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somebranches t1_j6hgeda wrote

Ken Liu wrote about this in his translator’s postscript. The challenge of translating in terms of giving the reader something that feels organic but not losing the “flavor” of the original. Said something about how a translation should still feel like it came from another language. I don’t have any particular experience with Chinese culture, so I can’t speak to the extent to which he retained it, but I have read a lot of translations and thought this one was pretty well done.

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tofu-weenie t1_j6hhcsb wrote

I've read several of Ken Liu's own books written originally in english and imo he is an excellent writer who does dialogue well. If the dialogue in three body feels clunky I assume that it's a purposeful decision on his part to retain the original flavour of the text.

I do often find that dialogue translated from very different languages doesn't always feel natural in English. I guess that's just part of reading in translation.

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