I am truly impressed that Seven Seas had this translated. Major kudos to the translators. Maybe it’s just me and my not-advanced Chinese reading level, but I find the writing style of Stars/Priest-in-general to be extremely …. Juicy. Rich. Savory: if there is a 4-word phrase concisely describing something elaborately and with deep historical context, Priest will use that phrase. If Priest can refer to Character A in a manner that immediately conveys Character B's feelings and emotions about that Character A, she will use that reference style instead of any simple name or pronoun.
Sadly, none of those idioms or reference styles translate well into English.
For me, reading Priest in Chinese is like reading an epic story off a wall mural in an ancient temple, but add jewels and engravings and some filigree in precious metals, and maybe leave some imperial armor and weapons lying around to trip over while trying to decipher some crazy-long sentence punctuated only with commas, no periods or semicolons or even long dashes in sight. It's amazing, but sometimes exhausting, and especially exhausting if I finally puzzle my way through a truly difficult passage only to realize "Ah. Chang Geng is theorizing about the potential short vs long-term consequences of different types of monetary policy. Sarcastically."
Anyway, here are some notes. A few are literal translations that you would have gotten two sentences later; a few are of wordplay that I really enjoyed but which didn't survive translation. A fair number are translations that you could have looked up in the glossary, but, really, who wants to spend their time looking up "shifu" vs "shishu" for a minor unnamed character?
The more important notes are fun cultural references, and some really tricky translations that I tripped over so badly that I had to go back to the original and figure out how to explain in English.
(After reading Vol 2:) AND it looks like Priest edited and changed her work just a little bit for print translation, but I love her (pirated) online version so much that I really really want you to know what I read and how much I love it. So I added a few sentence back in.
Notes 1, pages 12 - 81
Notes 2, pages 86 - 146
Notes 3, pages 148 - 202
Notes 4, pages 203 - 245
Notes 5, pages 249 - 281
Notes 6, pages 288 - 414
Notes 7, pages 415 - end
Notes 1, pages 21 - 46
Notes 2, pages 48 - 62
Notes 3, pages 63 - 87
Notes 4, pages 90 - 144
Notes 5, pages 153 - 237
Notes 6, pages 263 - 333
Notes 7, pages 339 - 366
Notes 8, pages 370 - end
Notes 1, pages 1 - 84
Notes 2, pages 97 - 151
Notes 3, pages 152 - 265
Notes 4, pages 267 - 350
Notes 5, pages 358 - end
Only 24 notes for the entire book! All right here :)
Back to the Masterlist of all the books I'm making notes on.
My Seven Seas translation live-blog has begun!
(It accompanies my Occasional Yelling Into the Void live-blog of my Chinese re-read of 杀破狼.)
Note #1:
The appendixes are Awesome. Really well done for cultural and world-specific context.
If you don’t know the story yet, I suggest Skipping the Character Guide until at least the end of the first arc (too many spoilers)(just finish the Prologue), and skip the Location Guide (too boring).
Start with the Name Guide on page 434.