cashew | Thursday, March 4th, 2021

Friend dragged me into the second episode of the TV drama. The acting is a bit...up and down.

So, when I looked the show up, it turns out almost none of the actors dubbed themselves, which, as friend and I figured, probably means none of the actors' enunciation passed muster. LOL. According to the list, only one character (聂怀桑, played by 纪李) dubbed themselves. Maybe I'll keep watching and see who this self-dubbing actor is.

(It's common practice in Chinese dramas to have both a visual actor and a voice dubber for each character due to the nature of dialects. In order for the audio to be decipherable by nationwide audiences, the pronunciation has to be standardized to the official pronunciation. This requires specialized training, which a lot of actors, especially TV actors, don't have. To give you an idea of how different pronunciations can get across the country: historically, it's common for government officials to hire a local translator who knows both the official dialect and the local dialect so that they can understand the local people.)

Also, I realized that the series keeps putting up the Chinese names in the archaic style, which probably is confusing as fuck for people used to the English/American style of names, so I'm going to explain how Chinese names are put together.

( Chinese names and its five parts: 姓、氏、名、字、号 )

So, here's a real life example from a pretty famous Chinese historical character to give you a taste: 诸葛亮(Zhuge Liang). (Did you notice he has a compound family name?)

姓氏 (Family name): 诸葛 (Zhuge)⬅Dad's side (琅琊诸葛氏)
名 (Given name): 亮 (Liang)
字 (Adult name): 孔明 (Kongming)
号 (Self-given name): 卧龙 (Wolong)⬅literally means "crouching dragon", so badass!

Therefore, he would be referenced in narration as "诸葛亮" (Zhuge Liang) or "诸葛孔明" (Zhuge Kongming) or "诸葛卧龙" (Zhuge Wolong). He would use "亮" in place of the first-person pronoun when speaking to others of equal or higher social status. People of a lower class would call him by the appropriate social title "先生" (aka mister or teacher), no names. If you're a little bolder or there are multiple teachers around, he can be referred to as "诸葛先生" (aka "Mister/Teacher Zhuge"). If you're a huge fan, you can call him "卧龙先生". To his close friends/superiors, he'd be known as "孔明". To his peers and enemies, he'd be referred to as "卧龙". Except 周瑜(Zhou Yu) who famously referred to him as "亮" and all the BL was born.

...now, I wonder how many MDZS fics actually follow this naming convention?

(BTW: If you're trying to scream someone's name, first, it just isn't done because it's improper; you don't speak a person's given name to their face unless it's parents to their child. But if you must call for them loudly for whatever reason, then you use the family name + title. So, using the previous example, if 诸葛亮's superior is trying to find him, they would call out "诸葛军师". 军师(jun shi) is a military title, basically the "teacher of the military" or "master strategist".)

Finally, an addendum: I noticed that MDZS uses a lot of "[Name]Clan of [Location]". (For example, the first two groups I encountered are 姑苏蓝氏 and 兰陵金氏.) This reference convention is necessary because a lot of Chinese family names are...uh, the same. For example: the 李(Li) family name is 100 million strong. Not all of them are related to the famous imperial family of the Tang dynasty. So, you have to clarify where the family comes from, aka identify the branch from the sprawling family clan.

OK, I'm done.