I spent 3 hours on a single word, and it's why so many translations feel flat
So I've been translating a Chinese cultivation webnovel for a while, and today I sat staring at one word for like three hours. The word is 灵气. You'll see it translated as "spiritual qi" or "spiritual energy" everywhere, which is not wrong exactly, but the original has this whole weight behind it. It's basically the "air" of that world, it's in the mountains, in the sects, tied to people's fates. Call it by the dictionary word and all of that quietly drains out.
Which got me thinking, and honestly this is me just rambling a bit. Figure every one of these terms done at a "good enough" level, times a thousand chapters, and you kinda get why some translated Chinese novels feel dead even when the original slaps. The story is fine. It's the lazy words that kill it.
Some words really don't have an English one-to-one. 道心. 因果. 缘分. Translators fight about these all the time and most of the time there's no right answer, just the least-wrong one.
Anyway, genuine question for people who read translated Chinese stuff: do you actually notice when someone clearly spent extra time on one specific word? Or is dictionary-level fine as long as the story stays good? Curious.
Oh and, if there's ever been a translated term that bugged you and you always wondered what it actually meant in Chinese, drop it below. I'll tell you what the original meant. That could be fun.