Thread 24617719

Started reading the Moss translation because I was told it was the best. I don't know why.
It comes off as clunky to me, like sentences are very blunt.
What translation does /lit/ recommend?

But why should I read this instead of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms

>>24618918
it is that?

>>24619011
Shit you are right sorry

>>24617719 (OP)
Learn Chinese.

That's just how it's written
Wait until you get to the bit after Dong Zhuo is killed

>>24619779
>It fell upon the day of full moon of the fourth month, the second year, in the era of
Established Calm (AD 169), that Emperor Ling went in state to the Hall of Virtue. As
he drew near the throne, a rushing whirlwind arose in the corner of the hall and, lo!
from the roof beams floated down a monstrous black serpent that coiled itself up on
the very seat of majesty. The Emperor fell in a swoon. Those nearest him hastily
raised and bore him to his palace while the courtiers scattered and fled. The
serpent disappeared.
I had to read this paragraph several times before I understood it.

>>24619794
Lol youmre illiterate. Ok sorry for being mean but what you're experiencing is a common phenomenon when one starts reading ancient books. Modern books rely on word count and evocative adjectives to get things across and impress the reader, but in the ancient world it is enough to say "a whirlwind" or "a monstrous black serpent" to get the reader's attention. Those are startling things!

>>24619794
U just gotta calibrate ur mindset and its ez pz

Started reading the King James translation because I was told it was the best. I don't know why.
It comes off as clunky to me, like sentences are very blunt.
What translation does /lit/ recommend?

>>24619799
>"a monstrous black serpent"
Is this some kind of allusion to BBC?

>>24619848
Who the fuck said King James translation was the best?
That's one of the more infamous translations.
Try NASB, it's considered most accurate and therefore best.
NASB
>God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

King James:
>And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

>>24619877
it's supposed to metaphor for losing mandate of heaven. It also contrasts the emperor's ancestor founding the empire by slaying a white snake:
>The rise of the fortunes of Han began when Liu Bang the Supreme Ancestor slew a white serpent to raise the banners of uprising, which only ended when the whole empire belonged to Han (BC 202).

>>24619894
Looks like the same thing but simplified so an American can understand it

>>24619894
>NASB is more accurate

>>24619799
Do you think it has anything to do with remnants from earlier, oral styles of storytelling?

>>24619848
The NRSV is generally considered the "academic" translation.

>>24619848
>>24620066
This has become my preference, as well.

Thanks for ruining the thread, faggots

>>24621405
Perhaps if you posted better on-topic conversational content instead of passively bitching tangential discussion wouldn't outcompete directly on-topic discussion.

>>24619794
>The godly medicines brought big successes, and soon he gained the tittle of the Wise and Worthy Master
Big successes? I'm just ESL, but that seems really informal. Three Kingdoms was written for the nobility, you'd think it'be a bit formal.
At this point, I wouldn't be surprised of Cao used "ain't"

>>24617719 (OP)
>pic related
>It comes off as clunky to me, like sentences are very blunt
shocking that the abridged version would be laconic

>>24624234
I used OP pic but I have been reading the unabridged version
https://archive.org/details/luo-guanzhong-the-three-kingdoms-unabridged/mode/2up

>>24617719 (OP)
Are there any good unabridged parallel translation bindings? Ideally it would have English on one page and hanzi with interlinear pinyin on the opposite page. I'm also interested in this format for other Chinese classics.

>>24617719 (OP)
>It comes off as clunky to me, like sentences are very blunt.
thats just chinese kek

>>24617719 (OP)
You are supposed to read it in Chinese. English cannot express the elegance of the story as well.

If you want to experience bluntness go read the Sagas of Icelanders

Thanks for ruining the thread, faggots

>>>That bit where Liu An kills his wife and feeds her to the hero Liu Bei and Bei is so overcome with emotion that this man just fed him his own wife that he cries with appreciation

We need women to return to this level of global importance.

>>24627489
Why do the Chinese seem so cavalier about cannibalism? How many missed meals will it take before my Chinese friends attempt a nibble?

>>24619775
No

>>24627489
>>24628051
Pretty sure they were literally in the midst of a particularly bad famine at that point in the story.

>>24617719 (OP)
Dynasty Warriors 3

>>24626060
Good. Then I don't have to bother reading it at all. There's way too many real classics I want to read.

>>24617719 (OP)
>>24619794
it s just how chinese is
they have no grammar and declinations and conjugation
it s basically grug speak or reading Hemingway
>>24619799
you re the illiterate one anon, romance of the three kingdoms was written in the 1300s, it s far from ancient, compare it to the divine comedy or any other work of medieval european poetry, journey to the west reads the same and it was written at the end of the 16th century at the same time as Gargantua and Don Quixote
furthermore ancient works of literature dont have the clunckiness of chinese, the only one i can think off which is a little more simple is plato s dialogues
chinese doesn t have the same flow as european languages but perhapse there is a beauty which we westerners can t see

>>24628656
Do you need to play the first two to appreciate Dynasty Warriors 3?

>>24628051
>tfw he hasn't heard of DECISIVE TANG STRATEGIC VICTORY

>>24628656
PREASE, BE CAREFOR

>>24631295
>敝邑易子而食,析骸以爨。

>>24619794
What is hard to understand? It's plain english

>>24631426
It's so a weird structure.
Like:
>Those nearest him hastily raised and bore him to his palace while the courtiers scattered and fled
It's just bizarre in terms I can't explain.
I would have written it as something like:
>The courtiers scattered as he was being carried back to his palace.

>>24631599
Your version doesn't convey the urgency with which those nearest him swooped him up. There's a contrast being emphasized: when the Emperor went down some rushed in to help him while some rushed away for their own sakes.

Anyone mind explaining why the "Great" chinese novels are all shonen shit? Romance of the three kingdoms is literally dynasty warriors, and the Monkey King isn't far removed in genre, content and tone from Dragon Ball. Monkey King in particular is a shonen anime, he fights a different demon every chapter and gets a new power up, weapon or ability, and things keep escalating until he fights god himself (Buddha). It's no different to Persona or Final Fantasy in its power creep.

The Chinese are the people that kept the Transformers and Fast and Furious franchises in theatres for so long. So I'm starting to think that whole empire has congenital shit taste.

>>24629127
>they have no grammar and declinations and conjugation
They have no declination or conjugation (might be starting to re-evolve it, the writing system makes it unclear where the word boundaries are, but if it is it's only in the beginning stages), but it certainly has grammar, enough to fill a whole wiki:
https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/
We English-speakers think of "grammar" as meaning declension and conjugation because the main languages we formally studied the grammar of historically were Latin and Greek, and they have a lot of it (while the other aspects of their grammar come pretty naturally to us because of the Indo-European family resemblance), but "grammar" is just any set of rules for how linguistic elements are combined to form meaning.

>>24631922
It's the other way around: shonen anime are like that because they're inspired by the great Chinese novels.

>>24632054
all european languages have a lot of morphology, english perhapse not so much
that s why we tend to call it simple and also why it s harder to articulate if you have a lot to say, but that isn t a concern for the average english simpleton
still chinese grammar is much simpler i dont understand how such an old and widely spoken language is so robotic

>>24631238
First one is a one on one fighting game and the second one is closer to what the series would become, but imperfect. 3 really solidifies the formula and greatly expands the roster, but they'll still let you choose a general and present you a scenario in which he leads his faction to total victory over China, something none of the characters in 3 really came close to doing, not even Sima Yi. The last one I played was 8 or 9, and it adds the Jin faction where Sima Zhao ultimately pacifies the whole country. Most of the games are decent, mindless fun with a little of the novel's story peppered in, but a handful of them are lazy shit where the characters share movesets

>>24617719 (OP)
Its a real dry read moat of the time, yes, but every now and again there are cool passages like Zhang Fei yelling so loud it kills a guy, or Guan Yu's ghost possessing Lu Meng and killing him by making him bleed from every orifice in his body

>>24628656
Dynasty Warriors 3 is great

>>24632175
It's not a question of "robotic", it's just different strategies for expressing meaning. Language evolution is cyclical, isolating languages (like Chinese or Malay) become agglutinative languages (like Turkish or Japanese) as individual words become part of common expressions to indicate grammatical meanings (like "going to" -> "gonna") and then fuse onto the root word, then agglutinative languages become fusional languages (like the European languages) as sound change and analogy turn the sequences of grammatical endings with distinct meanings into single lumps, then the fusional languages lose their inflection and become isolating again.

>Pu Chu set his spear and rode out to contest with Ding A-Ling
>After X amount of bouts, Pu Chu overcame Ding A-Ling and sent him into flight
>Pu Chu gave chase and rode down A-Ling and killed him
OR
>Ding A-ling escaped the battlefield to fight another day
>Repeat this formula ad nauseam for hundreds of pages, all battles are written in this manner

I don't envy anyone reading this story for the first time. Welcome to dry repetition: the novel. The only interesting thing in the entire story are some of the "ruses" that the various warlords attempt.

Also, the ancient Chinese clearly were not the people who coined the term "don't shoot the messenger" because either:

A: Messenger brings news that the leader is pleased with and thus, a banquet in his honor is held or...
B: Messenger brings news that angers the leader and the leader has his head cut off.

Repeat the above points for 800-900 pages and that's pretty much Romance of the Three Kingdoms in a tidy lil' nutshell.

>>24631922
You didn't read dream of the red chamber. That's shoujo