#yeah so I decided on the low to knock novels off my unfinished list

[beneaththebrim]

Opinion on the translation of 本座

I have a translation opinion that is just straining at the bit but since I’m just a beginner I’m gonna post it here rather than on twitter so I don’t get ‘Silence, HSK5-6′d about it (tbh idek what my hsk level is at this point bc my skills are so skewed toward reading/translating fantasy novels, like I can often read several straight paragraphs of shangxian without having to look anything up but if faced with, say, cooking instructions in chinese I’d probably still have trouble, and my speaking/writing/listening skills are probably still hsk3-4 at best, when faced with a font change I am rendered illiterate, etc).

But anyway I think it’s become really common to translate 本座 (benzuo) as ‘this venerable one’ and while things like self-appellations are just, so difficult to translate into english, I feel like ‘this venerable one’ is just not an effective translation, for a couple main reasons.

1) It takes a two-syllable phrase and turns it into six syllables. To borrow the words of another, it’s a bit like translating 师弟 (shidi) to ‘junior martial brother’, but if you’re in the moment, shouting “师弟！”, you’re not gonna have time to spit out that mouthful. Granted, 本座 is a self-appellation, which makes it more awkward to translate as anything other than ‘I’ in English--can’t just keep it in pinyin like you would do with 师弟, and moreover keeping it in pinyin would open up a big can of worms for a bunch of other non-我 self-addresses: 在下 (zaixia, humble self-address)，朕 (zhen, self-address for the emperor)，孤 (gu, self address for a prince)，贫道 (pindao, humble self-address for a Daoist)，etc.

2) 本座 tends to be a self-aggrandizing self-appellation, and the ‘this’ and ‘one’ in ‘this venerable one’ just automatically connote humility--they de-center the self, and ‘venerable’ can only do so much heavy lifting to make up for that. But 本座 doesn’t de-center the self, it reinforces it, it puts the self on a pedestal. Like, I’m not opposed to translating 在下 as ‘this one’ or even 贫道 as ‘this humble Daoist’ (sparingly, only at the beginning of paragraphs, see reason (1)), because in those cases, they do effectively convey humility. But the only way I could see ‘this venerable one’ being an effective translation of 本座 would be, say, a grandmaster/immortal/deity who is humble by nature, and only uses that appellation to be in keeping with their fellow grandmasters/immortals/deities.

So, what would I do? Well, I’m actually not in favor of just erasing the various context-laden self-appellations by turning them all into ‘I/me’, especially because it’s often important to characterization to see when a character switches between different self-appellations, how they’re modulating between formality and informality, pride and humility, distance and intimacy. In fact, I even distinguish between 你 (you, informal) and 您 (you, formal) by capitalizing the latter, despite that not being standard practice.

I can think of two main ways to go about it:

1) In the past, I’ve translated 本座 using the royal ‘We/Us’, much like I’ve done with 朕, and just put a footnote indicating it’s not quite the same. This, to me, seems like the best option short of changing typeface.

2) But actually, I’ve been thinking about it, and think maybe one could also convey the grandness of 本座 through ‘I/Me’, that is, capitalization and boldface (or maybe just ‘I/me’, just boldface). The eye pauses slightly on the word, but doesn’t get bogged down by a big mouthful.