Cao Cao appreciation thread

What the actual fuck. I get that you whiteys can't into ching chong nip nong names, but dear god.

I think it's interesting how "Han" became a concept much like "Rome", so people could talk about Rome's glory or Han's glory without any real connection to the physical city of Rome or the head of the Liu clan. I mean no one really cared about the puppet emperor outside the ceremonial aspect.

I bet you anything that those random as fuck names were autogenerated from some transcription process.

There was also an eastern han and a western han

what a wondrous idea. i'd love to do this for random books.

>"anabasis" by hugh fortherington, featuring the death of the persian usurper, henry jacobs
>the bible - the story of gemma and darren in the garden of stepney - the story of claude jones being sentenced to crucifixion by the roman governor, howard stevens
>the histories, by john webb
>the lives of the emperors, by sydney evans, featuring the mad emperor george shoemaker and his autistic uncle and successor, jim robinson.

>diaochan and lu bu fawn over each other segment

On a more serious note, I nearly took a vow to always use the native names for people, places and concepts when talking about history before I realized I was just being autistic.

What did you call Jesus? Yeshua?

For the record, I had no problem reading the novel like it's translated here
threekingdoms.com/

I just saw this translation and did a "...wtf" like everyone else

I guess, I wasn't really thinking of Western history when I thought of it, I was reflecting on the fact that serious books on East Asia almost always used native terms except for a few traditional outliers (household names like Confucius, "emperor" and other titles instead of "huangdi" or 'tennou" or whatever)

I really wouldn't know what to call Cyrus though. Kyros? Koresh? It doesn't help that the modern Persian sounds very little like the archaic one. I saw an English translation for a manga set in ancient Rome that made it a point of using Italian names because "Italian is just modern Latin right", I don't want to make the same horrible blunder.

The Han empire was breddy good by ancient Chinese standards

>"Several hundred thousand peasants didn't die in a skirmish?"
>"Good job!"

China sure does have a lot of happening in history.

That's interesting, I admit to finding the Ro3K intimidating because of all the similar names. Personally I'd like an actual translation for the names, which I understand are mostly of the "noun noun" type, like some Native Americans. "Cao" means something like "virtuous" iirc.

>like some native Americans
Like every culture on Earth really. We don't remember what Western names mean because they are Latin or Greek or Hebrew, but they obviously had meanings once.

I mean it would be ridiculous to translate
"Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius Cornelianus Scipio Nasica" as "Fifth (Son-of-)Blind-Boy Hired Loyal (Son-of-)Horned Baton Big-Nose"

It's actually kind of useful for Chinese though because our translations don't preserve the tones and we would have a hard time with them anyway. Many of the consonant distinctions get lost too like 'ch' vs. 'q'. It really does all look and sound the same to westerners. I can understand what user's getting at and literal translations of names could be useful for some languages.

The average person doesn't really know how to pronounce Latin either but that's no reason to rename every Roman something like Hired Loyal FitzBaton.
For that matter, Japs and Chinese can't pronounce English but they still try to render names in their own language rather than "translating" them.

There should be better transliteration schemes though.

I just brute forced memorized all the Zhiang Bie Dong Shang Zhaou Be Liu Ching Chong motherfuckers as I went along. Just dive in the deep end the try to read it.

Now memorize them again in Japanese so you can watch/play Sangokushi-themed stuff.

>inferior jap shit

...

>he doesn't want to see Sou Sou and Nobunaga band together to fight the snake demons

I think in X-treme legends, didn't they do this?

Serious suggestion, play dynasty warriors until you are familiar with the characters, then read the book

I couldn't tell what the fuck was going on in Dynasty Warriors until I read the book. Well, the manga version.

I agree, but its a great way to get familiar with the characters and their relationships to each other

Latin phonology is much more similar to English phonology than either are to Chinese. Mispronouncing a few latin letters or digraphs like "ae", "c", or messing up the vowel length isn't a big deal and its still quite familiar and comfortable to English speakers due to its importance in history and influence on later languages including English itself.

Chinese on the other hand has a very restrictive phonology and the phonemic distinctions it does make including especially tones but also palatal/retroflex consonants go right over the head of a lot of western readers. It really is different. You don't have to do it all the time but literal translations of the names of Chinese emperors' names for example would be more interesting to average readers. Tranquility emperor, civil emperor, etc. have a lot more personality to them than the actual names.

Can't we just -ius to all their names?

Mengdius. Xuandius. Kongmingius. Lubuius. Yunchangius. Etc.

>I only play Lokiu

That's exactly the kind of translation I would prefer. English names have meanings of course but because they're filtered thru foreign languages, we seldom have any sense of what the meaning is. Chinese names are in regular Chinese, and that adds something to the understanding. Like if someone were to insult Quintus by calling him "short-sighted", we might get that it's meant as an insult, but we get more if we know Quintus' patronymic means "Blind".

The butthurt caused by combining latin and greek roots together is nothing compared to what you just did. Somewhere a linguistic purist is having an aneurysm.

How would that help? I mean it'd show who was male and female I guess, but beyond that the problem is not in knowing that these words are names because they're usually the only words not translated.

>You don't have to do it all the time but literal translations of the names of Chinese emperors' names for example would be more interesting to average readers
I would certainly agree with that, especially since posthumous names are much more significant than personal names. I always felt Qin Shi Huang should have been rendered as just "The First Emperor".

That's what footnotes are for. Romans and Greeks played not just with the literal meaning of the common noun from which the name is derived, but also with the mythology surrounding it (most families had their own stories about origins and who they were related to and so on.) If you don't know the meaning behind common Latin names you really have no business trying to guess puns, you rely on people more familiar with Latin to explain the joke to you.

Well they did it to Kongfuzius and Mengzius. They thought it helped back then.

Those are Latinized, not translated. That's almost the opposite of what I'm asking for.

They needed it because they were writing in Latin and the grammar demands it, then everyone read the Latin texts and it stuck.

Uh huh.

Here's what Chen Shou thought of them:
>Wen-di [Cao Pi] possessed innate talent and literary grace, composed essays every time he wrote, had encyclopedic knowledge and retentive memory, and both genius and artistic talent; if only he had also added greater personal bearing, cultivated impartial and virtuous conduct, pursued aspirations while following the Way, developed great morality in his heart, then compared to the worthy rulers of ancient times, how close he would have come!

>Ming-di [Cao Rui] was reserved and determined, decisive and intelligent, straightforward in meaning and conduct, and had the qualities of a true ruler of men. But at the time when the common people were suffering and the realm divided and in ruins, he did not first restore the ancestral traditions or develop his power base, instead rashly imitating Qin Huang [Ying Zheng] and Han Wu[-di Liu Che] in ordering large scale construction and focusing on long-term plans; this was a swift path to danger!

So Chen Shou himself gives overall positive judgments, just judging both as brilliant rulers but lacking magnanimity in the former case and ill-suited for his time in the latter case. What's your source for your revisionist interpretations?

And what is this nonsense here?
>He didn't protect his good heir from his shit heir.
Care to explain?

>just judging both as brilliant rulers but lacking magnanimity in the former case

Are you dense? Your own quote tells us he thought Cao Pi was biased and dishonest, lazy, worldly, and immoral.

Modern Chinese dialects also sound very little like older Chinese dialects, so you'd run in to a problem pretty quickly there. Really, it's just asking for a clusterfuck.

Names are just arbitrary pointers to concepts. and so the best name is that which refers the most people to the correct concept, rather than what is actually most accurate to what people used in previous times. Still, there should be some effort made to preserve the older forms of names, especially by historians.

imagine a world where he steamrolled Liu Bei and the southland and reunited the Han

It would become a Chinese tradition to drop your baby on it's head.

So nothing else about China changes?

I don't think you know how to read very well.

Despite the memes, Chinese take very good care of their children on average.

Han was Han. The only difference between the two was that one of them got ruled over by some Confucian scholar for a few decades.

three kingdoms is mostly fiction anyway, in reality all your heroes were not deep characters, just a bunch of thugs grappling for power during one of China's many many apocalypses

it makes more sense as a land dispute amongst eccentric southern gentry in the reconstruction era where black people remain conveniently unmentioned tbqh

>Personally I'd like an actual translation for the names, which I understand are mostly of the "noun noun" type, like some Native Americans. "Cao" means something like "virtuous" iirc.
This is literally what they did in old Kung Fu films for english audiences.

I would rather they give it the same treatment as the many videogames and children's cartoons translated in English, such as Pokemon or Inazuma Eleven or whatever.

dude, I was just watching Backstroke of the West the other day. fucking hilarious

An important poet.

>you rely on people more familiar with Latin to explain the joke to you.
In which case it is no longer funny.

See for example this:

>Previously, at the time when Xiān-zhǔ [Liú Bèi] and Liú Zhāng met at Fú [in 211], [Zhāng] Yù was [Liú] Zhāng’s Advisor, and sat in attendance. He had a thick beard, and Xiān-zhǔ mocked him: “In the past I lived in Zhuō county, where there were especially many with the surname Máo. East west south north there were all different Máo. The Magistrate of Zhuō said of them: ‘Is this not a Máo surrounded Zhuō here?’”

>[Zhāng] Yù at once replied: “In the past there was a Chief of Lù in Shàngdǎng, who was transferred to Magistrate of Zhuō, resigned his office and returned home. At the time when people wrote to him, if he wished to address by his Lù title it would miss Zhuō and if by his Zhuō title would miss Lù. Therefore it was addressed as the ‘Lù-Zhuō Gentleman.’”

>Xiān-zhǔ had no beard, and so Yù replied like this.

>[Translator’s note: The surname Máo 毛 can also be a word meaning ‘hair.’ In ancient times, Lù 潞 would have been pronounced the same as lòu 露 ‘exposed,’ and Zhuō 涿 would have been pronounced the same as tún 豚, a pun on tún 臀 ‘buttocks.’ Liú Bèi called Zhāng Yù ‘hair covered buttocks’ and Zhāng Yù called Liú Bèi ‘Mister Exposed-buttocks.’]

Okay, but I don't see how translating the words would help much. Even modern Chinese people wouldn't get the pun because they don't know classical Chinese pronunciation.

>My own twin!
>Now neither of us will lack for ambition!

Koei should literally be given a blank check to fuck up any historical period they fancy.

Though ironically, Japanese people reading it might get the pun, since those pairs of kanji are still pronounced the same.

I prefer Zhuge Liang

youtube.com/watch?v=tSIQvswk4sU

youtube.com/watch?v=A7JpXRNP3hk

OP song is so good every time.

You mean the "military genius" with literally just one successful campaign on his record?
The man that played favourites more than Catherine of Russia?
The most egregious self-glorifying ass in Han history?
To each his own I guess.

Yeah I do mean him

And literally NOTHING you can say will convince me otherwise

Zhuge Liang is better than Cao Cao.

You either agree with me, or I don't care what you say and your words mean nothing

>You mean the "military genius" with literally just one successful campaign on his record?
If that one military campaign is overcoming long odds again and again and how close he actually came to winning, then it actually is extremely impressive.

And they were all egregiously self-glorifying asses. Kongming just happened to be good at it.

They made up Wang Lang dying to Zhuge Liang in fiction because otherwise they'd have to admit Zhuge Liang's first campaign would have literally accomplished nothing otherwise.

>Chancellor to Han who actually ran everything while the nominal Emperor played around all day in the capital
Zhuge Liang was literally Cao Cao-lite. Li Yan famously called him out on this by proposing that Zhuge Liang be granted title as King and the Nine Honors.

So one needs to only compare the successes of Wei to those of Shu-Han to see which Cao Cao was better at their job.

No, that one military campaign is defeating a bunch of southern barbarians after their army imploded and split due to internal infighting.
The only other military campaigns he actually led himself was the northern campaigns, in which he got rekt.

Zhuge Liang even had local superiority the first few times because Wei was distracted and committing more resources against Wu to the east. Romantic idealization of Zhuge Liang means that more attention gets paid to the western theater when Wei and Wu were launching campaigns against each other almost on a yearly basis.