Symbolika1:
4 hours ago
peng-peng:
I do not as well. Koala translated 1 word as Soul mate but the real meaning is true friend. Now everybody thinks that XY called XL her soul mate .
Friend: in chinese version (link bellow), in the drama, in Thai official version.
1/ From : http://m.xsbiquge.la/book/36337/19812269.html// chinese full version. Translation + Auto translation.
2/Drama covering the FRIEND:
- Tong Hua is also scriptwriter for the drama. So I think, as the creator of the story, she knows what she want to mean, and what's her purpose. :)
3/ From Winny's Thai, official version (Publisher and author approuved).
=> a confident
4/ Koala is deliberatly picking a word that suit his imagination. See the 3 counter exemples above.
She sure had the choice, as the first related words are pal, best friend, buddy mate etc...this is her choice, and doesnt align neither with the chinese version, neither the drama version, neither the official thaï version.
The term 知己 (zhiji) has created difficulties for translating and fully understanding a number of historical C Dramas, and some really insightful posts have been made on the topic.
In the posts I've read (this is one example: 愚妹無憂 : on translation (again), 知己, "soulmates", danmei,... (tumblr.com) and this is another example: 魂兮歸來 不下幽都 - all right guys, let’s have a conversation about soulmates (tumblr.com) ) on this topic (i.e., the difficulty of translating this word in a way that properly conveys its original meaning and connotations in Mandarin), the gist seems to be that "soulmates" is often a misleading translation, but any variation on "friend" also doesn't really capture the meaning and connotations of the term either. The key seems to be that this term is about one person "understanding" or "knowing" another person.
It can be used to describe a strictly platonic relationship, and it can be used to describe a romantic relationship. It is a flexible term and its meaning will vary significantly depending on the context.
In the first post above, Cyan notes:
it’s not the use of 知己 itself that makes an onscreen relationship more or less explicitly romantic but the context of the rest of their interactions. 知己 has multiple valences, and to pretend or assume that the romantic one is the only relevant reading of it is an oversimplification that I feel devalues both the depth of the term itself and, more broadly, love that does not take a romantic form. at its core, 知己 is about intimacy–in many shapes and at many levels.
before i continue, please read @hunxi-guilai’s post about 知己 and how it can vary in meaning and gravity depending on context.
and makes the following suggestions:
after thinking about it for a really long time, i think my preferred solution is actually fairly simple–instead of trying to translate 知己 as a rigid, one-word noun, just… translate what it means.
if you don’t already know, the two characters that make up 知己 are 知 “to know” and 己 “self”. so someone who is 知己 can literally be described as “one who knows me”. i think that to know and to understand are both english verbs that have the same natural weight variance as 知己. you can, completely sincerely, say both “oh yeah, I know her,” and “but i know her” for very different effect. i think that with some work and thought, you could come up with subtitles that not only circumvent the problem of reinforcing one-to-one translation tendencies and the misconceptions that those tend to breed, but also preserve the intended thematic throughline and are an acceptable length for actual subtitle timing and encoding.
...
for CQL specifically, I’ve gone back and forth between whether I would prefer using “to know” or “to understand” as the fulcrum of the 知己 translation, and I… think….. I would go with “to know”. at least right now. there are a few reasons for that tentative choice, one of which is simply that “know” is only four characters while “understand” is ten. the other is that, after messing around with both in each scenario, I think “know” ultimately flows better sonically.
...
if I were translating only for myself, I would probably still try to somehow work with “someone who understands me” because I think that just hits harder than “kindred spirit”. so like, “I think of you as someone who understands me” and “This lonely prince had always thought that you were someone who understood me”, that kind of thing. i think it gets more precisely at the core of what makes 知己 such an important concept in SHL.