The Tragedy of the Blu-ray of Heaven Official's Blessing

     So, a while back I mentioned towards the end of a post about how excited I was that the animated adaptation of Heaven Official's Blessing had gotten a domestic US release on Blu-ray.  (I am too lazy to try and track down what post it was in, tbh.)

    Sadly, I am no longer excited.

    At least, not in a good way.

    It may look pretty, but it's basically unwatchable.

    And you know why it's unwatchable?

    Because the subtitles are utter garbage.

    And this is coming from someone who's watched large portions of episodes of The Untamed on Youtube, where the subtitles do such odd things as using "Childe" for "-gongzi," despite that "Childe" is such an archaic term that the last person to use it seriously (afaik) was Lord Byron in faux Elizabethan mode.

    Those are still superior to the subtitles on the above Blu-ray, despite that the manufacturers of said Blu-ray have the gall to charge a lot of money for it.  This is especially infuriating because good subtitles already exist:  the subtitles on Netflix (where I originally watched the show) are perfectly acceptable.

    The Blu-ray's subtitles are so bad that I literally had to pause the disc every so often to write down my disgust at its behavior.

    So let's dive into those notes and catalog all the horrors I encountered in the first four episodes of the "official" US Blu-ray release of the animated Heaven Official's Blessing!  For the sake of my sanity, these are just following the order of my notes (thus roughly the order in which they happen in the show) and not escalating from least to worst.  (The worst is actually from episode two, so there's still a lot more after that.)

    First off, I was already annoyed just on the menu, because in this day and age it was defaulting to English dub instead of original language with English subs.  Seriously.  It's 2023, people.  Can we please stop acting like entitled 1990s toddlers?

    Right off the bat in the very first scene, they exhibit their confusion over whether or not the name of Xie Lian's country is one word or two.  (Hint:  it's one.  One word.  He's the Crown Prince of Xianle, not of Xian Le.  Not that hard, guys.)

    Then we get the ambush on Mount Yujun, and these zombie-things are forming up to attack the wedding procession:  we see skeletons, and then flesh assembling itself on top of the skeletons.  So they are very clearly zombies, in modern English parlance; they're probably some variant of jiangshi (I think that's the word) in the original Chinese, the standard MDZS translation of "fierce corpse" would likely have been appropriate here.  But no!  The subtitles decided to call them "slave-goblins."  Because yeah.  Those totally looked like freakin' goblins.

    But then...oh then.

    The next point in my notes is the most egregious of the lot.  Likely the most egregious in the entire series, if I could bring myself to watch the rest of it.  (Hint:  I cannot.)  Because this next problem is not just crass and reductive, it's also racist.  Against Chinese people.  On the subtitles for this Chinese animated program.

    Yeah, let that sink in there for a minute, then I'll explain.

    So, for this first of Xie Lian's outings as a newly reinstated god, he's being accompanied by two junior heavenly officials (low rank gods, essentially) named Nan Feng and Fu Yao.  These two are working for two martial gods (often referred to as generals), Feng Xin and Mu Qing respectively.  Feng Xin and Mu Qing had served Xie Lian back when he was just the Crown Prince of Xianle, and then had been his own junior officials after he first ascended as a god, and since parting ways with him became gods in their own right.  (This was not strongly explained in the show, which seems to expect the viewer to have already read the book.  (Which is why I was rather confused by the opening episodes when I watched it initially, of course! 🤣))

    The subject comes up that Feng Xin, under his divine name Nan Yang, has a lot of female worshippers, which naturally seems strange to Xie Lian, since Feng Xin is a martial god, and therefore one expects him to mostly be worshipped by soldiers and men in positions of power who have ambitions that they need military might to fulfill.  He asks about why he has so many female worshippers, and is given a long and amusing explanation.  Rather than try to paraphrase or retype (since it's two pages long!) I'm just going to present phone photos (sloppily edited together) of the pages in question.

    Obviously, the show didn't want to spend that long on a point that was ultimately pretty minor, just one of many petty tribulations that Xie Lian's former subordinates have gone through in the 800 years since Xie Lian's initial ascension and fall from grace.  (Feng Xin, it should be pointed out, does not generally get on well with women, so suddenly being worshipped by them in droves was particularly uncomfortable for him.)  So it mostly just expressed the story with a few lines of dialog and one image of the sign that got changed.  I don't speak Chinese, so I can't say exactly what Fu Yao says to go along with the visuals, but I do think it's safe to say that it's the tl:dr version of what was in those two pages of text:  at some point a king changed the characters Ju Yang was written with so that instead of meaning "Perfect Sun" they meant "Tremendous Masculinity."  A spelling error, but one that doesn't change the sound of the name.  Like if someone were to spell Fred as Phred instead.  That kind of thing, only where it would also change the meaning.

    As that situation simply cannot exist in English (unless they wanted to change Sun to Son, which would actually kind of work here), obviously the translators had to either plan on adding a footnote to the image (or a second line of subtitles to translate the on-screen text) and still say that the king changed the characters so they meant "Tremendous Masculinity" instead of "Perfect Sun" or they had to try to get creative and make the king have actually gotten the divine name wrong, not just in its spelling but in its sound.  Which is inherently much more implausible, but...I'll admit that it's much easier to try to deal with.

    In the Netflix subtitles, they go with the explanation that Feng Xin's original divine name was "General Duke" and that the careless king changed it to "General Dick."  Crass, but it gets the point across.  (Although honestly I feel like the "Tremendous Masculinity" version gives the benefit of the doubt of sounding just as much like it's about fertility as it is about size of equipment, but maybe that's just me.  Given that MXTX went out of her way to specify that the love interests of her first two novels were both hung like horses, she may have intended it to mean size of equipment.)

    That's not what was on the Blu-ray's subtitles.

    The Blu-ray's subtitles said that Feng Xin used to be called "Big Yang" until the careless king changed it to "Big Wang."

    Yeah.  You read that right.

    The Blu-ray's subtitles act on the disgusting assumption that people in China would associate the very common Chinese surname Wang with the crass English slang for "penis."

    This is so appalling that I have no words for it.

    As I said, it's actually downright racist.

    And, as I said above, this is still just the second episode.  But I've sort of worn myself out with ranting about that one, so I'm more or less just going to list from here on out.

    They also got three of the four ghost ranks wrong ("Wrath" being the only one they got right), but I didn't write down what the wrong ones were.

    Continually referencing the "Ghost Groom" as a "demon" despite that "ghost" is literally part of the title.  (There are, as of volume 6 of 8, no demons in Heaven Official's Blessing.  Just gods and ghosts.)

    First reference to Qi Rong and they're calling him the "Green Immor" instead of the "Green Ghost."

    I would like to send a personal note to whoever was in charge of translating this:

    "IMMOR" IS NOT A WORD IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE!!!!!!!!

    Sorry for shouting like that, but what else was I going to do?  What the *&&%^*(^ is wrong with the translation team on this that they're so desperate to avoid acknowledging that this show deals with ghosts?  I mean, they seriously went and invented a crazy-ass word rather than use the very obvious correct word, "ghost."

    And yes, I am quite confident about the fact that "immor" is not a word.  On top of the fact that three different online dictionaries didn't have it, I looked it up in the massive dictionary that my parents for some reason have, the type that normally you only see in the reference section of a library, because it is the size and weight of a small child.

The cover of said dictionary

    Here's the page where "immor" would be if it was a word:

    See?  Jumps straight from "immoment" to "immoral."  If "immor" existed, it would be above "immoral."  And in case you're thinking maybe this isn't such a big dictionary as I said it was...

    2662 pages of pretty tiny type.  (My parents keep a magnifying glass on hand in case they want to consult it.  Though they typically only do so when they want to exult in the fact that the crossword puzzle in the paper is wrong about something.)  If that word existed, it would be in there.

    So, finally moving on to episode 3, and mostly no new problems, until the kid unwraps the bandages around his face.  The subtitles call it "face sickness" instead of "Human Face Disease."  Now, I have no problem with "sickness" instead of "disease."  They're synonyms, and there's no particular advantage or disadvantage to either.  Leaving the "human" off, though, that is just dumb.  Because without specifying that part, it sounds like "a sickness of the face" not "a sickness wherein human faces appear on the skin."  Kind of a big difference.  (Especially since the image of the kid's face is not entirely clear that those things are supposed to be human faces.)

[EDIT:  okay, so I am apparently unable to count. 😰  The kid removing his bandages was in episode four, and it was actually episode five that I got through on the Blu-ray.  I'm currently skimming my way through those episodes on Netflix so I can finish rewatching the show with their superior subtitles, y'see, hence I noticed my mistake.  😅  Anyway, they got the other ghost ranks wrong, too, or at least got them different from the way Seven Seas translated them (I gather the difficulties in translating from Chinese to English are much greater than for a lot of other languages), and did not translate the Calamity titles of the others quite the same way, either, but much closer.  Interestingly, rather than translating "White No-Face" they treated it as a name.  Not sure why (did they also think people would confuse it with Spirited Away's No-Face?), but at least a name makes sense, whereas "White No-Form" does not.  And more importantly, they don't try to pretend ghosts are demons!]

    And now we reach episode 4, the one that made me give up in disgust.  To start with, I was already shuddering at the way they translated the episode's title:  "Ghost King of Hua Cheng."  Where's that "of" come from?  What purpose do they think it serves?  Hua Cheng is a Ghost King, not the subject/kingdom of a Ghost King!

    Then we get another reference to Qi Rong, this time as "Sad-faced Green Immor," which had me really confused at first.  I was like "how did they translate Night-Touring to mean Sad-faced?"  Then I thought about it rationally for a moment and realized that they hadn't used his name in the subtitle, even though I could hear the actor saying Qi Rong.  So I looked it up, and guess what?  The freakin' translators decided that his name was an epithet rather than, you know, the man's flippin' name!  (This is especially problematic because Qi Rong is someone Xie Lian knew back in the day, and Qi Rong was his actual name in life, so when Xie Lian eventually runs into Qi Rong in the course of the novel, he's shocked and appalled that the near-supreme ghost Qi Rong is in fact the very same Qi Rong he knew back in the Xianle Kingdom.)  I don't know why the subtitles wanted to use as few names as possible, but they absolutely did:  in one scene, Xie Lian addresses Mu Qing by name, but the subtitles don't use his name (again, this is brutalizing the story and the characters' relationship with each other, since things are so fraught between Xie Lian and his former subordinates).

    There are four super-powerful ghosts in Heaven Official's Blessing.  Three supremes and a "near supreme" added in just because he's so annoying (and/or to pad out the numbers to a perfect unlucky four), collectively known as the Four Calamities.  The subtitles on the Blu-ray call them the "Four Devils."  On top of the fact that devil is a word with far less punch, its use here also borders on racism, because of the old stereotype of Chinese people calling foreigners "foreign devils."

    I decided to write down how they handled the official Calamity titles of the four, just so I could compare them to the proper translations in the book.  Noting, of course, that they kept using "Immor" instead of "ghost," because why would they let go of something stupid once they had gotten hold of it?

    They went with "Black Water Boat-sinker" while the Seven Seas translation used "Ship-sinking Black Water."  I think the Seven Seas version looks and sounds better, but I'll give the Blu-ray's subtitles a pass on this one, as it does at least convey the same meaning...though changing a participle used adjectivally into the primary noun is a weird choice.

    Next they translated Qi Rong's Calamity title as "Green Light Night-stalker" instead of "Night Touring Green Lantern."  Again, changing around which half is the noun and which is being used adjectivally.  The meaning, in the most strict sense, isn't strongly different between the two, but "Night-stalker" makes him sound considerably more dangerous and effective than he actually is.

    Then there's the white Calamity.  All I wrote down for that one is how they translated his lesser title; I don't think they even used his full Calamity title (which is White-Clothed Calamity).   Unlike the other Calamities, we don't know the white one's name (at least, not as of volume 6, but I suspect his name is probably going to be exposed either in volume 7 (coming out later this month) or in the final volume (currently with a release date in November), so the only name he has to go by is "White No-Face."  The Blu-ray subtitles changed that to "White No-Form."  Which.  Makes.  Literally.  No.  Sense.  He's called "No-Face" because he appears to have no face, as it is always covered with a mask.  He has form.  (Well, okay, technically he doesn't have form at this point in the story, since his form was destroyed not too long after the fall of Xianle, but as he was already called White No-Face before that, it doesn't change my point.)  What he hasn't got is a face.  Hence White No-Face.  Changing it to "No-Form" is just stupid.  It's like someone in the translation department at Funimation/Crunchyroll said "wait, but that guy in Spirited Away is called No-Face!  We can't use the same name as him or people will get confused!"  Despite that no one other than an executive is that stupid.

    And finally, before we get to Hua Cheng's Calamity title, there's the fact that they call his wraith butterflies "Dead Soul Butterflies."  Which is, I guess, not totally wrong?  But it's...not good.  It's creepier (in a bad way), lacks punch, and takes longer to read/say, so it's all around bad.  (I added the "say" part because I'm pretty sure these craptastrophic subtitles are actually dubtitles.  Which is something I honestly thought no one did anymore, and yet there's kind of no other way to explain this?) [EDIT:  my brother volunteered to check in this for me, listening to the dub with the subtitles on, and astonishingly he reported that the two were not the same, because evidently in the dub they rarely used both words "Ghost Groom" together.  (Sadly, it sounds like he was in episode one or two, and not looking at the bog meeting in episode five; I'd love to know how the dub screwed up the Calamity titles, and if they actually persuaded their dub actors to use the non-word "immor.")]

    So.  Hua Cheng.  Crimson Rain Sought Flower.  The supreme Ghost King who challenged 35 gods simultaneously.  The love interest of the novel and all around sex bomb.

    The subtitlers decided to translate his Calamity title as "Blood Rain Flower-seeker."

    It's rare that I want to hit someone for reals, but this really does make me want to punch these guys.  Or at least slap them real hard.

    Changing "Crimson" to "Blood" implies an alignment with Qi Rong (who is known for hanging corpses upside down and causing a rain of blood from them), which could not be further from the truth.  Changing the past tense of "Sought Flower" to "Flower-seeker" makes him sound like a freaking hippie out hunting for flowers all the time rather than something that happened in the past.  (That part of his title has not been fully explained so far in the novel (or if it has I've forgotten) but I'm pretty sure I know what it's vaguely in reference to, however I won't say what as it's something that happened much later in the novel.) [EDIT- in rewatching the rest on Netflix, I saw that Hua Cheng himself (early in his San Lang guise) provided an explanation of the monicker, but I'm not sure that it was the real explanation, as it's sorta weird, but 🤷🏻‍♀️ I guess it could be?  I'll find out in a few months when the final volume of the novel comes out and I reread all the preceding volumes.]

    Of course, the subtitles don't even get right that he challenged those gods at the same time, and say he challenged them "in a row."  Fighting 33 gods one at a time, even back to back, is much less impressive than fighting them all at once.  (Not that he actually fought them all at precisely the same time:  some of them weren't martial gods but civil/scholarly ones, so what he really did was fight all the martial gods at once, and then debate all the civil/scholarly ones at the same time.  But close enough.)

    (The discrepancy between 35 and 33 is not a mistake on my part:  he challenged 35, but Feng Xin and Mu Qing refused to fight him.  While done for the wrong reasons, still a very wise decision on their parts.)

    Allow me to quote the next point from my notes:

Aaaaaaand they just called Hua Cheng a demon rather than a ghost.  That is so [censored] stupid!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    I think that sums up a lot right there.

    But let me go one further.  After talking about how Hua Cheng's stake in the challenge against those 35 gods was that if he lost he would surrender his ashes to Heaven, here's a direct quote of the subtitles of a line from Ling Wen:

   "He comes from Mt. Furnace, where thousands of demons fight to the death to become kings."

    AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

    ^ I can't sum it up better than that. ^

    So, Ling Wen's line is trying to fill in the viewer on another lengthy bit of world-building backstory that's accomplished in a long passage of narration, but which would be awkward to try and fit into the adaptation unless they wanted to have an actual narrator.  (Given MXTX's heavy reliance on simply putting world-building and backstory in these narrative asides, I think the adaptations might benefit from having a narrator.  It might be awkward finding the right type of narration for the stories, but it would make these detail moments work better.)

    Allow me to try to sum up everything wrong with that one line from the subtitles.  (Aside from the fact that it's probably half of what she's actually saying, but as I can't speak the language, I have no way of knowing.  Except that at this point I've watched just enough subtitled Chinese programs (and video game cutscenes) to know that expressing most things in English typically seems to take a lot longer than it does in Chinese.)

    Hua Cheng does not "come from" Mt. Tonglu.  He actually comes, originally, from Xianle, not that Ling Wen has any idea of that (as far as I know).  Now, Mt. Tonglu (which means "copper kiln," not "furnace," btw) is the site of a colossal battle royale, the winner of which becomes a Ghost King, and yes, Hua Cheng is one of the few who have won that battle royale in the past.  But everyone fighting in it was a ghost, not a demon (as I said, no demons in Heaven Official's Blessing!).  And the phrasing of "to become kings" implies that there will be more than one to emerge as a king at a time, when that is 100% not the case.

    Without knowing what she actually said, if I were hired to proofread the disasterpiece that is the subtitles on that Blu-ray, I would probably suggest replacing that line with something more like "He emerged from Mt. Tonglu, where he fought thousands of other ghosts to the death in order to earn his title as a Ghost King."  Or something like that.  (And yes, the idea of ghosts fighting to the death seems very strange to the Western way of thinking, since ghosts are already dead, but it comes up a lot in the novel, and the idea also came up in MXTX's other novels, so it's just a different way of thinking about ghosts ideologically, I guess.)

    So.

    Yeah.

    There you have it.

    After that massive pile of crud was slathered all over Hua Cheng in episode 4, I decided that my sanity was more important than trying to watch that thing.  I'd rather waste the money I paid to buy it than go mad trying to finish watching it.  (Sadly, I can't return it, because opened Blu-rays can only be exchanged in case of defect, and even then only for the same product.  Returning it because it's unwatchable due to horrifically bad subtitles is not an option.)

    It's a shame, because it's a pretty decent adaptation of volume 1 of the novel.  (Though I wonder how well they would have adapted the remaining 7 volumes if they had been permitted to make more seasons.  (Given the uptick in anti-LGBTQ+ activity on the part of the Chinese government, I think one can assume that the animation company does not feel that continuing to adapt gay romances is a safe move.)  At this rate, it would have taken eight seasons?  And I feel like they probably would not have wanted to dedicate nearly that long to it.)  Still, as long as it's available to stream on Netflix, at least I can watch it whenever I want.  But if Netflix ever takes it down, then I won't get to watch it again unless I want to either suffer through the rest of these ghastly subtitles or learn Chinese.

    On the plus side, it is faster to read volume 1 of the novel than it is to watch the entire season of the show, so there's at least that, I guess.