#arthur waley is my personal nemesis... not as much as marcus' tho he truly hates that man but im like. somewhere in the top10 for sure

[lautakwah]

theres sth deeply sad abt a lot of translated works (and i dont mean some ya novel translated frm english to french. obviously.) in the imperial core being shortened/abridged bc the translator deemed those parts unimportant or straight up didnt have the cultural/historical/religious knowledge to understand WHY theyre important... not to mention how they tend to be biased in their translating to pigeonhole sfuff into western frameworks of thought like 😭

#yes i am still salty as hell abt the amnt of shitty jttw and rotk translations out there... #arthur waley is my personal nemesis... not as much as marcus' tho he truly hates that man but im like. somewhere in the top10 for sure #i also loathe how theres this trend in western tl of eastern works to like... literally translate namea. #cicada for diaochan (rotk). trinket for xiaobao (tdatc). MONKEY???? FOR SUN WUKONG??? I STILL HATE THIS THE MOST. JTTW ISNT EVEN CALLED JTTW #HE NAMED THE BOOK MONKEY AND WAS DONE WITH IT HE USED OBJECT NAMES AS THE CHARACTER NAMES I WANT THAT MAN DEAD THRICE OVER #ling.txt #there are wayy more examples btw but this is why u need footnotes in ur translations idfc if u think it's clunky #or takes away from the immersion or whatever the fuck it's better than being an ignorant piece of shit bc the tl ur reading SUCKS