Jump to content
Chinese-Forums
  • Sign Up

The First Chapter Project: 刘慈欣《三体》


Publius

Recommended Posts

Great idea and first post. I’m in! Want to finish one of the long books I’m reading first, though, so it may be a month before I start. Where did you find your recommended electronic version of 《三体》?

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@murrayjames Amazon.cn has a Kindle version. Dangdang.com also has a electronic version. I didn't buy them though. I found a pirated 《三体全集》 that contains a copyright page:

出版时间:2012年1月

ISBN: 978-7-229-04206-6

此书授权在亚马逊进行销售

版权归广州市久邦数码科技有限公司所有

 

@Yadang Next book will be easier. I'm considering 曹文轩's 《草房子》 or 林海音's 《城南旧事》, both on the recommended reading list for primary school students.

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the post, Publius--you obviously put a lot of selfless effort into it.

 

I've been planning a re-read of Three Body later this year (alongside the release of the English translation of Three Body X) so I will definitely be back to make use of your notes and help.

 

Incidentally, here are Ken Liu's comments on the order of chapters in the translation:

Quote

The first book, as originally published in Chinese, actually comes in a different order. It starts out with the police and army officers asking Professor Wang to join them at the Battle Command Center. All the Cultural Revolution episodes happen as flashbacks. That gave the original Three-Body Problem a very Japanese thriller/detective story kind of feel. But Liu Cixin had always intended for the story to actually start with the Cultural Revolution chapters. He had switched the order only because of concern about whether or not that content would be sensitive. We decided to restore the chapter order, and I like the new structure a lot more. The Cultural Revolution parts are no longer just kind of throwaway flashback exclamations. They are actually the foundation of the story.

 

https://www.wired.com/2016/10/wired-book-club-ken-liu-interview/

  • Like 1
  • Helpful 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, here is the original preface not included in the book:

Quote

  《三体》终于能与科幻朋友们见面了,用连载的方式事先谁都没有想到,也是无奈之举。之前就题材问题与编辑们仔细商讨过,感觉没有什么问题,但没想到今年是文革三十周年这事儿,单行本一时出不了,也只能这样了。
  其实这本书不是文革题材的,文革内容在其中只占不到十分之一,但却是一个漂荡在故事中挥之不去的精神幽灵。
  本书虽不是《球状闪电》的续集,但可以看做那个故事所发生的世界在其后的延续,那个物理学家在故事中出现但已不重要,其他的人则永远消失了,林云真的死了,虽然我有时在想,如果她活下来,最后是不是这个主人公的样子?
  这是一个暂名为《地球往事》的系列的第一部,可以看做一个更长的故事的开始。
  这是一个关于背叛的故事,也是一个生存与死亡的故事,有时候,比起生存还是死亡来,忠诚与背叛可能更是一个问题。
  疯狂与偏执,最终将在人类文明的内部异化出怎样的力量?冷酷的星空将如何拷问心中道德?
  作者试图讲述一部在光年尺度上重新演绎的中国现代史,讲述一个文明二百次毁灭与重生的传奇。
  朋友们将会看到,连载的这第一期,几乎不是科幻,但这本书并不是这一期显示出来的这个样子,它不是现实科幻,比《球状闪电》更空灵,希望您能耐心地看下去,后面的故事变化会很大。
  在以后的一段时光中,读者朋友们将走过我在过去的一年中走过的精神历程,坦率地说,我不知道你们将在这条黑暗诡异的迷途上看到什么,我很不安。但科幻写到今天,能够与大家同行这么长一段时间,也是缘分。

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Even though it contains a lot of unique words I still recommend reading it on an e-version. It's very easy to use pleco OCR to quickly check these words without interrupting the flow of the passage.

My strategy was to read a chapter a day in the Chinese version, then next day read English and Chinese version together in a split screen mode on a tablet. Working quite well actually. Still plenty of reading exposure and much  more interesting  that almost all of the graded readers I read. 

 

  • Helpful 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

One other notable change made during the English translation of The Dark Forest 三体II:黒暗森林 involved one of the Wallfacers' plans, which was adjusted to remove references to Ball Lighnting 球状闪电 which had not been published in English translation at the time.  A translation of the original text (for comparison to the published book) is available at https://www.reddit.com/r/threebodyproblem/comments/5988jo/translation_tylers_original_plan_in_the_chinese/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Update: Turns out there is a revised hardbound edition called 纪念版 (ISBN 978-7-229-12441-0) but it's much, much more expensive than the paperback. The retail price is 288 yuan. On normal days you can probably get it down to 170 online. But with a 50% discount and a coupon, I was able to buy a lot more for a mere 100 kuai (that's 60 for the trilogy):

IMG_20190603_162314.thumb.jpg.0948d2705da3811ffaa6899950412b5d.jpgIMG_20190603_190027.thumb.jpg.de7c35d9b3f0e496ba8ab45a273a2c8c.jpgIMG_20190603_190428.thumb.jpg.6e18e264641d50c2f3d4cd331e99a878.jpgIMG_20190603_192047.thumb.jpg.785542edf40098b75b59c9b08d96631c.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 years later...

Since many of you guys seem to be reading 三体, I tried the first chapter. This is quite different from TheChairMansBao. Admittedly, it is more fun ? (I would not say more interesting). I found it quite manageable, even though I had to look up lots of words (according to CTA my comprehension rate is about 94-95%). 

 

When you read such a chapter, do you guys skip nuanced descriptions like 傻笑 变成 了 狞笑 (or do you know them already)?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 1/29/2022 at 5:51 PM, Jan Finster said:

do you guys skip nuanced descriptions like 傻笑 变成 了 狞笑

 

Welcome to the club!  I know some of them, but I tend to skip / guess the meaning.  I don't look up until I feel like I'd lose the plot line, or I see the words appear a few times!

  • Like 1
  • Helpful 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

You should make a list of all the sci-fi terms.  I only thought of doing that starting with book 2.   As a sci-fi fan, I expect to run into those terms again. 

 

Now I'm listening to it, I regret I didn't do one for book 1.  If I read book 1 again, I'll probably do it, unless someone else has already done it.

 

https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/61537-三体-part-2-the-dark-forest-黑暗森林-spoilers-for-三体-series/

 

https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/61706-三体-3-deaths-end-死神永生-spoilers-for-the-entire-三体-series/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...

I came here today looking for exactly this, and was surprised to find it! The only problem is that there is just one book listed.

 

The absolute hardest part about reading Chinese novels and news for me has been the pronouns, since they tend to be: (1) full of obscure characters and (2) not in Pleco. In most cases, if I scan a word into Pleco and it's not found in the database, I ignore it. Usually I can recognize the word later if I have seen it enough times before, but unless it's a direct transliteration, I won't bother to learn how it's pronounced. As a result, I have read several English>Chinese translated books without ever learning the character's names.

 

It would be great if there were some kind of database that listed all of the pronouns used in a particular book, plus their pronunciations and English (or other language) equivalents if they exist. I assume this would be easy to do at scale if there was a way to cross-reference Chinese Text Analyzer with Pleco to see which words appear in the book but don't appear in Pleco, but I'm not sure if that is possible. Does anyone know of an automated way to do this?

 

If not, I may just start a manual wiki list for the books I read. I would also be happy to share it here if it's helpful.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you mean proper names, I have that problem too.  So I had the wiki page open while I was reading books 2 & 3.  E.g.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Forest

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death's_End

 

You may be doing that already.  Both of those pages have a decent list of characters from the 2 books.  You can probably google around for even more detailed lists.

 

However, they don't have names of the institutions or the names of historical people though.  They are an large number of those scattered in those 2 books. 

 

Particularly, in the Byzantine empire section of the third book.  I compiled a list of proper names from that, because I got very confused:

 

https://www.chinese-forums.com/forums/topic/61706-三体-3-deaths-end-死神永生-spoilers-for-the-entire-三体-series/?do=findComment&comment=483134

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 2/8/2023 at 11:25 PM, phills said:

If you mean proper names, I have that problem too.

 

Yeah, you're right! I meant proper nouns, not pronouns.

 

The name list you linked perfectly meets my needs (though I'm reading a different book at the moment). I would love to have this type of resource for all commonly read Chinese novels, or even the news.

 

Perhaps there is no easy way to create one, and the best way is just to compile lists manually while reading the books as you have.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and select your username and password later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Click here to reply. Select text to quote.

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...