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  1. Aceldama

    Aceldama free servant Contributor

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    Romance of the 3 kingdom's.

    Discussion in 'Discussion of Published Works' started by Aceldama, Jun 18, 2020.

    I've been fascinated by this story when as a youth Id play the dynasty warriors video game series with my friend. Elated to know it was all based on a classic, historical novel.

    Very much want to pick it up but don't know how or where. Amazon has a few renditions. Thing is Wikipedia is saying that the novel has over 100 chapters and 800,000 words which is just hard for me to fathom.

    I'm assuming they have the novel sold in a series. First book of one has around 800 pages with I think three books in all. Which comes nowhere near 800k. Am I missing something? I want to read this novel in its entirety, despite its gargantuan size.
     
  2. Friedrich Kugelschreiber

    Friedrich Kugelschreiber marshmallow Contributor

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    For context, War and Peace is about 1.2 million words, which easily fits into one book. It's probably not as huge as you think it is.
     
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  3. Aceldama

    Aceldama free servant Contributor

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    For some reason I was equating words with pages. 800k words, not pages lol.
     
  4. Lemex

    Lemex That's Lord Lemex to you. Contributor

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    I knew someone who lives and works in China - and the Chinese government is so keen in preserving it's literary past it has authoritative editions with illustrations, and the full Romance of the Three Kingdoms comes to 3,000 pages in such editions. I think that has to include scholarly annotations, which (trust me) are vital for understanding literature so old on even a basic level. I've seen an unabridged English translation be around 1,800 pages, and my copy of The Tale of Genji (Japanese, and a much shorter work) comes to 1500 pages, not including a to be honest quite short introduction.

    What I'm saying is there's a lot of variables, and you'll probably not want to find a bad translation because it'll be cheap. Translating anything is hard (again, trust me on that) and so it's often more about what you personally find easier to read or what you are looking for. Some translations are more loose, and about 'capturing the spirit', but in English are generally more readable for a non-specialist, while others are more accurate to the original wording. That's not a hard and fast 'rule', but either way, you'll lose something unless you speak excellent Chinese.

    I've not read Romance, and so I can't offer any suggestions on translations of it, but when you go to buy one - I am going to recommend looking at a few different versions first.

    What makes you so interested in it?
     
    Last edited: Jun 18, 2020
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  5. Aceldama

    Aceldama free servant Contributor

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    Well, honestly historical fiction and nonfiction are turning out to be my favorite type of literature.. I don't know how it happened but I turned out to be a history buff.

    So seeing as this is equated as Shakespeare for China (in a sense) it's kind of mandatory to my literary sensibilities to read it.
    __

    What you're saying makes a lot of sense. I've already gathered from reading reviews on amazon that there are a few variables such as translation and annotations to take into account when looking to purchase a novel like this one. I'm going to purchase a few different copies with noticable differences and compare.

    I really don't mind complicated books so ideally I'd prefer a translation as close to the original as possible.
     
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  6. Friedrich Kugelschreiber

    Friedrich Kugelschreiber marshmallow Contributor

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    Hang on, I was completely mistaken. War and Peace has about 587,000 words, haha.
     
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  7. Aceldama

    Aceldama free servant Contributor

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    Okay. I got some Dr. Evil 'one billion' vibes lol. I believed ya though.
     
  8. Friedrich Kugelschreiber

    Friedrich Kugelschreiber marshmallow Contributor

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    Yeah, I confused it with Shelby Foote's The Civil War: A Narrative, which is 1.2 million words. 3,000 pages in 3 volumes.
     
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  9. Naomasa298

    Naomasa298 HP: 10/190 Status: Confused Contributor

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    I've read it.

    There's an online translation here, by C.H.Brewitt-Taylor, but using the modern pinyin name system:
    https://www.threekingdoms.com/

    The above was first published in 1925, so the language is a little archaic, but I think that lends it a charm. It helps to be familiar with the story to begin with, but if you aren't used to Chinese names, you may find it hard to follow (but that goes for all editions regardless). There are a LOT more characters than in a Dynasty Warriors game.
     
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  10. Aceldama

    Aceldama free servant Contributor

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    That was very helpful, thank you.
    How did you like the novel?
     
  11. Naomasa298

    Naomasa298 HP: 10/190 Status: Confused Contributor

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    An historical note: Although Romance of the Three Kingdoms is (largely) fiction, it is based on the book Records of the Three Kingdoms or Sanguo Zhi , which is a historical text documenting the real events (with all the usual caveats about such texts, given that it is a second-hand account).

    There is a translation of this on Amazon as well.
     
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  12. Naomasa298

    Naomasa298 HP: 10/190 Status: Confused Contributor

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    I enjoyed it, but I think if you don't buy into the story, it's hard going.
     
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