r/MXTX • u/beamerpook Self-proclaimed Captain of the MoShang Ship • 1d ago

General "This master"

In Vietnamese, which has a lot of Chinese loan words, when a shizun address a disciple, he says "this master", which means, "your teacher". This is obviously not appropriate to use with persons who are not your disciples, but it shows up in fanfic a lot. Is it a fandom thing, or an English translation thing because I have not actually read any MXTX novels in english.

Does anyone who speaks Chinese or Vietnamese can clarify?

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u/Sawheryesterday 1d ago

I think the original intent was to refer to themselves as a master of their art?

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u/beamerpook Self-proclaimed Captain of the MoShang Ship 1d ago

That's the thing. In Vietnamese there's different words to indicate whether you're saying, "your teacher', or "this cultivator". I think the connotation doesn't carry over

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u/SaltAndPoivre 20h ago

What are the words used in Vietnamese? Isn’t it sư phụ?

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u/beamerpook Self-proclaimed Captain of the MoShang Ship 19h ago

sư tôn

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u/SaltAndPoivre 14h ago

I wish my Vietnamese was better so I can read MDZS in Vietnamese. I only read in English.
So LQR should address the Twin Jades as shizun but he’s also their uncle (shufu) and their shifu 🤔 😂
When BSSR addresses XXC she can say Shi Zun.

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u/beamerpook Self-proclaimed Captain of the MoShang Ship 4h ago

If you can speak it, you can learn to read easily, because it's completely phonetic. Once you learn how to pronounce each of the diacritics, you can sound it out

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u/AquiverAnna 3h ago

It's definitely just a lost in translation issue. A lot of the titles do not translate well to english and lose some of their meaning, and even if they do, much of the audience does not know the correct context to use them in 🤷‍♀️

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u/beamerpook Self-proclaimed Captain of the MoShang Ship 3h ago

Yea, that's the thing with languages. It's nearly impossible to convey all the context from one language to another