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hunxi-after-hours · 3 years
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Hi! I hope you're having a wonderful day! I've seen that you've seen Word of Honor and I was wondering if there was anything fun lost in translation with the ghost people aliases that you think is worth sharing? The "Tragicomic" Xi Sang Gui is who prompts my question in particular because as far as I know, tragicomedy would actually be 悲喜剧 beixiju (same xi, though...) so it got me curious, but all of the aliases are fair game
ahahaha friends it's impossible to ask me if "anything fun has been lost in translation" because 1) the answer is always going to be yes, and 2) I don't watch these shows with English subs, so I legitimately have no idea how things have been translated
but specifically w/r/t "tragicomic" as a translation for 喜丧, that's like... a surprisingly good translation? not necessarily in terms of accuracy, but certainly in terms of brevity
you're right in that the words 'tragedy' and 'comedy' in Chinese are 悲剧 bei ju and 喜剧 xi ju (悲 bei / "sorrow, sadness," 喜 xi / 'joy, delight,' 剧 ju / 'work of fiction, theater'), but in contrast, 喜 xi and 丧 sang are part of the binomes 喜事 xi shi / 'joyous event' and 丧事 sang shi / 'sorrowful event,' which refer to marriages and funerals, respectively
so 喜丧鬼 Xisang Gui isn't actually the ghost of tragicomedy--she's the ghost of weddings and funerals
pursued further, the direct juxtaposition of '喜' and '丧' evokes two specific crossovers:
'joyous funeral' - some funerals (often for people who passed away over the age of 80) are called 喜丧 'joyous funerals' because, well, the person lived long, lived well, and died happy, at which point, the funeral isn't that sad since it's the natural ending of a happy story
'funereal marriage' - this isn't a Thing the way 喜丧 as joyous funerals is a thing, but it is Very Difficult for me to look at this interpretation, look at Cao Weining and Gu Xiang, and look back and not see it
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