What are you reading?

[imron]

It seems the book uses a different numbering for chapters, but I found the text you mentioned and it doesn't have the **. In those sentences, the book uses: 露出了乳房 and 锦锦吐出我的乳头

[WangYuHong]

Thanks, Imron!

I'll do some digging around to see if all the online versions are like this, or just specifically the site I got it from this time...

[WangYuHong]

Apparently it's just that version I downloaded... (tried out shucang.com for the first time... I wonder if it's that site that censors, or just this book in particular...) Oh well, something to look out for in the future I guess... You get what you pay for, and all that...

乳房 and 乳头 kinda make sense if you're trying to keep female anatomy from being too explicit... (although it's inconsistent because 奶子 wasn't censored)

One thing I can't figure out is the other words that got censored in my version:

风流

八九 (from 十有八九)

Do those words have different definitions apart from what one finds in the dictionary that would cause them to be censored? ("distinguished and accomplished" makes the most sense in the book's context, and 80%-90% for the second word) Maybe the "editor" for the version I got was just bored or something.

[skylee]

Re 八九, think the year 1989 and what happened that June.

PS - 風流 can have the implication of promiscuity (depending on the context, of course).

[rob07]

The 杜拉拉 books are very much in the same vein as 《圈子圈套》- white collar workers working in foreign-owned enterprises in moden China, although I think I prefer 《圈子圈套》slightly more. Mostly because I think《圈子圈套》has a stronger plot with a reasonably well defined beginning, middle and end, whereas《杜拉拉》seems more just like "these are the things happening in someone's life".

I also think this. Both 杜拉拉 and 圈子圈套 sell themselves to some extent as a success manual for life - 1. get a good white collar job, 2. do everything the main characters in the book do, 3. be successful and happy. This is annoying (although I do think that there is room for more novels about white collar life). There's less of this in 圈子圈套, which I think takes itself a bit less seriously and is more focussed on actually telling a story. I finished the 圈子圈套 trilogy, but one 杜拉拉 book was enough for me.

[xuefang]

I read my first Chinese book last year called 单身公主, then tried 失恋33天 for few months only to realize it’s way too difficult for me. Right now I'm reading 公关辣妹的恋爱札记 whish is a translation from English book called Lucy in the Sky. It's as easy as 单身公主 and great for intermediate/upper-intermediate learners. It's not going to change my life, it's just a silly rom com book, but the level is just right for me.

I'm going to try 失恋33天 again alter this year and I also have 巴金's 家 at my bookshelf which I hope to read this year too. Goal is to read five novels this year.

[feihong]

Finished Mockingjay, or《饥饿游戏3：嘲笑鸟》in Chinese. It was a good conclusion to the Hunger Games trilogy. Now I'm reading 火星公主 (Chinese translation of Princess of Mars), by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I think it's roughly at the same difficulty level as the Hunger Games.

[skylee]

I have downloaded the Hunger Games Trilogy, three books in English, but cannot find a decent version in Chinese (pdf, epub, doc, txt are all ok). Any clue?

[feihong]

I wasn't able to find any decent electronic versions of the Hunger Games trilogy. I guess maybe the books are still too new? I ended up ordering dead tree copies.

[skylee]

I see. Thanks for the reply. I have read the first few pages of part 1 and did not find it very interesting. I will try to read some more to see if I can go on.

[feihong]

The first book spends about half of its length depicting the dystopian world that the heroine lives in. The exciting parts don't start until after the midway point. I admit I was ready to give up on it at certain points.

[skylee]

feihong, would you like to try to read The Host? I don't usually read sci-fi (whatever that means) novels and I think the Host was the first one I could finish reading. I read the original version. It was slow in the beginning but became a page turner after from chapter 12.

You can find a Chinese version here, and the original here. My blog posts on the book are here and here.

[Lu]

I just finished book 1 of The Hunger Games (in English), started last night and just kept reading and reading until I had to tear myself away at half past 2. Really kept me going.

[feng]

I just found the first 15 books of Doraemon online, makes for great beginner reading. I can actually read through them quite fast if I am not anal about knowing the correct meaning of every single word.

http://kindleren.com/thread-202-1-1.html

Compared to other child material I have come across, this seems easier, I suspect it is related to the fact all of the sentences are quite short making the more difficult sentences not that difficult (: Very happy!

[Meng Lelan]

I generally do not like to read in any language, but while cleaning up my office/study last week I pulled 三國演義 off a shelf and started reading it and couldn't stop.

[yialanliu]

Romance of the 3 Kingdoms in Chinese or English?

The Chinese version is so dense, where I feel it is hard to read it in 1 sitting if you want to get the meaning. The english version which spells more things out though was definitely a good read.

[Lu]

I started on the English version but that is pretty dense too. I have to read it slowly, something I'm not good at.

[animal world]

Don't know why but this morning I all of a sudden thought of Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery which I have always loved. I assumed it would be available in Chinese. As it turns out Le Petit Prince has been translated into 250 languages so he must be loved the world over. I found a pdf of the Chinese translation online and am having fun reading this book, i.e. 小王子.

I also fouind http://www.cjvlang.com/petitprince/foxsecret/mysecrete.html -- a website that compares the various translations in English, Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese. Somewhere in the book it is written that he "was in need of a friend" (il avait besoin d'un ami). This was translated into English as "he was in need of a sheep." Duh. Ironically, many translations into many languages are translating from the English translation instead of the original French.

[WangYuHong]

I'm having a hard time finishing 《裸婚》

Not because it's difficult reading (I'd put it a step above 《和空姐同居的日子》), but more due to the fact that the main characters really grates me... Most of the time I just want to yell at them for doing what they do...

Oh well, gonna stick it out to the end, hopefully the remaining two-thirds pick up a bit.

[laurenth]

@animalworld

I am reading 小王子 right now and I really enjoy it. I had read it in French before, more than once, so it's not too difficult for my level (I'm just starting to read "real" prose, so I try to choose easy books). I'm forced to read it slowly, which makes it even more pleasurable, as there are many wonderful thoughts, sentences and parts.

The Chinese version I use is this one: http://www.xiaowangzi.com. It has the images and all. I just copied and pasted it into a text file to read it with Pleco reader. I also own a paper version because this is the only bilingual ZH/FR book I have ever seen...

I knew the site you mention but I had never noticed that there were translations in languages other than Chinese, in addition to a comparison of several Chinese translations (I had bookmarked this http://www.cjvlang.com/petitprince/foxsecret/heartseec.html).