Rebecca F. Kuang: preference

Transcript context

…Obviously, I can’t compare to the originals. Two strikes me as oversimplified, but the original might be as well, so I prefer one. It seemed closer to the original, but that’s quite subjective from a great-distance point of view. What do you think? One and three are by Ken Liu and two is by Joel Martinsen, who’s since done several of Liu Cixin’s other works. I like all of them. I think I have a slight preference for Ken’s literary style. It might be because he’s also quite an accomplished writer of his original fiction. I do not like the prose in Chinese. Or I guess I wouldn’t say I actively dislike it; I just find it incredibly utilitarian. He’s clearly more interested in the ideas than he is in writing very beautiful, elegant, descriptive sentences. I think this comes through especially in his character work. Oh, let me ask you, what do you make of the non-Chinese characters and how they’re represented? I get a kick out of it, so I enjoy it, but I think I enjoy it because it’s not entirely accurate. It’s a Chinese view of how Western establishment people ought to be running around and talking to each other. For me, that’s fantastic.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.