#white cat legend donghua translations

[whitecatlegend]

White Cat Legend season 2 full

It was very embarrassing for me to watch people discover my donghua posts after I figured out all the blunders I've made in my translations... but fear not, for I have rechecked the episodes and fixed the translations (although there is a risk that some lines are still missing; I tried to check everything, but at this point I've seen each episode about a dozen times and being attentive is hard)

Those are all hardsubs; I tried to style it in such a way as to make the transition from homemade to official subs as inconspicuous as possible. Share with your friends, download or watch on google drive - whatever suits you best. If you want to reupload this somewhere, I don't mind, but please give credit.

I did not edit the old releases (might do it one day, but ghhh where to find the time), but I might one day assemble all the translator's notes (especially the cipher one! That was so cool to research) in a doc somewhere in the same folder with hardsubs...

[miyamiwu]

Those who do great things shouldn’t sweat the small stuff. Sometimes, one even has to let go of personal pride.

—Lu Na, White Cat Legend / Dali Court Chronicles (大理寺日志)

[thatonenewp-layer]

i tink de CHINESE-speaking side of de fandom for white cat legend is a good size

it's just us english-speaking fans who are unfortunately de minority :< well at least as far as i know. maybe all of u speak/understand some level of mandarin and im alone to wallow in my pit of despair behind de language barrier-

[best-underrated-anime]

Are many of the animes here on crunchyroll? Or netflix? I know a bunch are but I also wonder if it's a good suggestion list ^^

Considering the numerous times I had to find alternate trailers because a lot of Crunchroll’s YouTube videos are blocked in my country… yes, a lot of the shows are on Crunchyroll. A few are on Netflix, and some are on Funimation.

As for donghua (Chinese anime), most can only be watched legally through Iqiyi or Bilibili. For the latter, it might be hard to access when you don’t understand Chinese. But fret not, these two also have official YouTube channels, so you can try checking there too.

While I’m at this, I might as well just list the sites where you can watch certain donghua...

Are You Ok - Iqiyi

Beryl and Saphire - Bilibili

God Troubles Me - Bilibili. I think some seasons are also on the official Bilibili YouTube channel

Legend of Luo Xiaohei - There are no official subs, but there are numerous fansubs on YouTube. The Legend of Hei prequel movie is on Crunchyroll, though. (Please watch the movie in Chinese… They literally translated the characters’ names to English in the dub, and it’s so cringe 😭)

Link Click - Funimation (S1 only), and Crunchyroll and Bilibili (both seasons). Link Click S1 official subs were awful, though, so I suggest looking into fansubbed versions. I think there are 2-3 different fansubs for it.

No Doubt in Us - Bilibili, Netflix

White Cat Legend - Bilibili, and I think YouTube too. @whitecatlegend also made some good fansubs for S2

Wo Jia Dashixiong Naozi You Keng - Bilibili

This is not a comprehensive list, btw. Just listing what I know off the top of my head.

As for aeni (Korean anime)… I’m not as familiar. There doesn’t seem to be any legal way to watch Mignon at the moment because of issues the creator had with Vimeo, but I could be wrong… Another aeni is Flowering Heart, and a quick search says it’s officially available on YouTube.

Trese, the lone Filipino anime on the list, is available on Netflix.

[kukuandkookie]

I haven’t been back in the White Cat Legend tag in a while but it’s suddenly so much more active! I’m so happy for it. 🥺

Now I really need to post my old fan art for the series sometime LSFJKSHSS (most of it is admittedly Wang Qi and Cui Bei ship art, but not all of it! 😂).

I’ve also been meaning to subtitle a few donghua extras and I could even upload some of the old manhua extras I translated…

Oh, and I did end up getting the donghua art book, so I have pictures/video of that too that I should upload!

(On that note, I did also run into the manhua art book at a super cool international book store in Shanghai, along with some other digital manhua—such as No Doubt in Us and Saved the Jianghu’s Public Enemy by Mistake—that had been printed into physical copies, but I didn’t get anything because they’d be hard to take on a plane… But man did I really really really want those manhua volumes, along with the White Cat Legend manhua art book 😭)

[masterofrecords]

Storytelling for shits and giggles

Figured with all the stuff that's been going on I should probably make a proper pinned post for those of my new followers who are not, miraculously, bots.

So yeah, hi, Master of Records here, and I love storytelling in various forms, from running Pathfinder and other TTRPG games to translation and to writing.

Translations:

I currently translate the White Cat Legend manhua (and sometimes donghua) over at @whitecatlegend. A story of political intrigue and Tang dynasty court drama inspired by the real historical events of Wu Zetian's reign - come check it out, it's a good (if more than occasionally bloody) time.

I'm also slowly making my way through the end-cards of The Ravages of Time donghua and the related historical notes on the episodes. Here's a masterlist for that, there is plenty of fun stuff about the Late Han and the Three Kingdoms period even unrelated to the donghua!

I also sometimes complain about translation work on this blog, under the #masterofrecords translates tag

Original fiction:

I don't have as much time for it these days, but I occasionally write some stuff based on the big Pathfinder campaign I ran for over two years for my friends. Check out my Angstober 2022 and Angstober 2023 masterlists for that!

Games:

I've had the pleasure of writing the script for a wonderful gay vampire visual novel Once upon a Stormy Night as a part of Weird Birds Studio. Check it out - the character art is gorgeous, and even if I didn't have the time to write the scene of the cat familiar cheating at cards, I did write the polyamorous ending.

Fanfiction:

You can find my AO3 here.

Currently I only have posted works for Twisted Wonderland

Any wips and updates are usually posted under #masterofrecords writes tag

Aquarium (Ashenviper, T, 100k words and growing slowburn, updates regularly every 1-2 weeks well not anymore I guess)

Jamil had always found Azul's attention annoying, but after the overblotting incident the merman became downright insufferable.

That's when Professor Crewel gives them a group assignment. How much can change in two weeks? A lot, apparently, and what was supposed to be a simple alchemy project turns into something more complicated, involving a heist, personal drama, good food and surprising revelations, not necessarily in that order.

One caring gesture at a time, feelings grow.

Aquarium fanart masterlist

Covered Faces, Bared Souls (Ashenviper, T, only 1st chapter of 3 is currently posted, will update at an uncertain date)

Azul had never had many chances to dance, especially on two legs. In preparation for the masquerade ball he employs Jamil's help - whether it was a good idea or not, remains to be seen.

When things get particularly bad, I sometimes draw shitty stick figure comics about everything wrong with my life tagged as #mor's silly penguin comics. If you think I haven't posted anything of worth for a while, check them out, they might have answers on whatever mental health malady had befallen me this time.

Feel free to drop an ask if you have questions about any of my writing/other work!

[danhoemei]

Danmei Masterpost

Novels and dramas with links and resources (main Masterpost)

I fixed the links to tags but let me know if anything doesn’t work as expected.

General tags

#resources (links to translations, info etc.)

#recommendations, #to check out, #fanfics

#meta (or #[series] meta, e.g. #tyk meta)

#them ladies

Please support the authors

Even if you don’t speak Chinese and read a fan translation you can purchase their work which brought you so much joy. English guides to do that:

Danmei Bookstore Masterpost (a great list of where to buy Chinese novels)

jjwxc: the most recent guide, another older guide, guide focused on mxtx

danmei news (mxtx official translation faq)

Official English Publishers

Seven Seas - series list (all mxtx novels, guardian, spl, 2ha, qian qiu, yuwu, bing an ben)

Peach Flower House - store (little mushroom, golden stage/terrace)

Novels

Priest

@priest-novels 

#bestial blade (Bestial Blade - novel)

#can ci pin (Imperfections - carrd / novel)

#guardian (Zhenhun - novel)

#guomen (Through The Strait Gates - novel)

#huai dao (The Way of the Evil - novel)

#you yi (You Yi | Itinerant Doctor - novel)

#jin se (novel)

#lhjc (Lie Huo Jiao Chou | Drowning Sorrows in Raging Fire - novel)

#liu yao (Liu Yao: The Revitalization of Fuyao Sect - novel)

#modu (Silent Reading - novel)

#shbl (Shan He Biao Li | Of Mountains and Rivers - novel)

#qi ye (Lord Seventh - novel)

#spl (Sha Po Lang - novel)

#tai sui (novel)

#tyk (Tian Ya Ke | Faraway Wanderers - novel / carrd; drama #shl)

#ultimate blue seal (novel)

MXTX

#mdzs (Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation - novel; drama #cql)

#svsss (Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System - novel)

#tgcf (Heaven Official’s Blessing - novel)

old blog @mxtx-novels-stuff 

Meng Xi Shi

#peerless (Wushuang - novel)

#thousand autumns (Qian Qiu - novel | donghua with subs)

Meatbun

#2ha (The Husky And His White Cat Shizun by Meatbun - novel)

#bing an ben (Case File Compendium by Meatbun - novel)

#yuwu (Yu Wu by Meatbun - novel - related to 2ha)

Other

#the bandit's strategy (novel - related to The emperor’s strategy & Everywhere in jianghu is wonderful)

#chun feng du jian (novel)

#copper coins (novel)

#devil venerable also wants to know (novel)

#dinghai fusheng records (novel)

#dmbj (Daomu Biji - novel; drama #ultimate note)

#dtppf (The Disabled Tyrant’s Pet Palm Fish [Transmigration] - novel)

#the emperor's strategy (novel - related to The bandit’s strategy & Everywhere in jianghu is wonderful)

#everywhere in jianghu is wonderful (novel - related to The bandit’s strategy & The emperor’s strategy)

#fanservice paradox (novel)

#golden stage (novel)

#jianghu name da (the jianghu is boundless)

#mist [unlimited] (novel)

#legend of exorcism (Tianbao Fuyao Lu - novel)

#little mushroom (novel)

#lmw (The Legendary Master’s Wife - novel)

#married thrice to salted fish (三嫁咸鱼 - novel)

#mistakenly saving the villain (novel)

#nan chan (novel)

#of all the transmigrations why am I a prisoner (carrd/novelupdates)

#poison of the human panacea (novel)

#qiang jin jiu (novel)

#qqgk (Quanqiu Gaokao / Global Examination - carrd / novel)

#renshe (novel)

#those years in quest of honour mine (novel)

#to rule in a turbulent world (novel)

#twwtadsl (The Wrong Way to a Demon Sect Leader - novel)

#villains white lotus halo (The Villain’s White Lotus Halo - novel)

#the wife is first (Qi Wei Shang - novel / carrd)

#you yao (Are You Okay - novel)

Webcomics

#saved the public enemy by mistake (bilibili | ?)

Dramas

#a chinese ghost story

#advance bravely (novel)

#bad buddy

#big dragon

#border town prodigal

#cherry magic

#cql (The Untamed; novel #mdzs)

#the devil judge 

#kieta hatsukoi (carrd, dm)

#kingdom 

#kinnporsche

#love between fairy and devil

#miss the dragon

#mriad (My Roommate Is a Detective)

#nirvana in fire 

#not me

#shl (Shang He Ling/Word of Honor - drama / carrd / resources; novel #tyk)

#the blooms at ruyi pavilion 

#the lost tomb

#the yin yang master dream of eternity

#tsomd (drama The Sleuth of Ming Dynasty; novel The Fourteenth Year of Chenghua)

#ultimate note (novel #dmbj)

#vincenzo

#we best love

#why r u

#zettai bl 

Them ladies (wlw)

baihenovels carrd

general tags: #them ladies, #wlw

#couple of mirrors

#fgep (Female General And Eldest Princess - novel)

#fragrance of the first flower 

#jwqs (Clear and Muddy Loss of Love - novel)

#legend of yunqian

#red devil and heroine su

[hrshlandmanhuadonghua]

Hi!! I’m on my way to make a carrd (and even a tumblr post) to share a bunch of manhuas/donghuas and where to read/watch them if you’re a non-native speaker and I only have a few.

Right now my list of stuff I have translations for is made of

All Saints Street

Fei Ren Zai

You Shou Yan

The Legend of Luo Xiaohei (and its prequel)

And the list I don’t have translations for (at least not easily reachable)

White Snake (fan tl but got it from a friend)

Nezha (the 2019 movie) (fan tl but got it from a friend)

Jiang Ziya (fan tl but got it from a friend)

Dali Temple Log/White Cat Legend (there’s official sub but it’s zoned)

So if you have more (titles and links would be great) you can tell me so I can add them! If you already made a masterpost for them, send me the link of the post so I can add it too! (also if there’s a post that explains the universe or else properly bc the thing is dense, I can add it too)

[whitecatlegend]

White Cat Legend s2e01 english subtitles

Sorry for the long wait, but here it is! With how busy I am, new episodes will probably appear on this blog every Saturday - episode 2 will probably take me less time, but episodes 3 and 4... oof. It's going to be a challenge.

Now, I did my best with the OP and ED, but please know that translating Chinese poetry or song lyrics is a bit like battling with a complex puzzle that might or might not have a solution. There were a lot of chengyu. I might have cried at some point.

I suppose I could have left it untranslated, but I really love both of those songs (the OP is sung by Zhou Shen! How cool is that!) and wanted to share with you guys at least a bit of their coolness.

If I ever get my hands on better-quality videos, I will update the file and this post, but for now this is as good as it gets. Do tell me if there are any problems with the subs! Enjoy the show, enjoy the emotional damage.

[whitecatlegend]

There it is! Episode 6, for your viewing pleasure

Important note: this episode has so. Much. Court language. Like holy hell I thought my brain would burst. I could fit about half of the meaning in the lines to make it readable, I think. Therefore this translation is a bit looser than I usually like; I hope you will forgive me for this.

Also I'm not above posting thirst traps to get attention, so here:

Enjoy this face while you still can

[whitecatlegend]

White Cat Legend s2e08 English subs

Oh boy, for an episode I didn't translate I sure have a lot of notes for this one.

So this is basically the official translation of this episode, transcribed by yours truly, with minor edits and additions - mostly tenses or that one time where Yi Zhihua's name was translated as flower.

Ministry of Justice is what I used to translate as Ministry of Punishments; it would seem that the justice translation is more accurate for the Tang time period - sorry for the confusion and not checking more thoroughly earlier.

On the other hand, Bodyguard was translated in the official subs as Captain which I don't think fits the established translations of the word or Qiu Shenji's actual duties. Still, it's going to be in the future episodes, so I begrudgingly went with Captain.

Similarly, Aide to the Imperial Secretary was translated by them as Grand Chancellor. This one's a tad dodgy, since I haven't been able to find a lot of information on the title, especially in Tang dynasty, and things get muddy with the Han dynasty Secretariat becoming the Department of State Affairs and all, but I'm pretty sure this is neither the Grand Chancellor nor the Minister (or even Vice Minister) of the department. After a lot of thinking and reading, I believe something like Aide to the Chancellor might be an appropriate translation, but again, I just haven't been able to find enough information on what the title entailed to say for sure... I don't think this title appears anywhere else in the future, so Aide it is.

They also tactfully translated eunuch as chamberlain and like. I have zero idea why, but it will also be in episode 12, so chamberlain stayed.

Didn't edit the OP or ED at all, because they'll be hardcoded in ep10-12.

Also, there were some lines that were missing/timed really weirdly in the version of the video I have, so I'm sorry the English and the Chinese are out of sync there.

There is also one line which I'm having a lot of trouble with, because it's supposed to be the same here and in a future episode, but the future episode which I can't change has a really weird translation, so. I dunno. I ended up going with a translation that makes sense, will think what to do with episode 12 later.

-----

The plan for the future is: do the same thing for episode 9 next week, then make all the additions for episodes 10-12 - that will hopefully take less time and I might manage more than one episode in a week, but we'll see - and then finally reconcile what I've done for episodes 1-7 with the official versions (I'll also check for any mistakes and missed lines). I have also finally figured out how to hard-code subs, so I'll do a prettified hard-subbed release of the whole season at some later point (probably a week or two after posting the last episode). I promise to actually figure out all the continuity then.

[whitecatlegend]

White Cat Legend s2e03 English subtitles

This episode is a bit on the longer side, but hey, it's here! Quite a few things deserving of notes, so see those below (warning: some might be spoilery)

There's a juicy tidbit of information in this episode (that makes it different from the manhua). Qiu Shenji calls Li Bing's brother commandery duke unlike commandery prince that was used in the manhua (and that is also Li Bing's title). That likely implies that they are actually only half-brothers, with Li Bing being the son of the principal wife and the kid being the son of one of the secondary wives or concubines, their father being one of the Imperial princes.

That said, though he might come off as a bit dispassionate in the static manhua, the animation made Qiu Shenji surprisingly good with kids... What did you think?

Unrelated, but I'm very happy I managed to get chapter 79 translated before this episode. The chant the bandits say here is derivative from the one in Romance of Sui and Tang, but I probably would have had a harder time tracking it down like that.

And another detail that doesn't come across in the translation, but the chief bandit immediately switches to polite forms once he "recognizes" Chen Shi, it's very funny. Like, I seriously cannot express in English how much of a bootlicker he becomes.

The characters in this episode's "Alice in Wonderland" are from the Dahufa movie that Nice Boat studio helped animate. It's fairly dark, satirical and in places disturbing, but I highly recommend checking it out (I believe I watched it subbed on youtube, but mind you, that was years ago, it might have been taken down).

P.S. Reworking subtitles for the new quality of video ended up being more bothersome than I had expected; I'll hold off on rereleasing episodes 1 and 2 until next week when I'll have a bit more free time. Thank you for your continued support!

[whitecatlegend]

White Cat Legend s2e09 English subs

Note to self: do not set timestamps on torture scenes before food.

Anyway, here is the promised list of warnings for this episode, because while the previous episodes have already dealt with some heavy and dark topics, it's turned all the way up to 11 here.

Blood, injury and torture depiction (not too graphic, and many things are left off-screen, but some are shown directly). Corporal punishment and death of an animal (only the aftermath is depicted, but is focused on).

And also, because Censor Lai is a warning of his own, here is a bit of historical background on him.

Lai Junchen was one of the people known as "cruel officials", and an infamous secret police officer known for employing various methods to frame other officials and using torture to extract confessions (or, occasionally, forging confessions entirely and having people killed right away).

Lai Junchen was promoted by Empress Wu for (by his claim) trying to report events related to Li Chong's rebellion and being thwarted by one of the princes; and even later in his career he would occasionally accuse someone of being Li Chong's accomplice (one, though by no means last, was general Qiu Shenji).

(Because I have nothing better to do with my life I've looked through Classic of Accusation - a book written by Lai Junchen on, essentially, the art of framing people in a believable way. It's... very cynical, is all I'll say.)

Also also. Mild spoilers, but in the Alice in Wonderland bits, Yi Zhihua's fighting name (Littla Hua) is exactly the same as the name of little Qiu Shenji's dog. I kept it as "Little Flower" for the dog, but it's literally the same, and it didn't occur to me until I translated Qiu Shenji telling Yi Zhihua he's his attack dog...

[whitecatlegend]

White Cat Legend s2e12 English subs

So, I actually went through the trouble of editing out the official subs for those two lines in the cells scene so that I could properly mirror the lines from episode 8 - I hope the editing isn't too obvious. Other than that, this episode had very little additional stuff for me to translate save for the plot progression chart and the Alice in Wonderland.

Oh, and if you're wondering what's with the short film at the end of the episode - it's the trailer to the upcoming project Deep Dive. It's made entirely in Blender (yay open source software!) and I'm personally very curious to see how the finished thing will turn out because it looks pretty cool so far.

[whitecatlegend]

White Cat Legend s2e04 English subtitles

Oof, it's finally here! Sorry for the long wait, this episode took a lot out of me. Why are there so few hours in a day... Anyway, some notes:

750 grams of gold - originally 15 liangs of gold, I figured it would make more sense if I recalculated rather than put a footnote in the subs that a liang is about 50 grams

"Doesn't he know that hesitation leads to change" - it's a quote from a famous Ming dynasty military work, Access to the Altar. The general idea of the full quote would be that a general needs to quickly seize opportunities, because if you hesitate, things will inevitably change. Now, obviously Ming dynasty happened several centuries later than this show, but a) so did cherry-patterned boxers and b) it is reasonable to imagine this being general military wisdom even before being put into writing.

I have Thoughts about this episode, but I think I'll settle on this: Nice Boat Animation really know how to make an impression on contrast and visual styles of different elements. And I love them for that.

One last thing: frankly, if you haven't been expecting war crimes, I don't know if we've been watching the same show up until this point, but still, this is your friendly warning that things get heavy in this episode.

[whitecatlegend]

White Cat Legend s2e02 english subtitles

Here is the file! Also, I found some mistakes in ep1 + got my hands on slightly better video, so hopefully I will update both those files soon (I sincerely hope I will, at least. I have so much stuff to do, you have no idea. I need fewer hobbies, seriously)

Now, remember when I said this episode will probably not take too long to translate and sub? Well, I lied - or rather was seriously mistaken. Buckle up, here comes the rabbit hole.

This fucking frame. This single frame gave me so much grief...

If you've been following my manhua translations, you might remember that I mentioned seal script - an ancient form of writing that is mostly only used on signs and such even by Tang dynasty. It's a bit tricky to translate, but usually not impossible once you figure out the method. I happily tried to apply the method here and... failed. All dictionaries claimed that those characters simply didn't exist.

That got me thinking - this could probably be some kind of cipher, right? It's a secret message from a guard to a princess. It could definitely be a cipher.

Obviously, ancient Chinese cryptography doesn't work in the same way that Western does - you can't rely on coding individual letters. So, there were many inventive methods to conceal information. One of them comes with an interesting story.

In the beginning of Wu Zetian's rule (not as an official Empress, but as the Empress Dowager) she was met with severe opposition. Her opponents assembled troops and communicated in secret, but one of them was arrested, one of the secret letters falling into Wu Zetian's hands. The letter, strangely enough, only said "green goose" (青鵝).

Wu Zetian, after some thinking, disassembled those characters into separate strokes and components (十二月 我自与), giving the meaning that in the month of December, that official was (going to start a rebellion) from within (the court)

Now, I tried to properly decode the message here, but it's a bit hard. I think the general idea is that someone passed through the gates between 7 and 9 am, but I'm honestly not sure how to interpret some of the parts of those characters (if anyone suddenly has more luck, please, please tell me, I probably spend several hours just on this thing and I want to know)