Since then, domestic readers are keen to talk about the admiration of celebrities such as Obama, Cameron and Zuckerberg for Three-body, but ignore the crux of the problem. Why do western readers admire "Three-body" so much?
Because of translation, what is the difference between western readers and the Three-body we see?
Trajectory magazine thinks that Three-body is the first (China) hard science fiction novel in the modern sense. Publishers Weekly believes that fans of hard science fiction will be intoxicated with the imaginative utopia of science and technology in Three-body. In an article published in The New Yorker, China's Arthur Clark compared Liu to China's Clark, and thought that Liu's works were "fables of human progress-full of concrete details and detached from abstraction".
The score of Three-body in Amazon
From websites such as Goodreads and Amazon, you can see the comments of ordinary American readers. The overall score of "Three-body" is higher than 4 (5).
A considerable number of readers said that they were attracted by the works at first because of that special history, and after further reading, they were more attracted by the technical propositions such as mathematics and physics involved.
Some readers commented that Liu is a pioneer of cosmology, thinking about the dialectical proposition of human nature and existence. Some readers also commented: I refuse to discuss the plot. If you are interested in science and technology and like hard science fiction at the same time, please stop reading this book review and order this book immediately.
The above two representative comments reflect American readers' concern about the ultimate human problems and technical problems. Some readers found the connection between Liu and Clark and made the following comments: Liu's style is very similar to Clark's, and both of them have incredible superhuman imagination.
Of course, bad reviews also exist, mainly because many readers can't really enter the world of science fiction, so they feel out of touch with the novel and the characters in the novel are unreal.
Liu's "Three-body" has been criticized at home and abroad, and a large part of it focuses on the flattening and rigidity of characters and the inhumanity of modeling. In fact, this is not that Liu has a defect in his writing ability, but that he did it on purpose. In Beyond Narcissism, Liu hoped that science fiction would give literature a chance.
He said: literature is moving towards deeper narcissism, grand narrative is disappearing, more and more introverted, more and more homely ... only the relationship between oneself and oneself, only personal muttering. At the same time, literature that abandoned the times and people complained that it was abandoned by the former.
It can be seen that Liu did not mechanically imitate the style of Clark's works, but organically combined some elements.
The existence of people as a group image corresponds to grand narrative. The narcissism of traditional literature is related to the disappearance of grand narrative.
Ken Liu
In the postscript to the translation of Three-body, it was said that he and Wei Liu have made great efforts to enhance the readability of the English version of Three-body, because there are a large number of culturally loaded words in the original text of Three-body, and the translator actively added some explanatory words at the right time to supplement the cultural explanatory information, thus helping readers to strengthen their understanding of the work and enhance cross-cultural communication and understanding.
In addition to the necessary annotations, Liu Yukun also made some minor changes in the specific translation process. In China's version of Three-body, Liu used some words and created some images suspected of discriminating against women.
Such as "sissy", such as "like women", and the negative image of Ye destroying the world.
This seems to be no problem in China culture, but it doesn't work in western society which is extremely sensitive to women's rights.
Therefore, Liu Yukun made some changes in translation.
Zhang Jingchu Edition Ye Wenjie
When explaining to Cheng Xin why she is most likely to be the sword bearer in three body 3: Death and Eternal Life, Hopkins once said: At the same time, let human beings, these women and fake women not be afraid.
Sissy is a disparaging term for women. China people may be used to it, but if it is translated into English according to their wishes, some western readers may explode. So Liu Yukun translated this sentence into: He should intimidate the three gods and not the people on the earth.