I read the trilogy in Chinese but only the first book in English.

The original Dark Forest is perfectly fine. Many people suggested it has the best storytelling among the three.

1. Ken Liu is generally considered (by people who have read the trilogy in both languages) a better translator

2. the Dark Forest's structure does feel a little "literary" to me, which might make you felt "the chapters were strangely broken up".

3. I heard that they made many changes in the English version to meet "the political correctness of the western world", which might be another contributing factor of your painful read.

(Liu Cixin on Joel Martinsen, 2015-04-19, https://m.newsmth.net/article/SF/370834): --- here comes my blunt translation ---

"Very reliable, Joel Martinsen's Chinese is very good, his Mandarin is better than mine, and he works hard and is very dedicated. There are more than 1000 modifications made in the English version of Dark Forest.

The only problem is: he only goes to vegetarian restaurants.

BTW, the modifications of Dark Forest have been just completed. There are more modifications compared to the first book, deleted everything related to Ball Lightning, one of the Wallfacer's strategy has been completely changed. Besides that, the editor of TOR is a Feminist and is very strict, sexual discriminations are recognized here and there. Example 1, when words such as "purity" and "angelic" used too often it becomes sexual discrimination, so their usage needs to be limited. Example 2, the secretary-general of the United Nations is a beauty is considered as sexual discrimination. Example 3, all Wallfacers are male is considered as sexual discrimination (but this hasn't been changed, I argued that all American presidents are male, though the editor argued that they will have a female president soon). These changes are a huge workload for me and Joel, very exhausting, but finally completed."

--- translation ends ---

Some context: - "Chinese" refers to the Chinese written language, which is universal across China, "Mandarin" refers to the official spoken language of China. Many people, including Liu Cixin, have accent when speaking Mandarin. That's why he said "Joel Martinsen's Chinese is very good, his Mandarin is better than mine".

- the vegetarian part is just kidding

- Ball Lightning is another popular science fiction from Liu Cixin

user:	Elaine-H
created:	February 6, 2021
karma:	19