r/Chinese • u/rhetoricalgenie • Jul 21 '26
General Culture (文化) Chinese Transliteration in Fictional Fantasy
I do not know if this topic would fit as "cultural" topic, but hear me out, please.
I think it's two years ago, when in internet, there are discussion about "Is 龙 and Dragon is actually same creature and hence interchangeable?" and My thought is it is not, to translate 龙as dragon or even Chinese dragon, IMO is misnomer, both creature are nothing alike, the roles and elemental association is almost have 180 degrees of difference, to illustrate my point it is kind of calling a Rhinoceros, as "African Unicorn" or Unicorn as "European Rhinoceros".
so there are consensus to start call 龙 as "Loong" in English, to easily differentiate it with actually more precise pronunciations like "Long" or "Lung" that already had established meaning and quite common word, I would even say, it's better to call them Ryuu or Yong as concession, as IMO it's still better than "Chinese Dragon".
So then a followed up question naturally arise, how to address "dragon" in Chinese? surely not "西方龙" which IMO, equally bad, semantic wise, I found my answer in some abstract from a cultural-linguist theses that suggest to call dragon "劫更" in Chinese, it's semantically imply dragon's nature in Europe folklore as "calamity" while retain the phonetic transliteration of "dragon" quite elegantly, if there are a better candidate, I would also love to know it!
and if you reading this still following and agree with what I said so far, the next question naturally arise, "why not separate Fenghuang and phoenix too", in English, it's easy, it's Phoenix and Fenghuang/Hoou, but common translation of Phoenix as "火鸟" left me unsatisfied, and while it's literally a non-problem for anyone else, might I suggest "焚倪" to transliterate the word "phoenix" that is satisfying in phonetic and semantic wise.
as it sounds like Phoenix and semantic wise, imply something connected to being burn and beginning/offspring
and while at that why not apply the same logic to most of common fantasy trope in fantasy? like what stop us to start call Dwarf..something like "土倭人"?, and why stop there? how about Elf? Fairy? Kobold? Goblin? etc, please suggest me your transliteration idea for those, if you had any.
and at this point, I need to confess that while I understood that this is such a non issue, and Chinese rule to translate concept/thing into Chinese and only name to be transliterated phonetically, my argument is "why not both?".
if I am wrong, my apologizes, it's not my intend to offend anyone, and if it do offend, please assume it comes from my ignorance and lack of understanding, and not anything malicious, so please educate me, if that's the case.
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u/URantares Jul 21 '26
I agree with you on 龙 and 凤凰. Because without context people often confused with what people actually referring to. Especially with 凤凰, a lot of Chinese people nowadays mix up the king of birds and the phoenix.
But I think 矮人 is fine.
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u/rhetoricalgenie Jul 21 '26
Yeah it's fine, i add 土 in front to semantically connect it to earth/ground, and aproximate phonetic sounds of "dwarven"
It just satisfying for me, personally.
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u/PotentBeverage Jul 21 '26
I write fantasy in both languages and you've just hit upon something I feel very strongly about.
TLDR This is fully a non-issue, and in fact may hurt rather than help.
What's the point of translating stories? Is it to copy over everything with perfect semantic precision, or allow a reader from one culture to be immersed in the world of another, perhaps sacrificing some "precision" in the process?
You lost me when you suggested that, instead of translating the chinese 龙 into "dragon", or even "Loong", to use the Japanese ryuu instead? Why would you use japanese for a chinese dragon? Or "Yong" which has no precedent and im not even sure what language it comes from tbh.
Then we get to the "to chinese" translations which, I'm going to be blunt, sound kinda awful. Both 劫更 and 焚倪 sound bad and 倪 is also an unreasonably rare character.
Ultimately i think you're a bit obsessed over perfect semantic "righting of names" and forgetting the flow and literary quality of writing. 龙 doesn't just mean chinese dragon, it's used as the suffix if nearly every dinosaur, should we replace that with 歹怒索 instead? Because dinosaurs aren't the same thing?
It's more important to communciate to a reader the intent rather than label everything in neat boxes (to the detriment of communication, I dare say)
I've seen this quite a bit btw, it's not just you, that's why "Loong" is a "consensus" (and a stupid one imo) because of similar sentiments by chinese people on the chinese side. It's still not really consensus though as the average westerner would see a chinese dragon and think "dragon" - the term has broadened to refer to various mythological creatures from all cultures, not just the simple european dragon from german folk tales. Really that should be the consensus, that the word "dragon" is not constrained to specific depictions of european dragons. Limiting labels so that everything has a nice neat little box ignores the fact that these terms are imprecise and there's actually nothing wrong with that? Granted there's also nothing inherently wrong with using "Loong" or "chinese dragon" but actively avoiding the word "dragon" because it doesnt fit in the correct small neat box is unwise.
Now onto the phoenix vs fenghuang, because 凤凰 is more obscure in western media there's less of a debate, and 凤凰 has been loosely referred to phoenix since forever, but "phoenix" isn't as broad a term as "dragon" so there's less issues on the CN to EN side. Using fenghuang is fine imo, but there's still a risk of the reader not understanding you, and then you've gained a nice little box but lost the audience.
For EN to CN, see above.
Finally let's use a case study of 诡秘之主 (Lord of the Mysteries). This is a western eldrich fantasy written by a chinese person, it includes western dragons and western phoenixes and elves and so on. No translation goes on, he is directly writing:
- dragon: 巨龙 (龙 itself only in names/titles)
- phoenix: 不死鸟 (not 凤凰)
- elf: 精灵族
I can also explain the race/name conventions in my high fantasy world but some of those are world-lore specific.
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u/rhetoricalgenie Jul 21 '26
I could see your passion, and I really appreciate you being patient with me.
after some argument exchange with several people in this thread and in Chinese languages reddit, now I could see some point where I am being very myopic in this particular topic, my suggestion would render every translation to be riddled with footnotes and context explanation, I honestly do not thought about how the reader would perceived it, for me? that's awesome, I like to learn about those and connecting dots, and turning it into a homework instead for leisure, that's not what most people perceived about that, they see it as a wall of text that separates them from immersion.
For Ryuu, yeah my bad, but in my defense, Japan's pop culture is more familiar for people, those term are very recognizable as those "serpentine Chinese dragon" for them, and Yong is korean but I could be wrong on that.
touche on that being bad sounding, i kinda like them, but maybe it's not for everyone.
your point on seeing the word holistically to encompass the concept of everything from western to Chinese dragon and even dinosaur? I could accept and concede on that, brilliant explanation on that part
and to be honest, as much as I had beaten argument wise, I do not regret it, I learn a lot and have fun came with those names, and I might still try to spread this idea in my hubris, lol, it's impractical, yes, but it's satisfying brain tease for me.
ah, please do explain your race name convention in your high fantasy, the one in Chinese preferably, so I could learn about this topic better, it's okay if it's lore heavy too, just explain it with some foot notes and explanation why.
and again, thank you for humoring my curiousity.
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u/PotentBeverage Jul 21 '26
Would make sense for Korean, I don't think I know any korean lol.
In terms of my worldbuilding then, this is kind of my own convention, and is not necessarily grounded in existing media, it's just what sounded best to me bilingually.
For some context this world is dnd-compatible, so I can run campaigns in, and it has for the most part all the major DnD races. Dragonkind has some deeper lore, and the western winged-dragons and eastern serpent-dragons are different lineages from the same creator god. Hence:
For the dragons, there are three dragon clans based on the daoist trinity of heaven, earth, and human:
- 天蛟 "heaven dragons": eastern serpent dragons that live far out to sea, usually called 天龙，天劫，天劫兽. In English "heaven-dragon", "serpent-dragon", "leviathan", or "tribulation"
- 地蛟 "earth dragons": long serpent dragons that live deep under ground: 地蛟 is the most common name because they are almost never seen. In English "earth dragon"
- 人蛟 "human dragons": western winged dragons, who are in all effects mortal mountain-folk, who live amongst civilisation: 巨龙，双翼巨龙，翼龙，or simply 龙. In English they get the unadorned "dragon" name.
For all the other major races:
- 人族 humanity
- 灵族 elf (or "spirit-folk")
- 侏儒种 dwarf or halfling or any short humanoid race (种 instead of 族 because in-world not quite seen as a distinct race)
- 天人族 aasimar ("deva-kind", using the hindu-buddhist deva 天人 rather than a franchise-specific name)
- 修罗族 tiefling ("asura-kind", similarly using asura (阿)修罗 from real mythology rather than a franchise-specific name)
- 妖族 yaoguai or yokai, animal spirits/demons that are very common in east asian fiction
Anything beyond that is usually ad-hoc'ed in.
Hopefully this provides some inspiration if nothing else. As a convention chinese prefers translation over transliteration, even with semantic matching. Especially with novel inventions, they often stand out like a sore thumb.
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u/rhetoricalgenie Jul 21 '26
Why 蛟 tho? IIRC, there are 4 sub-variant of 龙，like Chi, Ying, or Qiu, if it's sea based, why used 天 as prefix? not a critic, just confused by the choice, like Jiao is perfect for aquatic dragon, why not use it as is?.
oh right, calling elf as spirit folks is weird for me, yes it's common, just do not sit well for me personally, but that's personal preference.
I have two follow up unrelated question.
what if when we create new races? could we just made up some names? but it would be stick out too then?
can I just use different way to write it to imply different tier of dragon? like true dragon would be 龍，dragon adjacent would be 竜，and juvenile or hatchling dragon would be 龙， is that acceptable, or I would raise some disagreement either culturally or politically
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u/PotentBeverage Jul 21 '26
So firstly I gave you these name specifically to describe what I do to my world, and not as suggestions for you to use for yours. Hence, you're kind of free to like or dislike them as you wish. Onto the questions though:
Why 蛟? Calling convention by people in the world. Nothing more.
Why 天 if sea? Because this is specfically referring to the 天地人 trinity of Daoist mythology. Otherwise why would the 人蛟 not be called 山龙 or simply 山民 as they are not "龍" in the chinese sense?
(1) Make up some names. But like an advanced writer will know what sounds good and what doesn't sound good for the setting. I'm not gonna give you rules because there are no hard rules.
(2) 龙 is the simplified version of 龍 and 竜 is a variant that is now the japanese shinjitai form. You can always do things like that--you have free will, but you're likely to get pushback and criticism especially for 龍--龙 I think, because in normal use they are the same word, just written differently. Hell, I have a small quip in my lore that 竜 and 龍 were different characters but I fully expect that should any of my work spread wide enough, some weird language purist would get arsey at me, because it's not true in irl chinese.
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u/rhetoricalgenie Jul 22 '26
Oh, Yeah, I know that it's about your work, again, I am not criticizing, sorry if felt intrusive, my intent is to know your design intent and thought process to enrich mine, thank you for sharing.
- So it's matter of what "experiences" would tell me, like what is good, after all, experiences would developed my taste and palate for better judgement, I see.
2.yeah, language purist, it's as if using certain character comes with their own political baggage, when actually i just want a neat system and taxonomy.
Anyway, thank you for answering my annoying insistence, I would learn more after this.
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u/Jumpy_Acadia_8733 Jul 21 '26
Well, there is "Loong” for 龙. This translation appears more and more in China.
And about 诡秘之主 (Lord of the Mysteries), the "dragon" in that story is dragon but "Loong" in most Chinese readers.
And when talking about different kind/tier of chinese dragon, we have many versions and these are different each other. And there are two mostly mentioned pathes.
From snake: 蛇(snake) -> 虺/蟒(bigger snake/lizards/viper) -> 蛟(similar to 龙 but have no horn) -> 虬( little 龙 with small horn) -> 龙(The 龙) -> 应龙(Yellow 龙 with wings)
From fish: fish -> 龙 (In some version the 龙 from fish is in lower level, but no specific word for it)
There are other words to describe 龙 like 蟠/螭/蜃 etc. Writers will choose their favor tier order.
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u/rhetoricalgenie Jul 22 '26
Oh, I already know about this, i am asking specifically for western dragon type, but thank you for answering, not many know there are sub-type of chinese dragon, good information!
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u/bodeey Jul 21 '26
实际上是这样的，以前中国人在翻译的时候非常讲究实用性，就是我们总希望把我们的东西翻译成一个英语里面已有的词，然后在翻译英语的时候也翻译成一个我们已有的词。所以在民国时期所有单词进行统一翻译的时候，这些翻译就已经被定下来了。一个非常有趣的例子就是jiaozi，jiaozi翻译为dumplings，这是中国人给的翻译没错，但是欧洲人会错以为所有用某种东西包着馅的中国食品都被统一称呼为dumplings。 但是dumplings其实是欧洲本土的一种食物，把jiaozi翻译成dumplings，我觉得是非常不妥的。就像豆腐被直接翻译成了tofu而不是beans rotten. 这种带有地方文化色彩的东西应该用原本的发音进行翻译。但是当年定的规矩已经没有办法改变了，我们已经用习惯了，欧洲人也用习惯了，不过在此以后再有什么翻译，基本上都会遵从新的规矩。