Notices by Jenxi Seow 萧晨熙 (jenxi@mastodon.social)

@liztai living in a bubble vs knowing that the world is big. 世界那么大，我先去看看. As the proverb goes: 人外有人，天外有天

@liztai it might help to understand how some of them evolved to the traditional Chinese forms. Simplified Chinese loses some of that.

@liztai Outright ban vs blocking certain sites to make them harder to access.

@panda

There are people making millions through it. They earn a livelihood not just for themselves but for their whole teams or companies.

These 2020 articles turned up in a quick search:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2020/08/06/tiktoks-highest-earning-stars-teen-queens-addison-rae-and-charli-damelio-rule/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lizfrazierpeck/2020/08/10/5-ways-people-can-make-serious-money-on-tiktok/

@liztai @chungliwen Enjoy! Official translations are bound by in-house style guides and publisher’s rules, so less room to work with.

And they need to get everything done before things go to print. Whereas I can always go in and keep iterating and making small corrections, except for the ebooks.

I also advocate publishing on the web instead of ebooks because I get to drop hover tips everywhere for footnotes for more context and translator notes.

@chungliwen @liztai Thanks!

@liztai @chungliwen Thanks for the heads up. Not sure how that happened.

I’m actually itching to start my version of the The Smiling, Proud Wanderer. Long discussion over the translation of the XAJH title. I’ll be sharing that in an article soon.

@liztai @chungliwen You should’ve received an email with the link.

@liztai @chungliwen From my experience, it’s very common for Chinese people to ask for the characters of the names when introduced. And from there decipher the meaning of the names, or ask what it means if it’s an unusual name.

Even in situations where only surnames are exchanged, they would still ask for the character, though in this case the meaning isn’t important.

@liztai The official translations are from a British publisher, probably targets all English-speaking readers who are new to the genre. And from what I’ve observed, many readers have English as a second language.

It helps that the names aren’t too confusing and easier for them to remember/track.

@liztai @chungliwen Thanks for the heads up! Problem solved.

@liztai I spoke to Gigi at length about this. I was against the name translations, but have come around to accepting such an approach is necessary for readers who are new to both the wuxia genre and Chinese settings.

It also puts the reader in the perspective of a native speaker. Native speakers know what his name means each time we hear the name.

Really hope these novels help get new readers interested in the genre and then move on to translations that retain more pinyin terms.