>bookmarks

Where do banknotes qualify?

>>38805
Should be lawful evil. I have no idea why memorizing the page number would be evil, nor why a sentence pointer is good which I think just implies the person is borderline retarded and can't remember anything in context if memorizing the page number.

>>38796
As always: Thank you.
I remedied the errors that you mentioned.

I guess this is the way forward:

>Translate the text
>Let it rest for a few weeks
>Look through it again
>Read it aloud with the best British accent possible to see if anything sounds unnatural

Feels good that it turned out well. It's my way of showing respect to this great author.
Maybe I could try translating some of his fiction too. His poetry is too complex for me to translate, but his novels are relatively short, and only one has been translated into English. But for now, any long-term project is out of the question because of the upcoming exams, sadly.

Current two reads, tho I didn't start the second yet.
Burckhardt's Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtung is quite great, you learn a lot about the different phases and devlopments of religion, culture and state and how they're all intertwined. Even though it probably wouldn't be a pick for a modern scientist, lots of the books contents are true and quite fascinating. For instance, did you know that nearly all ancient mythologies and religions share the story, that their people had three brothers as forefathers?
The second will be a novella about a famous german criminal around the end end of the 18th century I guess, don't know to much about it yet as it's one of those books for which you can't find a synopsis online.
Generally I'm so occupied with work and stuff these days, that I rarely take the time to sit down and read, though I should and could do it way more often.

So this is the last book I actually liked, on the life of Julian the Philosopher - or Julian the Apostate for you baka gaijin.

I'm REALLY curious on whether someone who isn't into history and won't automatically recognise what Caesar and Augustus meant in the era would enjoy the book or not. It's a story of human ambition, the backdrop could have been anything else. And whatever you think of Gore Vidal and his generic democrap political opinions he is an author well-versed in his craft, the characters feel real and story urges you forward.

>>38805
3

>>38814
Do you have any tips for translating? What's your m.o.?
I guess I'll try my hand at it too since I can't produce anything original right now, and I'm sort of tired of reading too.

>>39189
>>38814
I noticed there aren't any translations of Peter Hacks to English apparently. Or maybe I'm too dumb to find them. But I am now considering giving it a try as well with a piece of him I read the other day.

>>39189
1.Know both languages well.
Read a lot in both your target languages so that you know what feels natural. If your text uses an expression, try translating it using another expression that's similar. This is easier with European languages, because we share a lot of expressions and figures of speech. Don't loan-translate anything.
2.It's going to be hard at first, and you're going to churn out trash. Just like with programming, don't make your first piece your magnum opus. I started off by translating anime subs and copypastas for example. Those don't have terribly complex sentences, so you can focus more on the style, instead of having to look up words every 5 seconds.
3.Take notes. If your text uses terms and terminology you need to translate, take notes to make it stay consistent.
4.Re-read what you translated after a few weeks of not touching it. Try reading it without the original and polish it to make it feel right. Keep checking for errors.
5.Get a trustworthy dictionary. Also have a print dictionary at hand so that you can check if your online dictionary feels untrustworthy at times. (Germany has a a really developed dictionary culture, so getting a good one shouldn't be a problem I think.)
6.Don't be afraid to take things slow. If you feel stumped, keep pondering on that sentence or expression. You'll figure it out eventually. (Though you could always just make a placeholder, rough translation, finish the rest of the chapter or text and come back to it later.)

I don't really have anything else to say, I'm an amateur myself, and I don't know the terminus technicus of the trade or any serious methods. These are really broad and general tips. Everything else depends on your text and your work ethic.
Just be conscious that your first few translations aren't going to be evergreen classics. It's a lot of work and practice. Practice mainly.

>>38798
3,5,8

---

I read some articles from this anthology Die Neue Wirklichkeit. Semantische Neuvermessungen und Politik seit den 1970er-Jahren A New Reality. New Semantical Assessments and Politics since the 1970s.
One article deals with the knowledge of networks, the net(work) as mode of description of reality and as strategy (for social change e.g).
Another article I read afilitated with it as it combines the One World image that came up with NASAs Blue Marble , calfornian counter culture and Club of Rome reports. The idea that western industrial societies are intertwined with the south in one world, one network or system so to speak, a world society - Weltgesellschaft. The article then goes on to scrutinze the consequences in pedagogy where the one world thesis and all the ideas that it is made up of are used to spread a certain awareness, the self as part of a big world system, that is responsible for the input into the world system and likewise then for its output systemic/cybenetic knowledge is used to describe the earth and the socities on it. The author argues that this knowledge mediated in schools and universities renders new subjectivities, it points to activation and self-responsiblity for a world system running and its states depending on in the individual input (e.g individual consumption, what you eat and buy affects the ecology and similar patterns like that).
Both articles also show the knowledge transfer within the western world, namely the US, GB and Germany, the latter ofc because it's a German publication that focuses on contemporary history in Germany.

Two articles are still to read: One about complexity as intellectual and political challange and one about management of the future - planning, self organization and prevention (which I guess deals with risk as a new concept, risk societies, Germans might know Ulrich Becks famous book about the Risikogesellschaft from 1986)

---

I also read Thomas Bernhards Watten. It's seems like shorter (90p.) and more light version of his Limeworks.

Most comprehensive book chronicling in detail the German economy from the barbaric age to the 21st century?
Also most succinct recording of German history?

>>39228
Are you going to obsessively reply to every post I wrote in the thread?

>>39230
>>39228
Alright guys comeon, let's have some much needed integrity and respect for one another.
Pic so you don't think I'm samefagging

I purchased Henry Kissinger's On China and Timothy Snyder's The Road to Unfreedom.
I'll begin with Snyder's book, even though the limited experience I have with lectures of his, makes me think he's not very insightful. Still gonna give this book a chance, and share conclusions here once I'm done.
After it, I'll read Stephen G. Haw's History of China and then move onto Kissinger's book.

This is all with the premise I'll not go on a several weeks long detour on modern Russian history.

>>39238
Fuck it. I'm dropping Snyder's book, I can't deal with how schizophrenic it is. What garbled self righteous ramblings of a mad man.
I survived two chapters before I had to end my attempts at reading this.

He opens his book with "To journalists, the heroes of our time". After this grandiose "let's pat ourselves on the back", he goes onto describe how there are two types of societies. The societies of inevitability and societies of eternity. The first being the west, in believing that its all systems lead to a western liberal democracy and the later being Russia in believing that the problems faced yesterday are the problems faced today.

For some reason, he finds these self penned terms to be so crucial and insightful that he will repeat them over and over again throughout the first two chapters. (Presumably through the rest of the book, but I had to punch out). In the first chapter he managed to insert the idea that Putin 4d chess'd the rise of Trump 4 different times in the most smug and oblivious way, not even merely suggesting that Putin provided crucial help as is the standard, but going above and beyond the call of duty and suggesting that this was a plan by Putin that had been in the making since before 2016.

I endured this and allowed the author to have creative freedom to over dramatize reality, but when he careened into the Russian 90s with the bold claim that there were no elections that served to legitimize Yeltsin, that's when I knew he had gone too far. He makes the entirety of the Russian 90s into a smooth transition into Putin, the only people even brought up in his oversimplified or retarded rundown of these years were Yeltsin and Putin. He chose to claim that '96 was a "fake election", with no further backing or context. The first mention of the Chechen question was when he brought up FSB agents being arrested in regards to the apartment bombings, as if the entirety of the Chechen War was just willed into being by the Russian government.

Just mind numbing oversimplified garbage, but this was not enough to deter me. I knew what was coming going into this book, but I wanted to read it.

Then the motherfucker ends his chapter with

>The ink of political fiction is blood

And at that moment, I could just imagine his smug face as he looked down at his D+ essay as if it were the masterpiece of a genius.

This book is possibly the only reasonable argument for book burnings.

>>39209
Thanks for the tips, they're very helpful!

I started today with translating An Imitation of Homer [based on a post-true story] WIP title by Natan Dubovitsky aka Vladislav Surkov from Russian to English (original: http://ruspioner.ru/honest/m/single/6268)
It's a story about the War in Donbass, or is it? Anyways, it's about love, games and the absurdity of it all.

I ended up being lazy and just using Google Translate for the initial draft, then adjusting or sometimes completely rewriting some sentences.
Besides the general limits of my language skills, there are definitely some specific challenges to deal with, i.e. how to translate the nicknames of the characters properly or this beautiful fucking alliterative clusterfuck: станицы, ставки, притаившиеся возле станции стаи танков. This expression is going to haunt me for a while I think, I've no idea how to translate it without losing the poetry.

Anyways here's the WIP version of what I've got so far, less than two pages.
If anybody finds it interesting, feel free to give some feedback!

TL Notes (guess I should add those as footnotes once I figure out how to do it in Markdown):
First two epigraphs I didn't translate myself, just stole them from some already existing translation
Third epigraph is actually from a tweet by a user called RashaOnMars, which is presumably Dubovitsky's/Surkov's twitter acc, though the account hasn't posted anything since 2016. As a side project, I should probably crawl all the tweets from the account, they're actually some pretty decent beat style poems (Surkov's admitted to being a big fan on Ginsberg, there's even a recording of him reciting the Sunflower Sutra with horrible accent)

>>39355
Nice translation, ernst.
I realize it's a WIP, and so this may not be a fair time for critique, but I'll mention one small correction in this sentence:

>he'd beat out everything outstanding out of him

The first "out" isn't necessary.
Other than that, I just want to say keep up the good work.

>>39372
Thanks a lot, I appreciate it. I'll try to keep the streak going and translate a few chapters every day since I've got some spare time at my hands. Admittedly, this is taking longer than I expected.

>I realize it's a WIP, and so this may not be a fair time for critique

Not at all, I'm thankful for any corrections.

First file's the next 2 chapters, second file is everything so far.

Did another chapter today, had to render with a different program. Glad I managed to save some alliterations, but there's a seemingly impossible to translate wordplay in there, just had to explain it in the footnote for now. Definitely a couple of expressions that I'm not too sure about whether they work in English. I could probably rewrite them in a more legible manner, but then again I'm afraid to deviate too much from the original in terms of style.

>>39385
This is fun to read, ernst.
I have a couple of suggested corrections in the Refusal section:

>He did it without permission, risking to provoke the enemy to inadequate retaliatory actions on the entire front.

Could be:

>He did it without permission, risked provoking the enemy to inadequate retaliatory actions on the entire front.

>In midst of a plain sky

"Midst" is usually preceded by "the".

>>39435
In the Gaff section:

>should be sent from the mayors directly to the

basement. . . ”
Is being sent to the basement a figure of speech?
Other than that, I didn't notice any expressions that didn't work in English.
In the final sentence there is some repetition, which I assume was just an editting error:

>Thought Fraiser...sometimes thought.

>I'm afraid to deviate too much from the original in terms of style

I've never translated anything, but it seems like maintaining the original author's writing style would be one of the most difficult things to get right. Hungary would definitely know more about that than I do. The dialogs in this do have a distinct flair, though, so I'd say you're doing a decent job with that.

It's an introduction to Philosophy of Mind from the Dimensions of Philsophy Series.

It mainly deals with physicalist perspectives and reductibility or nonreductibility of the mind to physics. Chapters range from behavorism, functionalism, brain identity theory to consciousness and mental content. Every chapter can be read independently. I skipped the last three (or dipped just into it), since I wasn't spending the right attention anymore. It also becomes more difficult and while it's systematic and with good examples the formalized parts are something I hardly have to deal with ever, which makes it hard to concentrate and understand. Kinda sad tbh. But it won't be my last book that is closer to formalized reasoning. I definitely lack formalizational skills and I want to at least gain some skills in that area, so I can handle it better and won't be excluded from such discussions in the future.

One moar chapter. Hope you don't mind me spamming up the thread.

>>39463
Thanks a lot again for the feedback, I'll incorporate the corrections. Glad to hear it's enjoyable.

>Is being sent to the basement a figure of speech?

Not as far as I know, maybe I could just replace it with "relieved of their duties" or some slightly crasser expression.

>Thought Fraiser...sometimes thought.

That's a literal translation, I considered rewriting "sometimes thought" with "or sometimes thought" or "at least sometimes" (referring to him thinking), would that make more sense? Maybe just put the second sometimes in italics to stress it? It's supposed to be a sort of comedic dialing back from the initial "thought".

>>39479
You're welcome, ersnt.

>It's supposed to be a sort of comedic dialing back from the initial "thought".

Ok, I see that now. That's a tricky line to translate while still keeping the humor. Any of the changes you considered would make the joke more obvious, and also would avoid confusion. I might even consider breaking the line into two sentences:

“Then what’s all this for?” Thought Fraiser, looking at the burning houses and crying women, sometimes thought.

Becomes:

“Then what’s all this for?” Thought Fraiser, looking at the burning houses and crying women. At least sometimes.

That's just my personal opinion, ofc. Comedy really is hard.

>>39467
Does it discuss the ideas of Daniel Dennett?

>>39543
I'm pretty sure I've read the name Dennett in footnotes, dunno which chapter exactly but even tho they can be read in exclusion they built upon each other somehow which means names and ideas appear in different chapters more than one time.

Next chapter done, though it had some tricky passages I'm not sure about.
I feel like I should pick up the pace considering I don't really have much else to do at the moment :D

I've been reading some short stories by Victor Pelevin (also noted that some of them also as of yet untranslated, if I decide to keep this up), and stumbled upon this interesting interview with him from 2002: https://bombmagazine.org/articles/victor-pelevin/
He's a pretty enigmatic figure, and probably one of if not the most prominent Russian contemporary writer, and Dubovitsky/Surkov can arguably be said to copy him in some regards.

Here's a fun quote from the interview on the Metaphysics of Engineering in Russia:

>[...] In Russia, when you are trained as an engineer, you spend several years studying theoretical physics: from mechanics and electricity to elementary particles. And this training is quite deep and serious. After you graduate from your institute you are assigned to some factory where you have to work for three years (at least it was like this when I was a student and factories were still working). What happens next is they give you a crowbar, a padded coat and a cap with earflaps, and you are entrusted with the leadership of three stone-pissed proletarians (you can’t use the term “worker” here as they never work). And your task is to remove ice in the backyard. That was the metaphysics of engineering in Russia. I say “was” because these days nobody removes the ice anymore.

>>39513
Thanks for the suggestion, I think for now I'll try to make do without italics though as the original doesn't use any either.

>Comedy really is hard.

It sure is, I'll try to mark down passages that are hard to translate to think some more about them later.

>>39633
I'd have imagined Pelevin looking like more of a crazy rocker type. I expected at least a cigarette in his hand.
I guess he looks kinda wacky on that picture anyway.

>>39644
AFAIK, Pelevin was (or even still is) into Eastern mysticism and philosophy, Zen in particular, so he often goes for enigmatic image. Note that he's even posing in front of bamboo in that photo, not in front of spruces or birch trees or something.

>>39644

>more of a crazy rocker type

There are definitely some pictures like this, too. There's this infamous cigar picture, hope it fulfills your expectations. Also plenty of cigarette pictures besides, and most of the time wearing sunglasses.
I also like this other one, from some magazine I assume, with the uber-edgy quote:
"I'm not sure, that it's the correct thing to do - to be born here in the form of a human."

Two more chapters, not too much, but there was a tricky acronym I had to work around and some inserted poems that need more work too.

>>39633

>it had some tricky passages I'm not sure about.

I only noticed this one sentence in Holy Fire:

>Not only the enemies lurking on the other side would not feel sorry for him, but his so-called allies, whom he so admired, for whom he proclaimed toasts at patriotic banquets, wouldn’t give a single damn either.

This would read more naturally if the first "would" were placed in front of "the enemies", instead of after:

>Not only would the enemies lurking on the other side not feel sorry for him, but his so-called allies, whom he so admired, for whom he proclaimed toasts at patriotic banquets, wouldn’t give a single damn either.

>>39658
In Poems, it looks like you conflated two similar expressions:

>Fraiser did not offer him to sit down, because he knew that the writer could only sit down or even just stand still for more than a minute...

This expression could either be:

>Fraiser did not offer him a seat...

or

>Frasier did not invite him to sit down...

And if you chose to use this translation, then you could also shorten the second "sit down" in the sentence to simply "sit":

>Fraiser did not invite him to sit down, because he knew that the writer could only sit or even just stand still for more than a minute...

Translating poems has got to be tricky, but at least in the context of the story they aren't supposed to be that good, right?

I use pages from an old book as a bookmark.

Currently mentally preparing myself for reading some religious texts.

Two more.

>>39683
Thanks again, incorporated your suggestions.

>Translating poems has got to be tricky, but at least in the context of the story they aren't supposed to be that good, right?

Yep exactly, at least there's that, but they still need some work I guess.

She is a sociologist concerned with system theories.

The book (2007) is quite short, only 120p, and I got quite a bit even tho I did not take any notes.

So what the says is that people need fictions in order to observe something which does not exist. Basically what needs to be observed is the future, which is ofc not real in the presence but because people want to plan ahead - meaning to remve insecutities - they need fictions, fictions that give a plausible and realistic future as orientation. These fictions are contemporary futures and are something else then the actual future presents that come into being once the future actually arrives.
So these fictions are not necessarily become true, but as fictions they have an impact on the presence. We decide things on the base of fictions (probability calculation is such a fiction that came into being during the 17th and 18th century and one of her main concerns). Even today financial markets etc. are based on the insecurities and based on fictions (make something observable that cannot not really be observed).

Her main thesis is that in order to deal with a complex, "real" reality, humans have turned to fictions so that they can manage better. So today the relation between reality and fiction is crucial to understand, if you want to understand how things are working. People who cannot deal with fictions cannot deal with reality at all.

Read a detective novel by Boris Akunin, Azazel (or The Winter Queen in translation)
Pretty fun & well-written, but ultimately just genre lit, nothing I can get too excited about.
I've more appreciation for the nom de plume, it works both as B. Akunin = Bakunin, and

>"Akunin" (悪人) is a Japanese word that translates to "great bad man".

Read a bunch of Russian short stories as well, one I really liked was Crystal World by Pelevin. It's about two guards taking drugs while on duty in Petrograd 1917 & talking about Spengler and Rudolf Steiner while they're supposed to blockade a street. It was very creepy but I felt like I was missing something. And indeed after reading some more about it, it blew my mind. Really good story.
Maybe I should try translating it to German. Oh wait, I still need to finish this whole Dubovitsky project. I got a bit sidetracked, should finish at least two chapters tomorrow.

Anyways, that short story made me pick up the Spengler tome for a few hours again today. I really appreciate some of the ideas & how he expresses them with his stern German poetics, but in the chapter I finished today there was way too much musing on architectural matters that went somewhat over my head. It's quite a struggle to read really, but then he throws out some very sweeping succinct statement and suddenly it's worth it to go on.

>>39995

>Read a bunch of Russian short stories as well, one I really liked was Crystal World by Pelevin

That's a good short story. I had tons of fun reading it last year.
I think it was about telling the reader that they might be educated and up-to date with obscure and cutting edge intellectuals of the time, but no amount of discussion among your friends will change anything, and while you're busy talking and being high, people are actually out there making history, and you don't even notice it that much.

Four more (relatively short) chapters, almost halfway through the text I think. I guess it's still basically the exposition part of the story, though it's about to finally be wrapped up, but judging by that it's not an ideal structure.

>>40009
That interpretation is pretty accurate for sure, I just didn't fully catch all the Lenin references until I read more about it. But even more than just not noticing, it's that the protagonists actually fail to do their duty and prevent that awful turn of history from happening. Then again, they're almost literally in hell on earth, so it's understandable they'd resort to getting high as to bear it.
But even just regarding the style, I'm quite impressed with the dreadful apocalyptic atmosphere he's able to create inside the text.

>>40009

>Pelevin

I do not know him (although I have heard about generation P before). I looked up some of his books on wikipedia and they seem ridiculous.
"S.N.U.F.F." caught my eye due to the title, but I don't know how good of a book it actually is. Reading the synopsis makes it seem like bernd's shitpost in novel form.

>>40028
I can't tell you about his novels, but his short stories are really good if you can stomach post-modernism. Though by no means is he my favourite Russian author.

>>40028
His first four novels, all written in the 90s, are really good.
Omon Ra, his debut, is a bit more straightforward than the others. It's about a suicidal Soviet space program.
Life of Insects is like a collection of short stories that are somewhat intertwined about anthropomorphic (but not quite, it's hard to explain) insects, it's more of a mindfuck.
With Buddha's Little Finger there's only two main narratives that intertwine, and it's probably his best book.
I've not read Generation P myself yet, but seen the ecranisation, it's on YT btw, and also pretty fun watch IIRC.
I've not read any of his later novels either (such as Snuff), but they're mostly considered to be just rehashes of his old ideas, just with some very contemporary pop culture & technology themes mixed in. Here's a good review of a one of his more recent works, where the reviewer also talks more generally about his oeuvre, if you want to read a bit more about him:
https://theuntranslated.wordpress.com/2014/12/13/the-love-for-three-zuckerbrins-%D0%BB%D1%8E%D0%B1%D0%BE%D0%B2%D1%8C-%D0%BA-%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BC-%D1%86%D1%83%D0%BA%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B1%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%BC-by-victor-pelevin/

>>39783
>>40025

>I guess it's still basically the exposition part of the story, though it's about to finally be wrapped up,

I can't wait to see how the rest of the story unfolds.
A few things I noticed while reading:

In House:

>Nada wasn’t not only unaware about his eating habits.

This is a double-negative and should be

>Nada was not only unaware about his eating habits.

In Audit:

>Sam ran to the truck, his counterint officers rushed there as well, guessing what needs to be done by their chief’s pace.

To keep the verb tense consistent(ran, rushed, needed)

>guessing what needed to be done by....

In Nada

>There were private ones who lived with one of the fighters, the were public ones, there were nobody’s ones.

This is just a typo

>the were public ones ==> there were public ones

>“Ladies, who are you?” - grimly barked Fraiser.
>The ladies did not answer. They knew that he already knew who they are.

The use of "are" in the second sentence should be in the past tense: "were". Unless this was done intentionally, as a humorous repetition of the preceding sentence.

In Delivery

>Why her? Somewhy her.

Did you use "somewhy" intentionally, as a bit of wordplay? If so, then well done. If not, then you could replace "somewhy" with "for some reason" to sound more natural, since it's a very obscure word.

>you’re going too far, you really went to far

Just another typo

>went too far

I also noticed that in a few places you used an inverted question mark '¿‘ and an inverted exclamation point '¡‘. Was that done to match the original text? or to indicate irony/sarcasm?

I recently started reading this book, which is one of the personal favorite books of my gf.
I'm enjoying it a lot so far.

Well, I finished it. It's an okay novella, not even close to being Kawabata's best, but that doesn't make it bad.

The prose is typical of Kawabata, short, almost haiku-like sentences, basically the whole novella is a series of fragments both on prose level and on the plot level. He leaves out events that aren't strictly necessary to the plot.
It's another one of those books that must've been pretty interesting as a westerner when it came out, because it's another one of Kawabata's romance novels that feel a bit same-y, but in 2020 it feels a bit eh.

The most interesting thing was how he mentioned that the main character, Kikuji is completely detached from his own culture, since he doesn't know what ornaments go with which season or how a tea ceremony should be properly observed.
Now that's interesting to read about.

The dramatic aspect of the work is really good. I felt engaged while reading about this fucked up, intergenerational love-hexahedron.
Though I think the symbolic aspects of the work felt a bit heavy handed while reading.

The ending is a bit of a let down, but that's expected of any Kawabata work that isn't The Master of Go, which is his best book by far.

If I were to assign a numerical value to it, I'd say it's a strong 7/10, only worth it if you're seriously interested in Kawabata's output or Japanese literature. (And you have a few hours to kill.)

Three more chapters, things are heating up, or rather even going a bit too fast. Guess the parallels to Homer should be clear now with the whole Fraiser-Minus-Nada triangle being the equivalent of Agamemnon-Achilles-Briseis, and IIRC that's all there is that is "Homerian" about this story.

I've been reading the OT a bit again, about to finish Genesis. The whole Joseph arc is pretty interesting, there's quite a step there compared to earlier chapters in terms of "character depth" or psychological descriptions with the whole dream interpreting stuff.

>>40056
Thanks a lot again!

>Did you use "somewhy" intentionally, as a bit of wordplay?

Yep, it's to mirror the repetition in the original:

>Почему она? Почему-то она.

I'm aware it sounds a bit awkward, and I was actually slightly surprised to find out "somewhy" is an actual English word.

>I also noticed that in a few places you used an inverted question mark '¿‘ and an inverted exclamation point '¡‘. Was that done to match the original text? or to indicate irony/sarcasm?

That's not intentional, haha. I'm also seeing now that some of the quoatation marks are messed up. Must be something about the way it's rendered to PDF, I'll have a look at it but I'll probably fix it once I'm done with the text more or less. Thanks for pointing it out.

Read Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guanzhong. It was actually my second attempt at reading it: the first time I tried was in high school, when I played Dynasty Warriors 4 extensively, which got me interested in the novel it based on. Back then I dropped reading early because it just felt boring, but now much to my surprise it didn't seem so at all. I wonder if I became boring myself, heh?

The book itself spans about a century starting with the Yellow Turban rebellion and ending with the unification of China by the Jin dynasty. Because of that it is choke-full of characters and events, and obviously those characters and events often suffer from extremely concise descriptions. The main characters are fleshed-out decently though, but the author's bias towards the kingdom of Shu Han is evident, so people like Liu Bei, Guan Yu, Zhang Fei are being treated as noble and honorable heroes even when they are being dicks, while most of Cao Wei and Eastern Wu personalities are depicted as devious, ruthless, backstabbing or outright villainous with few exceptions like Xu Huang, Zhang Liao, Pang De, Ding Feng etc. The narrative is also mostly told from the Shu perspective up until Zhuge Liang's – Shu's strategist and technically commander-in-chief – death, when focus switches more to the Sima family from kingdom of Wei, possibly due to Zhuge Liang's successor Jian Wei being kind of a failure (although it wasn't entirely his fault, to be frank: his ruler and Liu Bei's successor Liu Shan was totally incompetent and easily influenced by court officials). This bias doesn't make the book completely unfair to other sides of the conflict since they too have redeeming features and interesting characters.

Also of note are many fantastic elements. Accurate divinations on characters' fates are very common, and Taoist mystics wield actual magic from summoning wind or fog to teleportation. Nanman tribes territory is full of weird stuff too, and nanman leaders like king Mulu throw battle spells at their enemies. Dead people sometimes continue their exploits even after their death, and the badassiest badass of the novel Guan Yu even manages to increase his kill count while being an incorporeal spirit, that's how badass he is. Zhuge Liang invents automotive wooden oxen and horses and uses them to transport provisions. While most of the fantastic stuff kinda fits the plot, some of that just doesn't really add anything whatsoever to it and was likely included because of the author's appeal, like anecdotes about Zuo Ci trolling Cao Cao.

I'm also somewhat suspicious of the translation. I don't know Chinese so I can't say for certain if there are a lot of mistakes, but I have noticed at least one: Guan Yu's weapon has been translated as "меч" ("sword"), while it is actually a guandao (as seen on the statue in picrelated), a weapon close to European glaive, so it would be more logical to translate it as "клинок" ("blade"). Who knows how many more times the translator fucked up these kinds of small details.

Nevertheless, it was an okay read. Although so far I prefer European historical fiction, I might check out other Chinese classic novels, I think.

>>40314
That's an admirable feat and I'm very jealous of your dedication. I put it down after the first 110 pages of the first volume in the third grade of HS despite being the biggest China-nerd on the block.

>I'm also somewhat suspicious of the translation. I don't know Chinese so I can't say for certain if there are a lot of mistakes, but I have noticed at least one: Guan Yu's weapon has been translated as "меч" ("sword"), while it is actually a guandao (as seen on the statue in picrelated), a weapon close to European glaive, so it would be more logical to translate it as "клинок" ("blade"). Who knows how many more times the translator fucked up these kinds of small details.

From what I gather from my book on Chinese weapons is that dao had two subtypes. Long-dao that were one sided blades with long, spear-like grips and short dao that were close to ours swords.
The character 刀 could mean sword, dagger or just blade in general.
I guess the translator had no idea what the weapon looked and just translated it as a sword literally, which I can understand.

It must be able to read it in your mother tongue. I own it in English

>tfw a translation of the first 10 chapters was published but the publisher never commissioned the full version because communism collapsed and they were no longer interested in it

>>40318
The translation dates back to 1954, so the translator probably didn't have access to all the info on the Three Kingdoms period that we have now, and neither did he have a native Chinese historical consultant to correct him when necessary. But I still think that whenever you're not sure about the word's meaning during translation and you're going with the literal one, it's better to translate it with the least specific term (in this case, "blade"). Nonetheless, much respect to the dude for translating it whole, I imagine it was a tremendous amount of work considering that the novel is very long and likely written in a pretty archaic language.

>>40330
If I remember correctly, Three Kingdoms was written in literary Chinese with very minimal parts if any using vernacular. Literary Chinese stayed remarkably consistent over the ages and served as the main cohesive force of the empire. Kinda like what Latin was for Europe during the middle ages. It's only that it took longer for the Chinese to "get rid of it", because you can't expect millions of peasants to learn Latin. (That doesn't mean they shouldn't.)
The same goes for Journey to the West I think, while the other two Great Novels, Water Margin and Dream of the Red Chamber use a lot more vernacular because of their themes (with one following outlaws and the other two aristocratic families' intricacies.)

>much respect to the dude for translating it whole, I imagine it was a tremendous amount of work

It's very heart warming to see that these megalomaniac and monumental works actually borne fruit.
I remember reading the foreword to an edition of the Aeneid and I was happy for the dude that he could publish his translation after 10 years of work.

>I just read that they published the first volume in Hungarian translated from the original Chinese

I'm going to cry.

>It costs 30 euros

I'm going to cry

btw if you own a physical copy, could you post an image of the cover?

>>40412
I almost exclusively read digital books, but they often have cover images from physical ones. The one I read had picrelated. The only available (as far as I know) Russian translation was published several time with different editors, not sure for which edition this cover is.

>>40414

>I almost exclusively read digital books

Maybe I just need to get an ereader but I can't deal with this. I need a nice hardcover book to hold in my hands. It's just a problem because I unfortunately tend to move around a lot and so I've got my books scattered all over like in storage or with parents or whatever and they're heavy af. In fact now that I think of it they're the heaviest shit I own other than my only somewhat recently acquired fish tank collection and had been up til then about the biggest pain in the ass to move with.

Man, I need to start reading. I never should've paid for internet. I should just unplug my router and take the battery out of my phone. I never even finished reading something short like God and the State by Bakunin.

>>40417

>Maybe I just need to get an ereader but I can't deal with this. I need a nice hardcover book to hold in my hands.

To each his own. I have a sizeable library of paper books at home, but they are almost entirely books from Soviet times collected by my parents and grandparents. Those books one wouldn't be embarassed to hold in his hands: nice hardcovers with good designs (I noticed a modern trend in the West (and now probably here, too) to turn book covers into ads for live-action films and series based on those books; I sincerely wish a slow and painful death from cancer to all publishers who do that), often good illustrations and no printing errors. Those books were pretty expensive, costing around 3 rubles when blue-collar worker's wage was around 80 rubles and an engineer got maybe 120 or so, but you could acquire those books by recycling paper waste: for a certain amount of recycled paper you got a special ticket which you could then exchange for books. I used to read those books a lot when I was a kid, especially adventure and SF ones. Now I find ebooks more convenient, so bookshelves with those books are more like a room decoration.

>Man, I need to start reading. I never should've paid for internet.

Sounds like an excuse. You either read or don't, the Internet doesn't have to do much with it. In fact, Internet helps me to read more: I can download older books from Project Gutenberg and newer ones from flibusta and lib.rus.ec. If I wanted to get paper books, I would still have to buy them from online stores, because I'm not sure if there are still book stores in my town (we used to have two pretty big ones, now they're probably either gone or shrinked considerably), and even if they are, it's unlikely that they have books I want in their assortment.