they are, plus an unhelpful comment about the inaccuracy of one of the beautiful illustrations:

More under the cut

Just in case anyone can’t remember the names of all the musical instruments.

This is a minor word-choice quibble, but here it is. I think LWJ limped, as he was not hobbled, just injured.

Re my note at the top of this page: I think it’s similar in Western culture (I know I’ve been steeped in xianxia maybe too deeply when I forget the culture that I’m actually living in), but in Chinese culture it’s especially important to greet people by name/title, especially when you first see them, and again when you separate. It’s a simple, sweet way to acknowledge that you see them and respect them and appreciate them and support them; if they need help with homework or with reaching a high shelf, you’re here to help; if you’re the one who gets help and gifts and tasty treats, then you’re showing that you appreciate everything about them (and you’re ready for more cookies).

Each time I walk into my house it’s like a game of hide-and-seek where I have to find each family member and declare my presence (and demand affection in return); and each time I leave I yell “I’m leaving!” from the door (because I’m late and must go quickly!) so that they know that I am no longer available to help, but I will miss them all and love them from afar.

The illustrations are gorgeous. I don’t know if they would be so gorgeous if JC was holding his little umbrella overhead, like in the text, but you must admit that it’s quite a flex that JC can beat up many people with Zidian while keeping his head and shoulders dry.

You all remember the family / martial-family nomenclature, right?

MDZS Masterlist.

All the Books I'm Annotating Masterlist.

More Evidence for How My Favorites are Evil (Geniuses)(but not really evil)

from 杀破狼 Stars of Chaos, Ch 57:

Gu Yun laments not being more decisive about obliterating (murdering) all the evidence that he had previously mostly obliterated; or he should have just collected the evidence and used it to stage a hostile takeover. Sigh. Oh well.

Chang Geng reassures LiaoRan that he won’t attack the emperor (not because being nice is the right thing to do, but) because it’s not the right time.

I’m sure there are plenty of other modern western stories where the main characters are grey, but I just can’t think of any other story where the non-villain-coded main characters are all “darn, I should have murdered that other person” and “don’t worry — I won’t murder until the time is right.”

Do your followers know about Libby? It's an app where, at least in the United States, you can listen to as many professionally recorded audio books as you'd like for FREE, so long as you have a library card. You don't even need to visit the library, you can just borrow the audiobooks from your phone.

I don't know. I hope they do. But perhaps a few more of them will after reading this.

Libby App

Download the Libby App: ebooks & audiobooks FREE from your library

Bring the library to you! Free digital books, magazines and more! Available for iOS and Android devices.

Stars of Chaos 杀破狼 Vol 1, Notes 3

By Priest. Notes on the 7 Seas English translation.

Pages 148 - 202

As they mention in the Appendix, Priest doesn’t use naming conventions in conventional ways. She also never introduces characters’ courtesy names - she just uses them and assumes that you’ll figure out who it belongs to eventually and will totally remember it three / thirteen chapters later.

More under the cut

Chinese uses （在我）身上 a lot to mean “at me” “to me” “on me.”

On being a laughingstock of a godfather, here are those 12 words, 2 commas: “头回给人当义父，当不好，见笑。”

As for the note at the top of this page: 他本想要照顾一辈子的小义父化成泡影. While the text reads “the godfather (that he had wanted to take care of for his entire life) became the shadow of foam,” the meaning is closer to “his idea of his godfather (the man he loved deeply and wanted to take care of the rest of his life), that idea dissolved away as surely as the shadow of foam dissolves into nothingness.”

The fun part of this (translation) is that in Chinese, this entire paragraph is all just one sentence. 5 commas, one em dash. You’d think it would be more difficult to understand with so little punctuation, but it actually works very well and very clearly - descriptions that require a whole separate sentence in English are just modifiers in Chinese; and parts of speech that have to be specified in English are very clearly implied in Chinese, with no ambiguity at all.

Gu Yun never treated any of the princes badly. He was just a difficult child himself.

It’s clear in the Chinese that Chang Geng lost his temper because the Celestial Wolf Prince was speaking irreverently of / to Gu Yun, and no one is allowed to be rude to Gu Yun! (Except maybe Shen Yi, but that’s a different, more familial, type of irreverence.)

Yes. Hanlin Academy. Remember this phrase - you’ll see it, like, twice more. Book-smart kids who tested into imperial government.

They like to use the word “puppet,” whereas anime-fans might be more used to “robots” or “mecha.” Same same.

Stars of Chaos - All The Notes List

All The Seven Seas Books Masterlist

MDZS Volume 4 Annotations

Part 4, pages 152 - 174

More notes on MDZS vol 4! A few anti-slang, and then a lot of clarifications of sentences or words that I felt were strange or misleading or not as precise as they could be.

More below the cut!

杀破狼 Stars of Chaos:

This book has more plot than I have Chinese reading comprehension, but I think I see it now.

Chapter 52 is where Chang Geng asserts his superior intellect and problem-solving skills (because his vision isn’t clouded by pesky things like emotions for people who aren’t Gu Yun); and Chapter 53 is where he/Priest lays out Chang Geng’s evil master plan to bring peace and prosperity to the nation so that maybe he can convince Gu Yun to take a vacation.

No details or anything; just “this is the problem and that is what must be done.”

I feel like this performance by Zhou Shen isn’t talked about enough. I mean, yah it has over 2M views, but that’s, like, only slightly more than the population of my city. Not enough!

https://youtu.be/pJnRnhIEJgU

I never used to like breathy singing or slow, romantic songs until I heard Zhou Shen, and then I fell in love with His breathy, romantic singing.

And then he gets up and uses his unbelievably angelic voice to get totally goofy In The Same Song.

😍

Stars of Chaos 杀破狼

Vol 5, pages 153 - 237.

Another ten...

Just in case you can't remember from way back when, A-Yan was the youngest of the previous emperor's sons (youngest brother of the current emperor). He was a friend of Gu Yun's, and he died in childhood.

And, in case you don't already know, and I can't remember if Priest ever actually told us, "Hanshi" is the courtesy name of Jiang Chong.

I think Priest thinks that all of her readers are really smart, 'cuz she keeps assuming that we just Remember or can Infer things.

No one purposefully touches ash. It sometimes falls on the ground, and then we accidentally step on it. (And the Chinese word used here is 踩 = step on.)

白龙鱼服 white dragon fish clothes, as in Chang Geng was out there incognito and none of the commoners around him knew his high status.

此人也不知道是胸怀山川，还是真没心没肺...

胸怀山川 = his chest contains mountains and rivers = very broad-minded and open. "Tolerant of his circumstances" is a good translation; I just like the imagery of mountains and rivers.

没心没肺 = no heart, no lungs = (among other meanings) totally heartless. Immune to emotion.

Probably Working Off Different Versions again! But I like my old pirated online version (-pout-). Here is the pirated online version and my lame translation of it:

长庚当然不是要哭，Of course Chang Geng was not on the verge of tears,

他正强压着心里掺杂着幻觉的杀意，he was currently forcefully suppressing the mixture of killing intent and hallucinations in his heart (he was very very mad at the emperor),

整个人都快炸了。 his entire person was about to explode.

I like the imagery of the sky being soft and whole, like a blanket falling upon you, rather than fragments.

(I really love the imagery of 天塌下来当被子卷 = sky falls down, treat it as a blanket and wrap yourself up in it :)

"还有钟老将军没教过我的"

OK. I am here to share my confusion. The translation is totally true and valid, but I feel (sigh. feelings again.) like this sentence can carry more than one meaning, or maybe should imply something more (in the version I read, anyway).

So: my idea is that Chang Geng is crazy smart and he's giving Gu Yun all sorts of good ideas, so Gu Yun is all "Wow, you learned a lot from old General Zhang," and Chang Geng replies with "And I also have lots of original ideas that did not come from old General Zhong, I am way smarter than anyone you have ever met, you had better listen to me and do what I recommend."

That is my interpretation of those 11 little characters, anyway, which I think makes slightly more sense in this context.

Top: in case you aren't keeping a list of all the characters as they are introduced, Emperor Wu was the emperor two emperors ago, also Gu Yun's mom's dad = Gu Yun's maternal grandfather. He is the one who overthrew the previous dynasty, but he had no surviving male heirs and so gave the throne to the previous emperor, who was the dad of the current emperor. (I got so confused on my first read-through that I started a Character List on my second read-through.）

Bottom: 鸟尽弓藏. From mdbg.net: "lit. the birds are over, the bow is put away (idiom); fig. to get rid of sb once he has served his purpose"

浑水摸鱼。 Mdbg.net again: "to fish in troubled water (idiom); to take advantage of a crisis for personal gain"

Chinese has lots of cool idioms <3

And another ten are done!

My DanMei Literary Adventure Masterpost

Stars of Chaos - All Notes Links

MDZS Vol 5 Annotations 4

Part 4 of 6, pages 193 - 267

We are now in the Extras!

I’m just here to provide a little bit of cultural clarification (ex: what it means for a gentleman to use his mouth and not his hands, and No it’s not a scandalous sexy allusion) and context (not all cabbages are just cabbages). And maybe complain about the occasional word choice and commiserate over how hard it is to translate sentence structure (Chinese feels much more flexible to me than English).

I remember back in the Firefly days, when I had to tell an acquaintance that “Mei Mei” did not mean “sweetheart” and maybe don’t call her boyfriend that. Not in public, anyway.

More under the cut.

For more about cabbages and pigs: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/好白菜都讓豬拱了

Yes, you can find places where 面面相觑 translates as “dismay,” but it’s more like “I look at you, you look at me, both of our expressions are blank and helpless (and surprised):” “What is going on with our HGJ?” “I don’t know. Do you hear anything?” “No. You?” “No. Wha?”

I don’t know. Maybe it’s the long-leaved orchids portrayed in so many Chinese paintings; maybe it’s another plant that goes by a similar name. An image search of 兰草 in Chinese is only moderately helpful. Fill in your own best background flora.

Xue Yang is definitely at least a full-height teenager by this time.

MDZS Masterlist.

All the Books I'm Annotating Masterlist.

So during my second time watching Jiang Cheng walk across what I now know is a random mountain to meet Wen Qing, all I could think about was Wei Wuxian, Wen Qing, and Wen Ning’s plan and the fact that they must have been following him, like:

Wen Qing: should he really be walking across that field?

Wei Wuxian: I don’t know, I thought he would follow the path

Wen Ning: should we stop it now so he doesn’t trip and fall?

Wei Wuxian: naw let’s wait a bit, he needs to think it’s difficult

Wen Ning: is this a good place? can I ring the gong now?

Wei Wuxian: I think it’s good. wen qing?

Wen Qing: yeah yeah it’s fine. ring the stupid gong - I’ll lead him to a better spot

Wen Qing: I’m not going to wear the hat

Wei Wuxian: c’mon, you need to wear the hat

Wen Ning: yeah, wear the hat, a-jie

Wen Qing: he’s wearing a blindfold! he won’t be able to see my face anyway

Wei Wuxian: but what if he takes off the blindfold? what then, hmm? the hat is key

Wen Ning: yeah a-jie, the hat is key

Wen Qing: uuuuugh fine I’ll wear the hat